Photo: Maddie McGarvey | The New York Times
"Amid clouds of choking tear gas, booming flash-bang grenades and other 'riot control agents,' volunteer medics in Denver, Colo., plunged into street protests in recent weeks to help the injured, sometimes rushing to them as soon as their hospital shifts ended. Known as "street medics," these unorthodox teams of nursing students, veterinarians, doctors, trauma surgeons, security guards, ski patrollers, nurses, wilderness EMTs and off-the-clock ambulance workers poured water, not milk, into the eyes of tear-gassed protesters. They stanched bleeding wounds and plucked disoriented teenagers from clouds of gas, entering dangerous corners where on-duty emergency health responders may fear to go," NPR reports. "When we see suffering, that's where we go," NPR quotes Dr. Rupa Marya as saying. Dr. Marya hosted a national 3,000-person webinar providing bridge training to be a street medic. "And right now that suffering is happening on the streets," she adds.
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