Rescue Workers: What is the Golden Hour and What Does it Mean for the Patient?

Rescue workers have to take extensive courses in order to be part of a rescue team. Those courses teach the crucial things that rescue workers need to know in order to save lives. One of the first things that rescue workers learn in class is about the Golden Hour. The Golden Hour is a crucial space of time that rescue workers need to keep track of in order to give the patient the best chance at survival. In order to keep the patient from reaching critical condition, rescue workers have to move in high gear to keep the wheels turning, literally, on the care of a patient.

The Golden Hour is crucial for the patient. Rescue workers that get an ambulance call for an auto accident in the middle of the night don't just quietly slip out of their beds and slowly get dressed, stopping for a cup of coffee on the way out the door. Rescue workers fly out of their warm beds; pull on their pants as they hop across the room towards the door. They jump in their cars, drive to where the ambulance is stationed and then head out towards the accident scene. During this period of time, they have already put their own lives at risk being on the road. Why do they do it? To save someone else's life. They get out the door as fast as they can and to the accident scene because they have one hour to get the patient to proper treatment. If they don't, the patient could go into critical condition and possibly pass away.

An hour may seem like an extremely long time. Consider the fact that the rescue workers have to get to the scene within that hour. Then they have to get the patient out of the vehicle. That sounds easy enough as well. It isn't that easy all the time. Some patients have to be cut out of their vehicles with the Jaws of Life, which can take up a lot of that golden time span. After the patient is removed from the vehicle, he/she must be transported to the hospital, but treatment has to take place as well. Now the rescue worker may be down to just minutes before the Golden Hour has passed. That is one of the reasons that you need to move to the side of the road when you see an ambulance coming. Not moving out of the way when an ambulance is coming could cost the patient his/her life. In any case, the Golden Hour is a rule that rescue workers live by.

Just as a patient who isn't breathing might become brain dead if he/she isn't revived soon enough, an accident victim might die if he/she isn't treated soon enough. That hour is the most important hour of an accident victim's life because it can determine whether they get to live it. Every rescue worker knows this important term. They know what it means and they know what they have to do to make it happen. They work tirelessly to make sure that people survive. The Golden Hour is just as important to the rescue crew as it is to the victim. It isn't every minute that counts, it is every second. The next time you see an ambulance flying up behind you, think of the Golden Hour and remember that pulling over can save someone's life.