MDA’s international seminar brings doctors and paramedics to study mass-casualty response. The next one runs December 13 to 18.
Why would an American paramedic captain fly to Israel to learn emergency response? Because, in the words of one who did, “we run out of ambulances in San Francisco on your average Tuesday.”
Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel’s national ambulance and blood service, runs an International Seminar on Emergency Response that brings doctors, paramedics and other medical professionals to Israel to study how it handles mass-casualty events. The Jerusalem Post reported on October 15 that MDA will hold its 11th seminar on December 13 to 18, with training in mass-casualty response, disaster preparedness and search and rescue. Participants take part in simulations, meet Israeli medical teams, visit MDA sites and communities in southern Israel and spend a day riding in MDA ambulances. This year’s group will also join a simulation at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem.
The Post’s account is built on two participants. Jeff Covitz, a paramedic captain with the San Francisco Fire Department, says Israeli teams can sometimes triage, treat and move everyone from a 20-casualty incident in under 15 minutes, against the better part of an hour at home. Those are his observations, not a published benchmark. Dr. Michael Block, an American anesthesiologist, rode with an MDA crew in Tel Aviv on a heart attack call. The crew started an IV, called ahead and took the patient straight to the cath lab. “He would have died had we not gotten there so fast,” Block said.
The structural difference, as the Post describes it: in the US, EMS is mostly local, while Israel has a national service that can move people, ambulances and equipment quickly, and hospitals can shift operations to take in large numbers of patients. Some of that, the story notes, would be hard to copy in the US.
MDA’s training outreach is not new. In September, Ynet and Aurora Israel reported that 21 senior emergency officials from Spain and eight Latin American countries studied MDA’s model in Israel.
Sources and reporting note
The December 13-18 seminar dates were confirmed against MDA’s own listing through its Italian affiliate. The response-time figures above are participant observations reported by the Jerusalem Post, not published benchmarks, and no independent comparison of response times exists in these sources.
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