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Where I live, ambulances use pulse oximeter probes incompatible with those used by in hospital and issued to home (my daughter was ventilated at night and this was a real issue). That one at least would be solved (and not expensively if only people talked to each other. It didn’t need Ferrari to surface that one!




It's not just oximeters.

I once worked as a paramedic at the German-French border in the 1990s. Cross-border collaboration between us ("DRK RPF 2/83/1") and the French firefighters ("Samu-67") was cordial but the radio frequencies were not just different but such that the German radios could not even be set to the French frequency (this was before mobile phones were spread beyond C-net phones for business people that looked like suitcases), and syringe tips and infusion needle tips had incompatible endings.

So on one occasion, after running out of medicine and lacking a medic, we called the French colleagues for assistance, and we'd improvise and put a needle on a syringe and injected atropin, adrenaline etc. as needed into the plastic infusion bottle instead of connecting the syringe's ending right to the incompatible butterfly (nick name for the intravenal needle). That episode (Saturday, August 1, 1992) remains particularly memorable since this was my first day on the job, and job #4 on that 24-hour-shift (now they are banned to work that long) would become my first primarily successful resucitation after 45 min of CPR.

Standards (and open borders) can save lives.


45 minutes of CPR sounds like it would be really rough on both you and the patient. Better than dying though :)



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