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J. Philip Smith, MD; Balazs Imre Bodai, MD

JAMA. 1985;253(4):544-548.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

PREHOSPITAL emergency services are being increasingly developed and implemented in the United States.¹ Prehospital resuscitation of ventricular fibrillation has been shown to be effective, and since Adgey's first report of successful prehospital cardioversion of ventricular fibrillation, a major attempt has been made to provide cardiac resuscitation to victims of prehospital cardiac arrest.^1-3

A new class of health care provider (the paramedic) has been created to perform emergency prehospital care. While no national standard exists that defines a paramedic or his scope of practice, generally a paramedic is trained and required to pass the Department of Transportation course for the emergency medical technician (EMT) paramedic.¹ This course reflects the criteria established for the EMT paramedic by the Task Force on Emergency Medical Technicians, National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council.¹ These criteria, which include advanced life-support training, are generally the basis on which each state has determined the . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From the Emergency Medical Service, City and County of San Francisco, and the Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco (Dr Smith); and the Department of Surgery, University of California at Davis, Sacramento (Dr Bodai).

Footnotes
Reprint requests to Emergency Medical Service, City and County of San Francisco, Department of Public Health, 135 Polk St, San Francisco, CA 94102 (Dr Smith).

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