Time for an EMS history lesson: Freedom House

Airwaygoddess

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History

What an amazing story of EMS history. "I need to know were I have been, to become what I am now....." -_- Wonderful post Vent medic!
 

Katie

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wow. very cool vid. thanks for posting it :D
 

uselessmedic

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Wow, what a video, it is a shame they don,t get the credit they deserve!!!!!!
 
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VentMedic

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For a little more history:

http://www.freedomhousedoc.com/

http://www.freedomhousedoc.com/Biographies.html

Dr. Peter Safar
Dr. Peter Safar, an internationally renowned physician-researcher often called "the Father of CPR." Dr. Safar's career is a list of firsts. Trained as an anesthesiologist, he pioneered the fields of critical care and intensive care. He initiated Pittsburgh's first professional ambulance service with Freedom House, staffed by formerly unemployed black people from the Hill District. He consulted on the design of the modern ambulance and delved into disaster medicine, becoming a founder of the field's professional society and medical journal. A distinguished professor of resuscitation medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Dr. Safar was the driving force behind both cardiopulmonary resuscitation and critical care medicine. He developed this country's first intensive care unit and paramedic ambulance service, and was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in medicine.

Nancy Caroline
Nancy Caroline was an outstanding medical student. While doing her residence at Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh, in 1974, Dr. Peter Safar assigned Nancy to the position of Medical Director for the Freedom House ambulance project. Nancy cut her teeth on the streets of Pittsburgh.

She would ride along with the men of Freedom House, almost always at the risk of her own personal safety, to some of the most dangerous areas of Pittsburgh’s inner city. According to her mother, it was here that Nancy faced the biggest challenge of her experience when teaching the African-American men, not the basic education and extraordinary skills that were required of the job, but “to care.”

During her time, Freedom house became the number one program providing emergency care under the Department of Transportation. It is a fact that what is now the basis of advanced life support in emergency ambulance's was discovered here at Freedom house.

Nancy Caroline M.D. was the author of "Emergency Care in the Streets" now in its 6th edition. Although I am personally not found of Sidney Sinus Node and Abby AV node, it was one of the first modern Paramedic textbooks that is still widely used today.

http://www.jbpub.com/detail.cfm?TemplateName=ems&bc=2907-8&ThisPage=About+the+Author(s)

After finishing her residency in Cleveland, Nancy took a fellowship in Critical Care Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. Beginning in 1974, the late Peter Safar, MD, was overseeing a US Department of Transportation grant to create a curriculum for paramedics. Much of Safar’s work began to be delegated to (or, perhaps, seized upon by) young Dr. Caroline. Because of this work, Nancy served as an advisor to President Gerald Ford on EMS.
 
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