What does EMD stand for?

Welsh Ambulance Service dispatcher Teresa Ross has been named The Academy of International Dispatch's Emergency Medical Dispatcher of the Year after coping with unusual calls from two women in labour.

Byline: Seattle Times Staff Two 911 dispatchers from Southeast King County were honored last week as Emergency Medical Dispatchers of the Year from Public Health -- Seattle & King County and its Emergency Medical Services Division.

He spent five years as a emergency medical technician, working on the road treating patients before taking a post in the control room as an emergency medical dispatcher.

DPSST currently serves more than 32,000 public safety providers throughout the state, with programs that span the entire field of public safety, including: --City and county law enforcement, --Port, mass transit, school district, Indian reservation, and railroad police, --Fire service personnel, --Investigators in the criminal justice division and the state lottery, --City, county, and state corrections officers, --Adult parole and probation officers, --Polygraphers, --Telecommunication officers and emergency medical dispatchers, and --Private security officers.

Emergency Medical Dispatcher: Central Ambulance Control at Waterloo is Europe's largest, and gets more than 3,000 calls a day, answered by an emergency medical dispatcher, who manages the situation and relays the information on to the ambulance crew.

Luckily, teenage emergency medical dispatcher Rhys Griffiths was on the other end of the phone talking them through the birth last month.

An increasing number of emergency medical dispatchers across the country, including in Seattle, are now telling callers untrained in CPR to begin the chest compressions immediately.

With the new technology, emergency medical dispatchers know up front via the Internet which emergency facilities have beds available so that critical patients can be admitted and treated as quickly as possible.