City traffic wardens are set to become life savers in emergency cases by offering resuscitation and first aid.

In Ljubljana, assuring public order, preserving life, health and property links paramedics and traffic wardens. From now on, in the heart of the city centre, the latter will be able to offer assistance to residents and visitors in life’s crucial moments.

The City of Ljubljana traffic warden service and the Ljubljana Pre-hospital Unit, or on its behalf the Paramedic Station of the Ljubljana University Medical Centre have signed a protocol on co-operation, which includes the responsibility to inform wardens (on the side of the paramedic station’s dispatch centre) about critical events in which they can help by offering CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) and first aid to residents of and visitors to Ljubljana, also and above all with automatic external defibrillators. Every traffic warden patrol is to be equipped with these important technical devices, which are also known as AEDs for short. Wardens may also thus come to the aid of an accident victim or ill person in the event of cardiac arrest, and the majority of them have thoroughly upgraded their knowledge of basic CPR procedures and learned how to use automatic defibrillators. For the time being, wardens will be able to offer help in the direct city centre, where they are present virtually 24 hours a day, and following the successful pilot of this co-operation we hope to extend the areas of common operation.

A defibrillator for every traffic warden patrol

The City Traffic Warden Service has bought six AEDs which will normally be used daily by 18 wardens, for whom a group of expert anaesthesiologists has prepared training on basic CPR procedures. Thus they have learned about the causes of sudden death in adults, the chain of survival and learned to recognise the symptoms of cardiac arrest (if the affected person is conscious or breathing his heart is beating). Thus step by step they have developed their theoretical and practical CPR knowledge. They have learned about the elements of the proper provision of external cardiac massage and artificial breathing as well as the use of various devices in this. This was followed by thorough acquaintance with the AED and how to use it. Although it is a piece of equipment that is accessible to anyone in ever larger numbers of public places and can be used by a layman with no prior knowledge, training for proper use has advantages so that at crucial moments it is invaluable that the AED is used quickly and correctly.

Communication between traffic wardens and paramedics

Whenever the paramedic station dispatch service receives information about a person for whom it is anticipated that CPR will be necessary, and that a traffic warden patrol can be with him or her first, the paramedic dispatcher calls the duty warden and notifies him of the precise location of the emergency. The duty warden calls the colleague on the ground who communicates by radio how long it will take to get to the scene of the emergency. The wardens on the spot then offer the patient or accident victim first aid, where necessary starting CPR via use of the AED and thereby possibly increasing the chances of survival.