In September 2023 when we published our first Angels Journey dedicated to prehospital stroke care, Malaysia’s EMS Tuanku Ja’afar had just become the first EMS outside Europe to win an EMS Angels Award. They were swiftly followed by Vietnam’s EMS Center 115 Da Nang and later by services in South Africa, Ecuador, Colombia and Brazil.
The EMS Angels Awards are now a global program, and that is reflected in the lineup of stories in this issue. It also means that stroke patients around the world are getting to hospital faster, and that our community of prehospital stroke champions is growing.
Building an international community of EMS stroke experts was something our then awards coordinator Robert Havalda was most excited about after the program was launched in Lisbon in 2021. He said, “In the past there may have been contact between teams inside the same country, but not across borders. We’re putting people together and this is just the beginning.”
The past year has brought some exciting changes to this community. Our quality monitoring and awards evaluation partner RES-Q launched an EMS portal where EMS companies can now upload their case-by-case data and get real- time feedback on their performance including their preliminary awards status.
And in September we extended our Insights Month campaign to include EMS. Angels Insights Month is a twice- yearly quality monitoring activation that lets you gain insights about your stroke care performance, benchmark your EMS against others, target areas for quality improvement and meet the standards for an EMS Angels Award. Your next opportunity to get on board with Insights Month is in March 2025, so please make a note in your calendar.
The biggest news of the year for the global Angels community has to be the launch of our new Angels Regions strategy. Una región Angels es aquella en la que la concienciación comunitaria, los servicios de emergencia y la atención hospitalaria están optimizados para ofrecer mejores resultados a los pacientes con ictus. To become an Angels region, hospitals, emergency services, local authorities and public educators must all work together towards a single goal – to make their community safe for stroke.
There is plenty of evidence that patients benefit when hospitals and EMS work together, but of course you already know that.
The opening story of this year's EMS-themed Angels Journey is set in Johannesburg, South Africa, where Yudi Singer (medical manager, ALS paramedic and volunteer at South Africa’s first diamond-awarded EMS) applauds the growing emphasis on collaboration between the providers of prehospital and in-hospital care. He says: “Having a shared goal is extremely necessary.”
South Africa is a tough crowd if you’re a paramedic as ambulances are regularly targeted by criminals. But we would wager they’re no match for the team in our second story from that country, which is about the superheroes on our cover. Ballito, where they’re based, has some of the world’s finest beaches. They also have a highly motivated emergency service that functions as a vital link between community members and local healthcare systems. They’re the guys who reinforce our belief that paramedics don’t only save lives but also contribute to the overall well- being of the community.
Keep reading for inspiring stories from Poland, Italy, Colombia, and a storied part of Spain where Angels consultant Araceli García is stirring up winds of change that will ultimately benefit the residents of the very village where she was born. And definitely don’t miss the adventures of Araceli’s colleague, Susana Granados, who hit the night shift in the EMS coordination center in Almería and in the process initiated a whole new way in which Angels can support frontline workers.
Also, she brought pizza.
