Ambulances and Doctor Home Visits

Often, when feeling ill, people immediately call 03 regardless of the specific issue and expect that the doctors will arrive as quickly as possible.

There are two types of immediate medical care: emergency and urgent. Emergency care is that which is provided if there is a threat to the patient’s life. Urgent care is provided in situations when there is no direct threat to life, but the ailment is in an acute stage and the person needs help as soon as possible. Both these types of care are provided by ambulance services.

However, there are times when a general practice physician must be called for a home visit without resorting to ambulance services.

So, you should call an ambulance if:

you suspect that a person’s life is threatened;
you find a person unconscious;
the patient suddenly experiences difficulty breathing;
a person faints, feels extreme weakness and cannot move;
mental disorders take shape, accompanied by actions of the patient that present an immediate danger to his- or herself or others;
expressed pain syndrome is present;
you note a sudden dysfunctioning of any organ or body system;
any injury is received;
sudden bleeding takes place;
you suspect a sudden acute illness (condition), or worsening of a chronic illness;
a women goes into labor.

The main task of ambulance services is to stop the acute condition (that is, to ease the symptoms of the illness or to save the patient's life until arrival at the hospital), without giving any recommendation for further treatment.

A completely different type of assistance is provided by general practitioners on home visits . In addition to providing urgent assistance, they determine a therapeutic strategy and monitor the patient right up to the moment of recovery. If necessary, the doctor may immediately perform tests or to decide to hospitalize the patient.

If a person suffers from serious chronic illnesses, it is desirable to have data on hand from analyses and instrumental examinations performed during previous periods of treatment.

There are four EMC clinics with emergency and urgent care departments - at the hospital on Schepkina, at the clinics on Orlovsky and Spiridonevsky Lanes, and also at the children's clinic on Trifonovskaya Street. All departments are open 24 hours a day and are equipped with all the necessary equipment to provide both emergency and urgent care, and are able to quickly identify the cause and bring the acute condition under control.

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