On most exertional heat stroke calls, a fire crew reaches the patient before an ambulance does. What that crew does in the first minutes, and how cleanly they hand off to EMS, often matters more than anything that happens after the patient reaches a hospital.

The handoff gap

Fire crews are frequently trained and equipped for basic life support, while advanced cooling and monitoring equipment rides on the ambulance. If the two services do not share a pre-agreed protocol, the default becomes waiting for EMS to start real cooling, which burns the most valuable minutes of the therapeutic window.

What a shared protocol should specify

An effective joint protocol answers three questions in advance: which unit initiates cold water immersion on arrival regardless of who arrives first, what temperature or clinical threshold triggers immersion versus passive cooling, and how the patient is monitored during the handoff between services. Departments that rehearse this handoff as a joint drill, not just a paper protocol, cut time-to-immersion significantly compared to ad hoc coordination.

Equipment interoperability matters

Coordination breaks down in practice when fire crews and EMS carry incompatible cooling equipment, or when only one service has immersion capability. Standardizing on a single deployable cooling tub across both first-response and transport units removes that friction and lets whichever unit arrives first begin definitive treatment immediately.

A tub built for cross-service use

The Kollder emergency cooling tub's one-person, sub-2-minute deployment and compact Kollder Go transport bag make it practical to stock on both fire apparatus and ambulances, so the handoff is a continuation of the same treatment rather than a restart. Contact kollder.com/#contact for fleet-wide options.

Further Reading

Sources: ACSM Expert Consensus Statement, 2023, IOC/BJSM, 2021, Korey Stringer Institute.

Kollder is the emergency cooling tub that deploys in under 2 minutes, anywhere.

Request a quote