THE 118 MEDICAL EMERGENCY CARE DURING COVID-19: NEW STRATEGIES FOR FUTURE PANDEMICS

In Italy, acute life-threatening situations are handled by the 118 Emergency Service and pre-hospital medical facilities that rely upon centralized call reception, medical dispatching, and on-site emergency medical care before hospitalization care. The 118 services ensure that medical and paramedical units are often the first on the spot. At the same time, the professional skills of the dispatching physician are essential to ascertain the patient's needs to preserve life and vital functions while ensuring the appropriate emergency healthcare in the nearby hospital facilities. The main reasons for suboptimal emergency care in life-threatening situations like the ones presented by the COVID-19 pandemic were a notch issue, with medical facilities being extremely reduced in some country areas, fewer volunteers and physicians, hospital reorganization, very tight funding, and the low skills of "first-on -the-scene" emergency workers. This raised the question of equal healthcare opportunity for everyone and the need for more qualified medical education, especially regarding emergency healthcare professionals, such as assistants, paramedicals, and drivers. COVID-19 urged an improvement in the system's efficiency with a plan for achieving objectives together with implementing a network of emergency services with varying degrees of emergency healthcare management. [...]