A waiting game no one wants to play
Published 12:00 pm Saturday, March 6, 2004
They pull people from mangled cars; they deliver babies. On one day, they might comfort the woman whose husband has just died of a heart attack; on the next, they may be called on revive a drowning victim.
It’s all in a day’s work for a paramedic.
Most of the time, however, they play a waiting game. In a house that is home to South Whidbey General Hospital’s ambulance service, paramedics sit for hours over the course of days, watching CNN, playing computer games, reading and sleeping while listening for the next emergency call from a 911 dispatcher.
This is also part of a day’s work.
Island-wide, 13 ambulances and 24 paramedics serve residents 24 hours a day, seven days a week from four locations; two in Oak Harbor, one in Coupeville at Whidbey General and one in Freeland. Aid cars are also housed in five fire stations from Oak Harbor to Bayview for use by emergency medical technicians. This is a two-pronged response team available for medical emergencies.
At the scene of an auto accident, house fire, or other medical trauma, passersby will usually see two ambulances responding, one with EMTs and the other with paramedics on board. Paramedics are paid professionals, while the EMTs are trained volunteers. The responsibility for treating a patient during transport to the hospital always falls to the paramedics.
“We don’t know what we will be facing so we send in the calvary,” said Roger Meyers, Whidbey General’s Emergency Services manager.
Different medicine
Working one of their standard 48-hour shifts out of the Freeland ambulance station recently, paramedics Darin Reid and Sig Kohl had their three straight days of on-call duty punctuated by an emergency response to someone who seemed to be suffering a heart attack, and treating two people seriously injured in a car accident. This is what they were waiting for.
“I wouldn’t do anything else,” said Reid, a 21-year veteran of the paramedic service.
Though paramedics are highly trained and paid for their experience — as much as $72,000 a year for a paramedic with 12-years of experience — they do not deal with patients in the same way doctors and nurses might. Becoming emotionally involved with patients is something both say they can’t afford to.
“We couldn’t do our job well if we did,” Kohl said.
But they do care and are frustrated by the recently passed Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) that protects an patients’ medical information.
“We aren’t able to get follow up information on our cases,” Kohl said.
Reid, the father of a toddler, said some of the most difficult calls are those in which children have been seriously injured. Still, he can’t dwell on the calls too much.
“We have to work in the moment on the case in front of us,” Reid said.
Whidbey General’s paramedics have all received at least 2,000 hours of training to be certified for their profession. Dr. Paul Zaveruha is the medical director for the hospital’s emergency services division, while Roger Meyers is the manager of the team.
Meyers credits Zaveruha with building the paramedic corps to its current level.
“People here will receive care comparable with that in Seattle from our paramedics,” Meyers said.
Meyers said most of the paramedics at the hospital have been working in the field for at least 10 years.
On the road to a rescue
Paramedics roll out to medical emergencies with 45 medicines, a cardiac machine, and the ability to perform a number of lifesaving measures, including inserting IVs.
Reid said one of the things he often hears when he is called out is “I don’t know if my problem is serious enough to need a paramedic.” He advises people to err on the side of caution, even though having a paramedic respond to an emergency comes at a cost of several hundred dollars.
“That’s why we are here,” he said.
When a call from dispatch comes into the Freeland ambulance headquarters near Cameron Road, Reid takes down the information as both men grab jackets and head down the stairs to one of the two ambulances in the garage. They are on the road in less than two minutes.
“We never run, we’re quick but careful,” he said. “I can’t do anyone any good if I slip and fall and for safety we rarely travel more than 10 miles over the speed limit.”
How the system works
The Whidbey General’s Emergency Services is levy funded, receiving about $2.5 million of its $5 million budget from property taxes. In 2003, paramedics responded to 5,700 calls on Whidbey Island.
In March 2002, WGH ambulances were placed at county fire stations for use by volunteer emergency medical technicians. Robert May, a lead paramedic with the hospital, South Whidbey’s Island County Fire District 3 “sets the gold standard for emergency medical technician aid.”
“We couldn’t do it without the help of the fire district,” he said.
Fire district EMTs are the first responders to car accidents and other medical emergencies, but become employees of Whidbey General when they are in one of its ambulances.
In comparing the training given to paramedics and EMTs, May said there is a big difference. EMTs receive about 140 hours of training and are able to provide what is called basic life support. Paramedics proved acute life support, a higher level of care designed to stabilize an emergency medical condition for the trip to the hospital.
The island wide system paramedic and EMT provides total coverage all the time. When South Whidbey paramedics are busy on a call, another ambulance from Central or North Whidbey is routed to cover other South Whidbey emergencies. Paramedic response times to about 90 percent of emergencies on the island is six minutes, according to Meyers.
