One more thought on this. I'm I fireman and we run as a rescue (not medical) squad. Car wrecks, falls from cliffs, boat wrecks, confined space rescue, trench collapse, construction accidents, stuff like that. I'm also a firefighter, but we do far more rescue work than firefighting in our district. We're not "Medics" we're "First Responders" and the paid EMT's and Paramedics are on-scene too. But we're the ones who are there first - as we like to say, if we were there any sooner, we'd have to wreck the car for you.

When I roll up to a car wreck, there's a number of things that go on - in this order - this all happens, often, in a matter of seconds - but not always.

a) what has happened?
b) is it safe for me to get and be near the patient?
c) what needs to be done to prevent further harm to the patient?
d) do I need more help to proceed safely?
e) what is the current condition of the patient?
f) what is the most immediate threat to the life of the patient that must be addressed?
g) what curative steps can I take to save the life of this patient?

Only much later do I care about things like medical history, name of the patient, or anything like that. At that point, we've started cutting you out of the car, or we've begun to package you for transport to more advanced care.

Sure, if you're epileptic, that's good to know, but if you have a gear-shift embedded in your gut, we don't really care too much about your epilepsy at that moment or if you take Lipitor. We want to make sure you can breath, your blood is circulating and that you don't get MORE injured as a result of anything that happens AFTER your car wreck, fall, whatever.

The medic squad takes it to the next level - they administer drugs, do ventilation and more, as needed. Aside from informing the ER by radio that we have a patient "taking X miligrams of Such and Such, and Y miligrams of So and So" I've never seen them really that concerned with the medical history of the patient on the scene - but they do look for medic alert tags and such. But it tends to be informational not curative.