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by Randy Cassingham

Randy Cassingham's Honorary Unsubscribe Recognizes the Unknown, the Forgotten and the Obscure People who Had an Impact on Our Lives

Nancy Caroline

A physician, Caroline was asked to help standardize the curriculum for those working in a new branch of emergency medicine: paramedics. The first paramedics were trained in Los Angeles in 1970 (the Emergency! TV series started only 2 years later), but the materials used to train them were a mishmash of medical texts and journal articles. Dr. Caroline, the medical director of an ambulance service in Pittsburgh, agreed to write a textbook to train paramedics. Her book Emergency Care in the Streets was released in 1979 and quickly became the standard for training emergency medical service personnel. "Without Caroline's work and support, EMS would not have evolved into the profession it has become," says Dr. Bryan Bledsoe, who wrote several follow-on texts for paramedics. To get it right, Caroline often rode in ambulances to see the challenges Emergency Medical Technicians faced. "She wasn't just an academic," said A.J. Heightman, editor of the Journal of Emergency Medical Services, "she was comfortable on the street. You'd always see her riding with the crews." In 1977, Caroline emigrated to Israel and became the medical director of Magen David Adom, Israel's equivalent of the Red Cross, which provides ambulance services across the entire country. She finished her paramedic text there, and continued to update it; it's in its fifth edition. She also established a hospice in Upper Galilee -- where she later became a client. She died of cancer at the hospice on December 12 at the age of 58.

From This is True for 15 December 2002

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