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Jac [ITA]
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First of all a little disclaimer: I'll try to be as complete as possible but due to the difference between city and city what I'm going to write can be partial and not applicable to every city in Italy.
The first thing that I want to underline is that all EMS is preformed by volunteer. Well, not all but say the 90% of people in the ambulance are volunteer. There is a little quota of paid employees but is only to backup the volunteer work.
Said that how is organized the system of prehospital emergency care. In Italy the dispatcher is not the same for all emergency agency: there is the police dispatcher, the fire dispatcher, and the EMS dispatcher. Everyone of this has its own number to dial. So if you need fire you dial 115, need an ambulance dial 118 and so on. This means that the inter agency cooperation is a bit slow. For example: in case of a building fire the citizen call 115, fire dispatcher, they send the fire engine then the fire dispatcher call the ambulance dispatcher to request ambulance.
Another problem is when the police is needed, reading this forum I understand that often the PD is on scene before the ambulance, in our reality the ambulance crew has to ask for police back up when on scene.
In details how the call for help works? The citizen call 118 (EMS dispatcher called centrale operativa "central"), explain the situation, the dispatcher choose a color code for the run (the color could be green, yellow, and red you know what they means
) then call via telephone the ambulance company and send them to the scene. If the code is red we turn on lights and sirens otherwise we ride quietly. If the code is yellow it can be "promoted" to red for traffic by asking the dispatcher via radio. When the ambulance is on scene take care of the patient and load him for the hospital. Then we communicate with the central to inform of the destination hospital.
Who is on board of the ambulance? As I said before there is only volunteer. So the ambulance are almost all BLS ambulance because we are not enabled to use IVs, administer drugs or make any kind of diagnosis. But there is also the "ambulanza infermierizzata" that is an ambulance with a registered nurse in addition to the volunteer so he/she can use IV and other "advanced" instrumentation.
If a physician is needed the "automedica" (physican-mobile) can be dispatched. The automedica is a car with a driver, an emergency physician and a nurse. It cannot transport the patient so it's always dispatched with an ambulance, or they meet directly on scene. The automedica is our ALS unit.
That's all, I've tried too give an overview of the organization but it's a large topic so fire your questions so I can be more specific!
If you want see some photo of our ambulance go here for Verona or here for all Italy
The first thing that I want to underline is that all EMS is preformed by volunteer. Well, not all but say the 90% of people in the ambulance are volunteer. There is a little quota of paid employees but is only to backup the volunteer work.
Said that how is organized the system of prehospital emergency care. In Italy the dispatcher is not the same for all emergency agency: there is the police dispatcher, the fire dispatcher, and the EMS dispatcher. Everyone of this has its own number to dial. So if you need fire you dial 115, need an ambulance dial 118 and so on. This means that the inter agency cooperation is a bit slow. For example: in case of a building fire the citizen call 115, fire dispatcher, they send the fire engine then the fire dispatcher call the ambulance dispatcher to request ambulance.
Another problem is when the police is needed, reading this forum I understand that often the PD is on scene before the ambulance, in our reality the ambulance crew has to ask for police back up when on scene.
In details how the call for help works? The citizen call 118 (EMS dispatcher called centrale operativa "central"), explain the situation, the dispatcher choose a color code for the run (the color could be green, yellow, and red you know what they means
) then call via telephone the ambulance company and send them to the scene. If the code is red we turn on lights and sirens otherwise we ride quietly. If the code is yellow it can be "promoted" to red for traffic by asking the dispatcher via radio. When the ambulance is on scene take care of the patient and load him for the hospital. Then we communicate with the central to inform of the destination hospital. Who is on board of the ambulance? As I said before there is only volunteer. So the ambulance are almost all BLS ambulance because we are not enabled to use IVs, administer drugs or make any kind of diagnosis. But there is also the "ambulanza infermierizzata" that is an ambulance with a registered nurse in addition to the volunteer so he/she can use IV and other "advanced" instrumentation.
If a physician is needed the "automedica" (physican-mobile) can be dispatched. The automedica is a car with a driver, an emergency physician and a nurse. It cannot transport the patient so it's always dispatched with an ambulance, or they meet directly on scene. The automedica is our ALS unit.
That's all, I've tried too give an overview of the organization but it's a large topic so fire your questions so I can be more specific!
If you want see some photo of our ambulance go here for Verona or here for all Italy
Cieo! 
Just kidding! 
