gained from military experience of medical care in the field into a system able to be used in the private sector. This system must be able to train personnel who could provide field intervention medicine, or technical intervention that quickly turned near death victims into surviving patients (Department of Transportation, I-8). In 1967 one of the first such systems was set up in Pittsburgh. "Unemployables" of the black ghetto were trained in basic life support for pre-hospital, ambulance use. For these individuals, who were not accustomed to the medical profession, the world of emergency care was a shock. Special stresses and constraints existed when rendering CPR in a crowded restaurant, childbirth in a city park, or patient care through the window of a wrecked automobile (Caroline, ix). In California the Wedworth-Townsend Paramedic Act, passed in 1970, it provided permission for certain counties to establish experimental programs to test the use of Paramedics for emergency care in the field. It not only established advanced life support as the scope of practice for Paramedics, but also introduced the idea of a MICN. A Mobile Intensive Care Nurse, or MICN, is a registered nurse licensed by the county health department to provide emergency medical care or to give instructions. These instructions could be given either in person or by radio, to Paramedics working in the field. Originally, MICN's worked in the field with Paramedics, but this was later found to be impracticable. Currently, MICN's provide instructions to Paramedics from the hospital either by radio or phone (Calif. Health & Safety Admin., 1). The concepts of field emergency medical care were just being recognized in 1971. (Heckman, pg. xiii) However, the need for easy identification and a unique symbol was recognized quickly. The fact that not many people were familiar with the new form of medical care made such identification necessary. It was decided that Emergency Medica...
