OMA Doc

[LondonMedic]

Hi,

I'm Mark, I'm a medic from London, UK.

I was just wondering about the OMA Doctors; who are they, where do they come from, what do they get called to, who dispatches them, that sort of thing?

Thanks.

 

[tbendick]

OMA is the office of Medical Affairs. 

In the FDNY we have the BHS or Bureau Health Services which takes care of FF's day to day doing medicals respond to the hospital and fire scenes.  They only deal with Members of the department.

OMA on the other hand is for our EMS side of things and the CFR-D program.  They oversea all training and work with the medics on the city Exams.  They are also responsible for quality assurance and do sit downs with members if there is a question of patient care on a run. 
As far as responses they have doctors who man a call center (Medical Control or Telemetry) were medics and EMT's will call into for instructions while on scene of assignments.  The 2nd role is to respond to scene of incidents, the two main OMA response Doctors are now both USAR trained. They can also goto minor school bus accidents and check the kids out on scene instead of taking them all to the hospital.

 

[LondonMedic]

Sounds like a good plan, here our docs deploy far more often, but don't do any of the telephone advice work.

 

[tbendick]

There is a lot of phone work going on with the Doctors.  On the Medic side they have protocols for each type of emergency, then within them they have options which may inculde contacting the doctor for use of some drugs.

On the EMT side, they will contact for RMA's if the person is over the age of 65, or the crew feels the patient needs to go but doesn't want to be transported.  As well anytime someone needs treatment but doesn't want transport you have to contact the doc.

They do come out more now then in the past, but not on routine stuff for the most part.

 

[LondonMedic]

London's doctors operate through HEMS or BASICS and only go out to the big traumas, there's not a lot in the way of telephone advice here, certainly not from doctors.