President Miloš Zeman awarded the Golden Rescue Cross medals to emergency and rescue workers for exceptional interventions in 2021 at Prague Castle last week. Michaela Richtrová, a doctoral student at the MU Faculty of Medicine, was among the recipients of the highest Czech award in the field.
She received the medal for her part in the intervention that took place in Tišnov near Brno, where six people were assaulted last October. Richtrová went to the scene as a leader of a rescue team of the South Moravian Region’s Emergency Medical Service, where she works part-time as a paramedic. “It is a great privilege for me and I really appreciate this award. I am honoured to receive the highest award for first responders,” said Richtrová, a fourth-semester doctoral student in the Anesthesiology, Intensive Medicine and Pain Management programme at the MU Faculty of Medicine.
She said the intervention itself was quite challenging. “The problem was that initially, we didn’t even know what sort of a situation we were actually responding to. Then we found out that there was a badly wounded child and three other seriously injured people at the scene of the attack, all in critical condition. We had to intubate them, put them into induced sleep and hand them over to other doctors,” said Michaela Richtrová, who also works at the Paediatric Anaesthesiology and Resuscitation Department of the Children’s Hospital in Brno.
She explained that the intervention was further complicated by the fact that she and her colleagues had to carry medical supplies into a house where the handcuffed attacker was lying near the injured persons. “My colleagues and I worked great as a team. There were very good EMTs with me, so I accept the Golden Rescue Cross from the President as a token of appreciation for all of us who participated in the Tišnov intervention,” emphasised Richtrová.
The aim of the Golden Rescue Cross – announced annually by the Rescue Report magazine since 1999 – is to recognise exceptional and highly professional interventions by firefighters, paramedics, soldiers, police officers and other components of the Czech integrated rescue system. It also recognises ordinary people for providing first aid and non-profit organisations operating in the area of emergency and rescue services.