Singapore has made significant progress in increasing the survival rates of cardiac arrest victims. Between 2001 and 2012, victims who survived cardiac arrest rose from 2.5% to 11%.
To further enhance the cardiac arrest victims’ chances of survival, from January 2018, Singapore General Hospital (SGH) and SCDF will be introducing the four ambulance-based interventions progressively over the next four years.
These new intervention, administered by SCDF paramedics, are the high-performance CPR, manual defibrillation, impedance threshold device and intravenous amiodarone.
Doctors from the Unit for Pre-hospital Emergency Care (UPEC) at the Ministry of Health are training the SCDF paramedics on these interventions as part of their continuing medical education. At a media briefing this morning, SCDF paramedics demonstrated how a high-performance CPR is conducted.
SCDF Chief Medical Officer, COL (Dr) Ng Yih Yng said, “Continuous training and skills upgrading are part and parcel of being an SCDF paramedic. It becomes especially important as our population ages and their needs change. Our paramedics will be trained to administer these new interventions as part of SCDF’s higher standard of care for cardiac arrest victims, potentially making a difference to their survival.”
Source: FB post by Singapore Civil Defence Force