There's an emergency going on. It's still going on. It's still an emergency.
When I was waiting in the centre on Friday, I was flicking through a copy of outnorthwest and came across an advert for ice-r: a way of carrying your personal health records with you at all times in case of an emergency. I went to have a look at the product today to see what it was like and it seems quite good. It's a sort of USB stick with all your personal medical records so it can be accessed by any computer (except ones running Linux, naturally). It seems quite good (apart from the not working on Linux bit) but it did get me thinking. I'm allergic to penicillin and because of that I used to wear an SOS bracelet which has a hidden compartment that contains a slip of paper bearing pertinent information. I gave up wearing it because the face of it kept corroding and when I complained to the SOS company, they said it was my fault for only buying the stainless steel version instead of one of the better ones. O-kay...
I now have an emergency information card in my wallet which is printed on bright yellow paper and contains contact details and some basic medical information. That's as a result of the workshop at Trans-Health which was about how to prepare for emergencies and that kind of thing - but I don't know if that's enough or having one of these 'official' products would be better. The thing is, are medical personnel even aware of their existence, do they look for some indication that a person carries medical information on them or is it just a waste of money? There are so many different products out there, from SOS and MedicAlert jewellery, to ice-r and zaptag USB thingies, all of varying prices and with different ways of containing the information. The same thing goes for that ICE number for mobiles. It's a good thing to have, but do the emergency services know to look for it? I suppose at least the best thing about my current system of a card in my wallet is that it's cheap, I always have it on me, it's easily updated and unlike some of the other systems out there, my personal medical records are not stored on some company's own database.
I now have an emergency information card in my wallet which is printed on bright yellow paper and contains contact details and some basic medical information. That's as a result of the workshop at Trans-Health which was about how to prepare for emergencies and that kind of thing - but I don't know if that's enough or having one of these 'official' products would be better. The thing is, are medical personnel even aware of their existence, do they look for some indication that a person carries medical information on them or is it just a waste of money? There are so many different products out there, from SOS and MedicAlert jewellery, to ice-r and zaptag USB thingies, all of varying prices and with different ways of containing the information. The same thing goes for that ICE number for mobiles. It's a good thing to have, but do the emergency services know to look for it? I suppose at least the best thing about my current system of a card in my wallet is that it's cheap, I always have it on me, it's easily updated and unlike some of the other systems out there, my personal medical records are not stored on some company's own database.