Police officers may, can and do provide first aid, but until now the law has not clearly regulated the extent to which police may act before an ambulance arrives.

The new rules will be added to the Law Enforcement Act, which is currently being amended.

Police officers already have the necessary skills but are now always allowed to intervene, said Roger Kumm, head of the Police and Border Guard Board's prevention and offence proceedings bureau.

"Examples are mostly cases where someone has been stabbed and develops a collapsed lung. Police officers are not allowed to use so-called invasive methods, even though police medics have the necessary specialist training. They are not allowed to clear the airways by actually intervening medically," Kumm explained.

"What has been done until now is immediate life-saving assistance. No one is going to let a person die before their eyes; a police officer wants to save a person's life, but, for example, we do not insert an IV cannula ourselves. We could already begin a great deal of the preparatory process that is extremely important for the ambulance ourselves. We have the skills, the people are trained," he continued.

One example is the shooting in Lihula in 2020, where the ambulance was unable to enter the scene because of the high level of danger. Another is serious traffic accidents, when officers may be closer than the ambulance and can begin providing life-saving assistance.

Ain Peil, an adviser at the Interior Ministry's law enforcement and criminal proceedings department and the drafter of the bill, explained that first aid is not precisely regulated in Estonia.

However, the general principle is that everyone should provide first aid within the limits of their competence, particularly employees of public authorities.

Peil said the clearer the legislation is, the better it is for police officers. "They do not have to spend as much time wondering whether to act or not and worrying about whether they have the right to perform those procedures," she outlined.

The Estonian Society of Emergency Medicine Physicians considers the amendment necessary. At the same time, doctors believe the law should clearly set out a list of the procedures police are allowed to perform, said Tanel Lepik, a member of the society's board.

"According to the bill, the officer's training determines that boundary, and some of the techniques that can be performed are invasive, and if they are not performed correctly, they can harm the person," he said.

Lepik added that the list should be jointly drawn up by the police, ambulance service and emergency medicine doctors: "So that we work according to the same principles."

Another change to the Law Enforcement Act is that police officers will be able to carry out rapid tests for drugs, rather than taking an offender to a hospital.

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