Paramedics will turn to a victim's cell phone for clues to that person's identity. You can make their job much easier with a simple idea that they are trying to get everyone to adopt: ICE.
ICE stands for In Case of Emergency. If you add an entry in the contacts list in your cell phone under ICE, with the name and phone no. of the person that the emergency services should call on your behalf, you can save them a lot of time and have your loved ones contacted quickly. It only takes a few moments of your time to do.
Paramedics know what ICE means and they look for it immediately. ICE your cell phone NOW!
It was started in April, 2005 by a paramedic based in Cambridge in England. His name is Bob Brotchie and he is a clinical team leader for the East Anglian Ambulance NHS Trust.
He said he got tired of trying to figure out who to contact when dealing with shocked or injured patients who can't give the information themselves.
The campaign encourages people to put an entry in their cell phones and other portable address devices under the name of "ICE" (In case of emergency).
Emergency personnel can quickly check the cell phone for the ICE entry and reach whoever's name and contact information is there. It also gives the cell phone owner the opportunity to choose who will be contacted during an emergency when that person may not want Mom, Dad, or some other same-named relative to be called.
The announcement of the campaign in April was made by Brotchie, a British war hero named Simon Weston, and the Vodafone Life Saver Awards.
Vodafone is a cell provider in the UK and says that its research has shown that more than 75 percent of the people it surveyed don't carry any information about who they would want contacted on their behalf in case of an emergency.
