For Whom the Sirens Toll: A Study on an Ethical Challenge in Prehospital Emergency Medicine

An emergency medical dispatcher (EMD) is a professional tele communicator who gathers information about medical emergencies, provides assistance through emergency medical advice and instruction, and dispatches emergency medical service (EMS) resources to the scene. Evidently, the types of tasks and resources that EMDs handle may change among countries (1). EMSs include the ambulance service as well as the fire and police department in some countries. Regardless of the type of EMS, the main role of an EMD is to determine the situation and location and to dispatch the EMS resources to the emergency. However, in some cases, there might be more than one emergency calls at one instance, and an EMD needs to prioritize the calls. An EMD is the person who must establish priorities for the allocation of limited EMS resources. During an emergency, the process of organizing the closest appropriate ambulance to the person in genuine need is crucial. It is called (tele) phone triage and it involves many technical, medical, and ethical challenges.