Ambulance Safety: MADDE

Sammanfattning: Safety, a word that can be linked and interpreted in many different ways. Personal safety, that you should feel safe in your everyday life depending on your surroundings. IT security, to protect a persons or organization's valuable assets such as information. Flight safety, the safety of flying in its various kinds. There are safety issues in almost every area you look at, but this project that you will read about in this report is about traffic safety, more specifically, the safety of working in the back of an ambulance. Imagine working as an ambulance paramedic. You and your colleague have just picked up a “Prio 1” (most critical degree), classified patient who needs urgent care. You are sitting in the back of the ambulance and will take care of the patient while your colleague is driving the car. The situation is so critical that your colleague needs to drive as quickly as possible to get to the hospital in time. Thus, you must sit tight with a seat belt in order not to risk your own safety during the ride. Around you, there are a number of components you need to care of for the patient. You cannot reach these components because of the belt that clings to the chair. What are you going to do? Do you unbutton your belt to reach the components, but risk your own safety while driving? Or do you wear the belt incorrectly, so that you use the belt, but only over the hips (for example), so that you can reach the tools? Both of these alternatives are how the majority of ambulance paramedics use the seatbelt today to be able to do their job. Either you unbutton and release yourself completely from the belt or you use it, but incorrectly to reach everything the person in question needs in the ambulance. Both actions have resulted in a big amount of injuries to the caregivers and the numbers continues to increase continuously. This project is about just that. A solution to the problem of the working environment in the back of ambulances. Further in this report you will read about how two students at Halmstad University encountered the problem, but first and foremost how they solved it.