I answered the call and there was a little girl who told me “my brother is not breathing, he is not moving, he has had an epileptic fit”. So I activated all the procedures. The ambulance had already left but I was able to see what was going on and give more precise instructions to the arriving doctors.
Nicolò Bravi – nurse at the 118 emergency number, Romagna Soccorso
30 April 2022 – In Ravenna, Italy, Nicolò Bravi, an operator of the 118 emergency service of Romagna Soccorso, answers a call. There is a little girl who reports that her brother has had an epileptic fit and is not breathing; she is the one calling because her parents are foreign and have difficulties with the Italian language. An interpreter could be requested but the child is in cardiac arrest and action is needed immediately so Nicolò decides to see the situation first-hand, even though he is miles away and there are no rescuers on the scene yet. Nicolò therefore activates FlagMii® EML and in a few moments can see through his own eyes what is happening, while the girl translates to her parents the instructions for performing resuscitation. Eventually and to great relief, the child is saved.
As Nicolò points out, without this type of intervention “the outcome would have been very different“.
The Ravenna case draws attention to the following key aspects that can enhance rescue during calls with minors:
Emergency calls from a child are no rare occurrence. For this reason, the adoption of tools capable of facilitating dialogue between the minor and the emergency operator is a necessary objective for any modern control room.
FlagMii® EML’s mobile phone video call is activated by SMS and has the great advantage of being a communication channel already known to the youngster (even at pre-adolescent age), who can therefore handle it correctly with his own smartphone or that of a family member.
The event drew attention to another critical aspect of emergency calls – the interaction with interlocutors who do not speak the operator’s language. The parents of the children in Ravenna were foreign-born and had difficulty speaking Italian, so the girl acted as interpreter during the emergency call.
In this case, the video call with FlagMii® EML allowed the operator to check that nothing was misunderstood during the passage of information between the control room, the child on the phone and the parents who were trying to resuscitate the child.
