A Brazilian ambulance with a SAMU marking

SAMU (Service d'Aide Médicale d'Urgence, "Emergency Medical Assistance Service") is the French hospital based emergency medical service. It was founded in 1968 by coordinating the existing SMUR teams (prehospital care units). Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1950x1311, 320 KB) Ambulância em um atendimento de urgência. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1950x1311, 320 KB) Ambulância em um atendimento de urgência. ... Emergency medical service (known by the acronym of EMS in the USA and Canada) is a branch of medicine that is performed in the field, pre-hospital, (i. ... 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1968 calendar). ... Categories: Stub | Emergency services | Prehospital care ...

The name SAMU is also used by several French-speaking countries as well as Spanish-speaking countries such as Argentina; it then stands for Sistemas de Atencion Médica de Urgencias y Emergencias (sometimes SAME).

SAMU in France

SAMU missions

SAMU missions are defined in a law of 1986. SAMU are defined as hospital services providing permanent phone support, choosing and dispatching the proper response for the call in the swiftest delays. These responses can range from 1986 (MCMLXXXVI) is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... A physician visiting the sick in a hospital. ...

• Medical advices (28% of the calls)
• Sending ambulances, from the fire department for street accident or disease or absolute emergencies at home (24% of the calls), or from private companies for relative emergency transportation from home (8% of the calls)
• Sending a generalist physician at home (22% of the calls)
• Sending a ressuscitation ambulance (H-MICU: hospital mobile intensive ressuscitation unit, called UMH-Unité Mobile Hospitalière), fast intervention vehicle or medical helicopter for the most serious cases
• Management of crisis with large numbers of casualties (plan rouge, plan blanc), they maintain the mobile sanitary kits (postes sanitaires mobiles, PSM).

The French philosophy for medical emergencies allows the reanimation units to be dispatched only in life-threatening cases. An ambulance is a vehicle designated for the transport of sick or injured people. ... Firefighter with an axe A firefighter, sometimes still called a fireman though women have increasingly joined firefighting units, is a person who is trained and equipped to put out fires, rescue people and in some areas provide emergency medical services. ... Physician examining a child The word physician should not be confused with physicist, which means a scientist in the area of physics. ... The french red plan (plan rouge) is, in France, an emergency plan in case of an important number of causalties in a limited area; its aim is to organize the means of rescue to face this concentration of casualties. ... The french white plan (plan blanc) is, in France, the emergency plan to face a sudden increase of activity in an hospital, such as a massive arrival of casualties due to an accident or a disaster (who may come by their own means to the emergency department or are evacuated... Field hospital of the Radom-Kielce Home Army area, during the Operation Tempest of 1944 A field hospital is a large mobile medical unit that takes care of the casualties outside the hospital buildings. ...

SAMU are also in charge for the training of emergency physicians.

SAMU organisation

All French Départements hold one SAMU (that is roughly one for 500 000 people), which makes a total of a hundred units, and 350 SMUR in the whole France. The départements (or departments) are administrative units of France, roughly analogous to British counties. ... Categories: Stub | Emergency services | Prehospital care ...

Additionally, two SAMU have special tasks :

• The SAMU de Paris is in charge for emergencies in fast trains (TGV) and flying Air France aircraft.
• The SAMU de Toulouse is in charge for ships at sea.

The main component of the SAMU is the dispatch, called Centre 15 (15 is the emergency number for medical emergency) or CRRA (centre de réception et de régulation des appels: calls reception and dispatch center). The CRRA received about 10 million calls in 2004, with a regular increase of 10% per year: TGV trains depart from Gare Montparnasse in Paris to western and south-western destinations. ... Air France Boeing 747 Air France (Compagnie Nationale Air France) is a subsidiary of Air France-KLM. Before the take-over of KLM, it was essentially the national airline of France, employing 71,654 people (at January 2005). ... 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

• 57% from individuals (witnesses or victims of an accident or disease);
• 27% from the firefighters (NB: in France, firefighters are in charge of emergency ambulances, as certified first responders)
• 5% from the hospitals (usually life threatening emergencies in a department)
• 5% from a general practitioner (usually visiting a patient at home)
• 5% rest (police, ambulance - in France, private ambulance society mainly act as transport for programmed acts, a kind of paramedical taxi).

