In the days when I wore contact-lenses, I used to wear a Medic-Alert tag which stated that fact (plus phone # for all the other necessary medical info.) I no longer wear contacts, but always carry a card with the important ICE¹ numbers on, as well has having an ICE¹ entry in my cell-phone.

- Wil

¹ In Case of Emergency

good advice so far...

i'll add a few things, based on my time as an EMT...

if there are multiple hospitals in the area where you regularly ride, make a note of any preference (eg insurance or religious considerations). note it as a "preferred hospital". this will be considered by the EMTs when they decide where to take you. sometimes they'll take you to another hospital for any number of reasons.

if you're dazed and not 100% coherent (as is common after even a minor crash!) don't be afraid to refer to your "notes". they're not just for when you're unconscious.

if you don't have any drug/food allergies, note "NO KNOWN DRUG ALLERGIES" and/or "NO KNOWN FOOD ALLERGIES".

if you have special religious or dietary needs, note them.

if you have any implants or PIERCINGS, note them. you don't want to ride the MRI machine with a metal screw in your wrist or a metal ring in your dick.

if there's anyone who needs to handle personal or business affairs until you wake up, note their names and contact details (mom, dad, children, ex-wife, business partner, lawyer, etc).

ICE - http://www.snopes.com/crime/prevent/icephone.asp

don't assume that a mobile phone will survive a crash.

That's one of the reasons I bought a Boomerang tag , it allowed me to put the ICE info on the back of the tag in big letters.

When I broke my leg on the bike last Oct., I made sure they locked it to the rack before they carted me off in the ambulance.

I'll have to dig up the link later, but apparently, USB memory sticks are becoming ubiquitous enough now that there is a company making Medical ID sticks available, and most ambulance/EMT will have the capability of reading them on the scene. Not sure they would know to look for it though. I gotta remember to get some kind of medalert bracelet or something for when I ride. I have ID, but usually just my work badge. Not sure work would give out my info if paramedics had to call, but they would probably at least call my emergency contact numbers themselves.

If I wear a "DNR" bracelet, will first responders let me slip away?

in NJ, 10-15 years ago, EMTs would've ignored a DNR.

i think it still varies from one state to another, and how those courts have ruled.

1. It depends on your state. Different states have different laws about what a valid DNR order requires.

2. A DNR only covers medical services related to cardiac life support. If your heart stops on a bike in a state in which a DNR bracelet counts as a valid advanced directive, then they will let you die. However, if you get hit by a car and are completely wrecked but still breathing, they are required to do everything in their power to save you.

They may very well be; electronic, shared HREC systems began many years ago. It depends on the region and the hopsitals involved, of course. Even the military went that direction years ago, though they are not by an means exemplary with respect to the transition and system state.

It depends less on the state and more on the local consideration of a DNR. An avanced directive is not a legall binding document; the congressional Patient Self-Determination Act determines that health organizations honor the intentions of the patient with respect to DNRs.

my knowledge of this is 10-15 years old (when I was an EMT in the states), so it may not be current... but the organizations took their cues from state court cases. i suspect that still strongly influences how different organizations handle DNRs. so while it may be technically correct to say that it's up the organizations to decide how to handle it, as a practical matter it varies from state to state.

the advice we got, as EMTs, was this: if someone doesn't want to be saved, then don't call an ambulance for them.

Versichertenkarte (national mandatory insurance card)

Has photo and chip with all of your data on it. Readable anywhere in Germany (all records stored in a central database) and, in theory, throughout all of the EU (where you're covered).

Should have all patient records/allergies/blood type/DNR/organ donors/etc...

http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=300428

info in English: http://www.bmg.bund.de/ministerium/e...alth-card.html

In a more practical sense, if a 1st responder finds you in a remotely savable state, they will attempt to save you. The 1st responder has been trained that they have about 3 minutes to initiate CPR and the odds of saving you drop fast after the 1st minute. No one is going to waste time looking through pockets for a DNR when they find an unresponsive patient not breathing with no heartbeat but still warm or who looks recently injured. So this becomes more of a legal syllogism than something that is practical.

J.

Paramedic here - name and DOB are the best. Blood type is useless, the hospital has all sorts of procedures they need to do in order to give someone blood, they're not going to trust what some random bracelet someone has on says. If you need it right away, you'll get FFP or universal donor. Any medication allergies would also help, as would emergency contact numbers. If you have a condition that might render you suddenly unconscious, like epilepsy or diabetes, list that. If you're on beta blockers or other medication that would artificially lower your heartrate, list those. Anything beyond that will be useless - if you're in bad enough shape to not be able to tell us the info, we'll be hauling butt and at the hospital before any of it would be relevant, and if you're still in bad enough shape to not be able to tell the hospital staff that sort of thing, they'll be busy for several hours getting you stabilized before they would even start thinking about minutiae.

That's smart, I should do something like that on my new helmet. (Just picked up a Nutcase this morning!)

I just wrote that stuff on card and put it in my bike bag. if they go through my stuff they will find the phone numbers.

These always look like a good idea but even though most of us use computers for charting now, most are so locked down that we can's access the info on your drive. Bracelets work and there are some new ones on the market now with a phone number and access code to call for your personal info.

I bought the road id bracelet that has 800# and website that have all my info. All the bracelet has is name, birth year, ICE#. I've wondered if first responders actually access this info if something happens?

I'm a ski patroller.

