The agency said the talks were arranged as hospitals face growing difficulty accepting pediatric emergency patients amid regional imbalances in pediatric medical resources and a shortage of residents. It said the goal is to combine firefighters’ pre-hospital response capabilities with the society’s expertise to find more fundamental solutions.
The two sides agreed on three priority tasks aimed at improving survival rates for pediatric emergency patients and said they would move immediately to implement them.
First, they will fully revise the 119 emergency call consultation manual to reflect children’s physiological characteristics, which differ from adults. The agency said it will refine phone-triage protocols and symptom-specific transport guidance — including for seizures and foreign-body ingestion — with advice from the society to help field crews make faster, more accurate decisions.
Second, they will overhaul training for paramedics to raise and standardize pediatric emergency care skills. The agency said it will actively cooperate as the society designs its own pre-hospital pediatric emergency care education program, and will develop and distribute customized simulation training content based on surveys of field training needs.
Third, they agreed to make more active use of 119 air ambulances (firefighting helicopters) to address limits in pediatric specialty infrastructure, which is heavily concentrated in the Seoul metropolitan area, and to reduce transport delays. The agency and the society said they will work to improve the efficiency of using firefighting aviation resources so critically ill children can be transported quickly, within the golden time, to the most appropriate hospital anywhere in the country.
Commissioner Kim Seung-ryong of the National Fire Agency said pediatric emergency response requires more careful and precise expertise, and that cooperation with the society would help strengthen the nation’s safety net. “By combining field experience with the society’s specialized skills, we will do everything we can so our children can receive optimal emergency medical services anywhere in the country,” he said.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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