What would you do if someone close to you suddenly had to be rushed to hospital? Are you adequately prepared?
You’re likely to have to provide paramedics, nurses and doctors with detailed health information. This might include dietary needs, allergy information and details of pre-existing medical conditions like diabetes. It might also include immunization information, medication that is currently being used and details of recent illnesses.
We tend to think that the emergency services will be able to help regardless of the information they have available to them. They will always have a ton of questions that need to be answered and you should really be prepared to answer them.
One solution to this problem is to produce an Emergency Document for every member of your family and your household. The same system might even be used in the workplace. The Emergency Document would provide details of pre-existing medical conditions such as Asthma, allergies and dietary information, details of injuries that might have been sustained in the past and any other information that would potentially be useful to healthcare professionals.
These documents are best compiled by the individual concerned. When writing the emergency document it should be assumed that you are unable to communicate with the doctors and nurses. Think about the sort of information they would need to know under such circumstances?
Print hard copies of your families emergency documents and keep them in a safe location. Always keep the documents up to date with the latest relevant medical information. Take the relevant emergency documents when you go to the emergency room but make certain that staff take copies and return the originals to you. Your Emergency documentation can save a lot of time that would otherwise be spent repeating the same information.
It is particularly useful to carry emergency documents when travelling. Think of the document as an addition to your travel insurance policy.It would take only a few short minutes to produce such a document but the information it contains could save your life.
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if you’re an older traveler you would do well to consider senior travel insurance and you may like to consider pre-existing medical condition travel insurance.