What we would do is do the emergent stuff first - ABC's (Airway, Breathing, Circulation), activate the EMS and arrange transport. Subsequent to that, if you were unconscious and unresponsive, we'd put you in a C collar and put you on a backboard presuming you'd crashed. We'd make note of the bracelet and info and it would go into the documentation that goes to the hospital. Up until this point, there is very little that is needed to know about the patient. But from this point on there is a BIG need to know. The hospital would certainly access it and would probably have accessed it while the patient was being transported with information found on your RoadID by the EMT's in the ambulance.

As far as finding this stuff, all first responders are trained to look for medic alert tags like this. So, yes, they ought to find it. If they don't the hospital would when they cut everything off of you. Then next of kin would be identified, identity would be passed to all the groups downstream for documentation purposes, etc... Any medical history that would impact treatment at that time would be noted and observed such as drugs given etc...

The first responders are primarily set up to support vitals, do the rescue work, and get the patient into the EMS.

I've sent a fair number of seriously injured patients off to the hospital via ambulance without knowing their identity. When there is no data on the patient's condition, it's not unusual for the medical staff at the hospital to call us back and query us about mechanism of injury. They want to know not only how you crashed but why you crashed. For instance, did you crash off the road because you're a diabetic and you were going into insulin shock? That would have a big impact on their treatment, for example. You might be unconscious not from the crash but from something else and the crash was secondary. That's where the medical history becomes really important.

Then there is the issue of who you are and who to call about you. Like I've said, I've sent people off in ambulances and had no idea who to call to tell them I did so.

Anyhow, that's the first responder perspective (at least mine).

J.

My mother is a medic but because of an injury to her knee, she is currently doing office work. One of the biggest issues she has been having is tracking down people who have multiple addresses and multiple phone numbers. So for the sake of billing, make sure that you have some form of ID that has your current address and phone number. But for the medic on scene, they really need allergies so they don't give you anything they shouldn't also if you have any illnesses that could impact their decision making, this also includes diseases like HIV because they need to know to be extra careful with you if they know you have any sort of blood borne pathogen.

Also, WEAR A HELMET! A lot of doctors require the medic to bring in the helmet so that they may examine where you hit your head at specifically.

I believe most places follow universal precautions.. that is that they assume everyone has a blood borne pathogen. I have to bake blood borne pathogen training yearly where I work. Now human nature may be another story.

If you're not wearing the helmet, won't the marks on your head be sufficient?

helpful, thanks!

The Emergency responders aren't that likely to go through the bag on your bike. Most likely your bike will be abandoned while you get carted off. My friend who had the heart attack on the bike got his bike back from a resident who lived close by the scene. The resident grabbed it so it wouldn't be stolen, but he had no idea who the man down was. Somehow through facebook and several connections and mutual friends they connected and he got the bike back a month later.

+1. I just assume everyone has some horrible hybrid mutation of Ebola+Noro+TB. Everyone gets treated the same.

Exactly right. No one is going to go through your wallet or look for a medic alert tag and then decide how to protect themselves. Everyone is assumed to have blood borne pathogens. In point of fact, for most 1st responder training courses, the fastest way to fail the the course is to cut corners on barrier protection.

To the other comment on data on your bike - these guys are finding you unconscious and unresponsive. They are there to save your life by assuring your airway, that you're breathing, your heart is beating and that you don't bleed to death all while trying to do no additional harm and with not much to work with in terms of mechanism of injury (not witnessed). They are probably already behind the curve so there just isn't any time for introspection and a scavenger hunt. If they don't find it right away, they don't look since there is a lot to do that's more important and the #1 goal is to get you into the EMS and to the ER as fast as possible. The identity thing can get figured out later. The hospital will concentrate on stabilizing you and then they have both the time, the personnel and the capacity to start figuring out the nuances and identities. And if you're wearing a tag (medicalert, roadID etc..) they'll find it and leverage it.

So, if the ambulance that shows up is an ALS (Advanced life support) rig, they'll look for a drug card and if they see "NKDA" (No Known Drug Allergy) on your medic alert, they'll give drugs as advised by the MD for pain or whatever is required betting that's right. Important things that could lead to a crash like diabetes, epilepsy, etc... are good things to know otherwise the primary assumption will be that the unconscious state is because of the crash (i.e. head injury/brain injury) and will be treated accordingly. For example, If you might crash because you're diabetic and you didn't manage your insulin and food intake properly, then you might want to make sure that is prominently displayed somewhere and somehow. It's really common sense - if you're a healthy normal person then just make sure you carry some id on your person. THere is room for that sort of thing on the RoadID. I'm a big fan of roadID because it's pretty hard to get separated from that and it WILL get found.

Just last spring, my son had a very bad ski crash out of town (racer) that wound up with him in a coma and a brain injury. It took a while for hospital to figure out how to get ahold of us. Had he had a roadID or something like that, it would have all been in there and it would have been simple. As it was, that caused some delays that I don't think we would have had otherwise. So, now that he's back up and about and starting to resume his normal activities, I'll get him one and make sure he has it on him all the time since he now has a health condition (history of TBI) that could impact his treatment if there is a future incident. A TBI patient can take a lighter hit and have a more severe consequence that is out of proportion to their accident. That would be hugely helpful to the ER in treatment and figuring out what happened and who to call. Where this stuff matters is largely when you get to the ER.

J.