An emergency care assistant is primarily part of an emergency team or any other type of disaster team, such as a natural disaster or an accident, who are usually the first people to respond whenever any incident requires their services. In the medical field, they are a part of the very first, or what is also known as frontline, medical service due to the fact that they are usually part of the initial respondents whenever any incident occurs. Their main responsibility is to work with other members of an emergency team in order to efficiently and effectively manage any situation. They may also be required to drive an ambulance as well as lift, transfer and stabilize patients, and other assigned duties.
One of the duties of an emergency care assistant is to drive an ambulance, which is the vehicle an emergency team uses to respond to any incident as well as to transport patients from the scene of the emergency when necessary. The emergency care assistant must also perform an outlined check of the ambulance before the team responds to any emergency and at the conclusion of any such response. Apart from the operation of the vehicle, another responsibility expected of the emergency care assistant is knowledge about the various equipment on the ambulance, which the assistant would have learned as part of the qualifying process for the position. This knowledge will come in handy any time the crew responds to an incident in order to help stabilize the patient.
Another duty of the emergency care assistant is to help protect the victim of any incident from adverse conditions as well as to move family, friends and sympathizers away from the victim so that the crew will have enough room to do their job. Where an incident occurs in a remote or unusual location, the emergency care assistant will help extricate the victim from the location and carry the victim to the ambulance. For instance, if the emergency crew had been called to attend to a hiker who fell from a cliff on a mountain, it would device a means for safely rescuing the victim and also for transporting the victim to the nearest hospital for medical care. When the team arrives at the hospital, the assistant would also help carry the victim into the hospital from the ambulance.
