Emergency Medical Services
Prehospital care is an integral part of the mission of the Department of Emergency Medicine. All attending physicians and
residents receive EMS training and are certified as medical command physicians by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Contemporaneous
medical direction of pre-hospital patient care is performed on a daily basis in the emergency department. Einstein Medical
Center is one of only five medical command facilities for the city of Philadelphia and is responsible for providing on-line
medical direction to paramedics on fire rescue units and provides direct medical control for four non-municipal ambulance
services. The Medical Center’s Department of Emergency Medicine has forged a solid working relationship with the Einstein
EMS Education Center and the Jefferson Health System Great Valley Ambulance Company. This alliance combines the expertise
of each entity to form an effective EMS education, medical oversight and transportation system. Among our many activities,
we facilitate the transport of patients from outlying institutions and hospitals to Einstein Medical Center.
The emergency department maintains a response plan to provide a physician triage and field surgical response team in the event
of a mass casualty event. The Emergency Preparedness Committee is responsible for keeping the medical center in a state of
readiness for both internal and external disasters. External disasters can include a vast range of multiple casualty events
such as weather calamity or natural disaster, episodes of civil unrest, and radiation or hazardous material accidents. Internal
disasters can include any event that overburdens the normally available resources within the medical center. In addition,
Einstein Medical Center residents and attending physicians have provided on-site medical support upon request for special
events locally in and around the city of Philadelphia.
The Einstein EMS Education Center offers both residents and Einstein employees training in Basic Cardiac Life Support (BCLS),
Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS), Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS), and Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS). Einstein
Medical Center also is an American Heart Association (AHA)-approved Community Training Center that serves as a resource to
other facilities in the Southeastern Pennsylvania/Delaware AHA Affiliate.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health accredits the EMS Education Center, and we are a state leader in training prehospital
care providers. Our emergency medical technician (EMT) and paramedic programs educate more providers each year than most other
programs within Pennsylvania and train students from all over the tri-state area. The EMS Education Center is in the process
of a formal affiliation with the Thomas Jefferson University School of Allied Health.
The emergency department sponsors a two-year fellowship in emergency medical services under the direction of David Jaslow,
MD. To date, eight fellows have graduated from the program and have used their training to secure a variety of leadership
positions in EMS.
Many of our faculty members serve on committees and taskforces for state and national EMS organizations. These include the
DMAT and FEMA teams, Regional Medical Advisory Committee, the Pennsylvania Emergency Health Services Council (PEHSC) and the
Pennsylvania Medical Advisory Committee, the National Association of EMS Physicians, the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine,
the American College of Emergency Physicians (AECP) and the American College of Osteopathic Emergency Physicians (ACOEP).
In addition, our faculty and staff frequently lecture to local audiences including the Pennsylvania Emergency Health Services
Council Annual Statewide EMS Conference.