Firefighter in full turn out gear with a pickhead axe. ... A certified first responder is a person who has completed forty to sixty hours of training in providing care for medical emergencies. ... An ambulance is a vehicle designated for the transport of sick or injured people. ... A taxicab (sometimes called taxi, cab, or hack) is a vehicle for hire which conveys passengers between locations of their choice. ...

Prehospital Care Strategy

The French doctrine relies on the hopes of survival for a critically injured patient decreasing exponentially with time, which explains why so many patients die during transportation. To maximise the chances of recovery, it is believed important to cut down on tansportation time, and bring a fully equipied and qualified team to the patient, rather than sending an ambulance to pick up the patient and double the travel back to hospital. To this effect, Mobile Emergency Units (SMUR) are equipped with both a fully qualified emergency physician and medical equipment. Categories: Stub | Emergency services | Prehospital care ...

This doctrine also simplifies greatly the Emergency department of hospitals (eliminating the need for a "smaller hospital within the hospital"), and ensure that the stabilised patient will receive care from a specialist rather than an emergency generalist.

In extreme cases, heart operations have been performed on the street (resulting in surviving patients). Overall, the French SAMU is arguably one of the very best in the world, innovating in lots of areas (the French SAMU are the only emergency teams to have tested portable succion cardiopumps on scene) and inspiring equivalent services in other countries. A cardiac pump or cardiac bypass pump or heart-lung machine temporarily takes over the function of breathing and pumping blood for a patient. ...

The French emergency system is very different from emergency systems from the USA and the United Kingdom, for instance : one notable difference is that intervention units (ambulance or SMUR) may decide to stay on the scene for a long time (much more than the typical 10 minutes that ambulances spend on a scene before picking up a patient in most other countries).

This is often described as stay and play, opposed to the scoop and run strategy performed in the United States and in the United Kingdom. This is not totally true as in most cases, the patient is at the hospital within the golden hour, the best description would be play and run. In emergency medicine the golden hour is the first sixty minutes after an accident or the onset of acute illness. ...

This feature is often misunderstood among the American public or British public. For instance, when Diana, Princess of Wales died in Paris, some British tabloids took outrage that the patient had stayed on the scene for two hours, leaving the impression that the delay might have caused the death. Actually, the SAMU doctrine allowed the patient to receive extensive care during these two hours, including cardiac ressucitation in the ambulance [1]. Diana, Princess of Wales (Diana Frances Mountbatten-Windsor, née Spencer) (1 July 1961–31 August 1997) was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales. ...

See Emergency medical service: Prehospital Care Strategies for more details . Emergency medical service (known by the acronym of EMS in the USA and Canada) is a branch of medicine that is performed in the field, pre-hospital, (i. ...

Miscellaneous information

The emergency number for SAMU is 15, in addition to the 112 (European Emergency telephone number), 17 (police) and 18 (Fire department). Many countries public telephone networks have a single emergency telephone number, sometimes known as the universal emergency telephone number or occasionally the emergency services number, that allows a caller to contact local emergency services for assistance. ... Firefighter with an axe A firefighter, sometimes still called a fireman though women have increasingly joined firefighting units, is a person who is trained and equipped to put out fires, rescue people and in some areas provide emergency medical services. ...

SAMU should not be mistaken with SAMU Social, which is a service for rescuing homeless people. A SAMU Social is a municipal emergency service in several cities in France whose purpose is to provide care and medical aid to homeless people. ...

External links

• SERVICES D'AIDE MEDICALE URGENTE - SAMU, SMUR
• SAMU de France
• SAMU de Paris
• System of Emergency Medical Assistance in France