Border Region Emergency Medical Services in Migrant Emergency Care

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2832135?guestAccessKey=c0957767-f5eb-4d6d-88a4-15c747418b57&utm_term=040325&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_medium=referral&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9mof2hIRtXJ1BIgZWfahYnCjtuuTRLP9y3EAGazzsLTMATjg07ufLPVmUM8izxWlcaT1zxpdJtlWrD9m0eAEdJyHYgsA&_hsmi=355451370&utm_content=tfl&utm_source=for_the_media The dangers of migration When President Trump and other national leaders talk about migration at the southern U.S. border, they talk about security in the sense of building an impenetrable boundary. Less of a concern appear to be the health and safety of the people making the journey. But interviews with 67 emergency medical service clinicians who work along the border between Mexico and Arizona, published Friday in JAMA Network Open, paint a picture of “numerous, continuing, mass casualty-like events,” where EMS workers are sometimes overwhelmed and ill-equipped to treat their patients. “I feel [like] we’re serving a federal issue at a municipal level and without the support or without the finances or without the resources,” one clinician said. The EMS workers interviewed are employed by local fire departments, and their work is not subsidized by federal resources. At the actual border fence, traumatic injuries are typical. “Usually it’s [the] lower half of the body because that’s sometimes what hits first,” a clinician said. One clinician reported having to use hand signals and Google translate to communicate with some migrants who’d been shot. Border patrol, meanwhile, can’t transport people when they’re patients — only EMS is certified to do that. The study authors call for more federal funding to support these workers, and predict that any increased effort to lock down the border will only increase the burden on EMS clinicians who work there.