Ambulance Clipart

Ambulances are emergency vehicles designed specifically for transporting injured or sick patients to medical facilities. The first crude ambulances were used to remove wounded soldiers from battlefields during wars. Over time, dedicated transport carriages and carts slowly evolved into more specialized patient transport vehicles.

Modern ambulances form an indispensable part of healthcare infrastructure and emergency response systems. They are equipped to administer urgent medical care while rapidly transporting patients to hospitals during medical crises. Ambulances save countless lives each year by delivering advanced emergency care faster than would be possible with private transport.

Types of Ambulances

There are a few main varieties of ambulances:

Land Ambulances

This wide category covers all patient transport vehicles operated on roads and highways. It includes everything from smaller vans up to large truck-sized ambulances. The most iconic land ambulances feature boxy rear patient compartments mounted on light or medium truck chassis.

Air Ambulances

Specially outfitted helicopters and airplanes act as air ambulances to move patients faster over long distances or rough terrain. They facilitate urgent patient transfers between hospitals and transport critically ill or injured patients from remote areas to trauma centers.

Specialty Ambulances

There are also more specialized ambulance types like huge bariatric units for transporting obese patients. Neonatal and pediatric ambulances carry specialized gear to safely transport infants and children. And large mass casualty buses allow transporting multiple patients at once after disasters.

Ambulance Equipment and Features

Modern ambulances contain a vast array of medical gear alongside safety and communications features:

Patient Compartment

The rear patient area houses built-in stretchers, cabinets for medical supplies, and seats for paramedics. It is climate controlled and features an enhanced suspension system for a smoother ride.

Medical Equipment

Each ambulance carries essential resuscitation devices like defibrillators, ventilators, IV fluid, and an oxygen delivery system. Other standard equipment includes wound dressing materials and common drugs used in emergency situations.

Safety Features

Visual and audible warning systems give ambulances a way to safely expedite journeys during emergencies. This includes rotating lights, spotlights, and a range of sirens. Most ambulances also have retroreflective striping to enhance visibility.

Communications

Ambulances have two-way radios to stay in contact with hospitals and dispatch centers. Some also feature specialized hardware for transmission of patient health data to hospital trauma teams before arrival.

Common Ambulance Clipart and Images

There is a wide selection of colorful clipart and detailed images showing ambulances and paramedic scenes:

Ambulance Clip Art Styles

The most ubiquitous style shows illustrated or cartoon ambulances in a comic, minimalist style. But there are also many more realistic photographic clipart images. Ambulance icons can display just a common ambulance style or a specific type like an air ambulance.

Paramedic Response Scenes

Exciting dynamic images illustrate ambulances racing to incidents with lights flashing. Other detailed scenes show paramedics wheeling patients on stretchers. Similarly, trauma response teams rush critically injured patients from helicopter air ambulances into hospitals.

Medical Symbols

Among the many emergency and medical symbols, a common one representing first aid or medical facilities depicts the iconic ‘star of life’ – a blue six-pointed star outline containing the Rod of Asclepius. This ancient Greek symbol of a snake-entwined staff symbolizes medicine and healing.

Using Ambulance Clipart

Ambulance-themed clipart has many uses:

Health Education

Cute ambulance illustrations catch attention making them ideal when creating health promotion flyers, posters, brochures and public service announcements aimed at injury prevention and first aid awareness.

Emergency Preparedness

Local emergency medical services agencies often use ambulance-themed graphics when creating community emergency response plans and liaising with regional disaster response networks.

Illustrating Medical Stories

From children’s books to medical dramas, ambulances and paramedics feature in all kinds of stories involving sickness, injury or medical emergencies. Clipart visualizes these tales.

Ambulance Clipart Design Elements

Basic ambulance clipart tends to feature a few core design elements:

Illustrated Ambulances

Simplified ambulance drawings emphasize rear patient cabins, emergency lights/sirens, prominent branding, and common van or truck chassis. There are also many illustrated variants like police, fire, bike and military ambulances.

Medical Equipment

Stretchers, oxygen tanks, EKG monitors defibrillators feature prominently in more detailed ambulance illustrations. Some also include drip bags, drug cases and depicted paramedics for an enhanced emergency response feel.

Patients and Paramedics

More elaborate ambulance drawings include patients on stretchers being loaded into patient compartments by paramedic crews. Air ambulance variants add helipad scenes showing patients being transferred from helicopters.

Styles of Ambulance Clipart

There are a few distinct genres of ambulance-themed clipart:

Minimalist Line Art

Very simple black and white line drawings comprise this pared back style showing iconic ambulances in basic shape without any shading, tone or extra elements.

Comic Clipart Style

On a similar minimalist tone, comic-style ambulance illustrations use uncomplicated lines but with the addition of bright solid color fills and visual sound effects like “zoom” and “flash” emulating a vibrant pop-art comic genre.

Photographic

For enhanced realism, some illustrated art uses digital effects to make enhanced clipart seem photographic. This gives the depth, texture, lighting and detail of real-world ambulance pictures transformed into an illustrated style.

Creating Custom Ambulance Clipart

For full control over the entire creative process, digital illustration software allows easily crafting custom ambulance designs from scratch:

Digital Drawing

Modern programs offer intuitive tools replicating real-world drawing implements. This allows using digitized pencils, ink pens, and paint brushes to illustrate an ambulance, add background elements like roads/buildings, and embellish with color gradients and textures.

Stylization

Custom clips can mimic other distinct art genres. Cartoon filters transform illustrations into a hand-drawn style with exaggerated vibrant colors. Line filters reduce images down to striking graphic black and white line work. Painterly filters give drawings the sweeping brush strokes of oil paintings.

Best File Formats

Scalable vector graphic (SVG) formats work best for ambulance clipart as these store images using mathematical formulas rather than pixels allowing enlarging illustrations to any size without losing quality. This prevents pixilation and blocky artifacts when scaling up clips.

Copyrights and Attribution for Ambulance Clipart

Those sourcing or altering ambulance clipart from online sources should observe a few guidelines:

Licensing Rules – When using paid stock ambulance graphics, license terms dictate allowable uses. Free public domain and CC can be used without obligations, but always check terms to ensure proper attribution when mandated.

Crediting Artists – Many ambulance illustrators request crediting their work if used especially when releasing graphics under permissive CC licenses rather than public domain.

Editing Purchased Images – Ambulance stock with full commercial licenses allows significantly altering original images like changing colors or adding text and new graphic elements. More limited licenses may prohibit edits beyond minor cropping and resizing.