How Vets can Assist Paramedics in Improving Patient Care: A Humorous but Thoughtful tale of Nightshift

Human medicine relies on patient communication to assist with a medical diagnosis and the instigation of appropriate clinical treatment protocols. Medicine is driven by verbal communication where patients are expected to answer key questions concerning their illness, injury or disease as well as furnish relevant information about their medical history. However, what happens if there is no effective verbal communication? What happens when non English speaking patients, paediatric patients, the mentally ill, the semi conscious, unconscious patients, or even the anxious, frightened or autistic patients require medical attention? Health care practitioners can often appear uncertain of the appropriate medical steps to take both in the pre-hospital and hospital environment.Veterinary practitioners are faced with this situation every day. They do not rely on verbal communication with their animal patients yet they have well developed skills to effectively understand, diagnose and treat their furry patients. Could there be lessons to be learnt from the examination of animal treatment models that could benefit human medicine, particularly on road paramedics?