VIDEO: West Valley City firefighters are now prepared to give blood transfusions on scene. That has never been done by a Utah emergency ground crew. “Every person in our department has gone through four hours of whole blood transfusion training,” said Brandon Howard, the department’s medical division battalion chief. “Blood saves lives. This is the golden standard for trauma treatment.”
With the partnership of Intermountain Medical Center, West Valley City paramedics have been working to bring whole blood onto their responder engines since last December. Crews studied at a three-day course in San Antonio, one of the few U.S. cities that offers a prehospital universal blood program.
“We’ve been pushing the frontiers of blood transfusion at Intermountain Medical Center for about 10 years,” said David Morris, a trauma surgeon at Intermountain Medical Center. “We have whole blood in our hospitals and in our helicopters. Focusing on the ground crews is the next evolution. These are the teams who service our communities, that bring patients to us.”
