Emergency medical technicians and paramedics — health professionals who speed to the scenes of car crashes, homes of heart attack victims and anywhere else they’re called — give so much of themselves. Often, they’re working for love, not money, taking “spare” time around regular jobs to volunteer their services in their communities.
County Crew
It’s an unusually slow morning at Station 10, the base for Calvert Advanced Life Support in Prince Frederick, Maryland. The training area, with its practice mannequins, airway devices and cardiac monitor/defibrillator, is quiet. The kitchen, with a couple shelves stocked with cans of Campbell’s soup, is empty. Two crew members are bunked in darkened backrooms.
Paramedic Katie Kreider and paramedic intern Shirley Millette, returning from a call, discuss a challenging case with Crystal Bowen, a paramedic and the Station 10 captain. As exhausted as all they are, their enthusiasm is obvious.
Emergency medical service for Calvert County is 100 percent volunteer, the only such county in the state and one of the dwindling number of all-volunteer services nationwide, Bowen says. Everyone — paramedics, EMTs and firefighters — donates their time and essential skills.
Outside of CALS, Bowen, Kreider and Millette commute to other jobs to pay the bills. Kreider is a critical care paramedic at Children’s National Medical Center in the District of Columbia, while Millette is a career firefighter transitioning to the paramedic role. Bowen works as a paid paramedic on a private ambulance service.
Within CALS, volunteers handle medical emergencies, such as cardiac arrest, strokes and overdoses; injuries from falls or motor vehicle crashes; and changes in mental status from diabetes or seizures among their calls, says Heather Howes, a paramedic and the EMS specialist for Calvert County.
Howes was hooked on emergency care at a young age. “My want and desire for this probably started when I was about 12 years old,” she says. “My grandfather had a stroke, and I was the one that called 911.” The way the responders took care of her grandfather, while keeping her calm, made a strong impression.
As soon as Howes turned 16, she joined her local volunteer service and has worked in several areas, including Washington, D.C., where shooting and stabbing emergencies were routine. A 25-year EMS veteran, Howes has earned certifications along the way to reach the level of paramedic.
Howes has seen “horrific” things on the job that not everyone could handle. “You see a lot of tragedy — you see people at the worst moment of their life,” she says. But once in a while, maybe their best moment: “Delivering twins in the back of an ambulance was pretty cool,” she says.
Drivers, Please!
Stretching all the way from Southern Maryland to the White House, heavily traveled Route 4/Pennsylvania Avenue inspires drivers to go too fast. At the moment, however, the driver ahead of Bowen’s medic chaser vehicle is in no hurry to move out of the way as she responds to a call.
That’s OK this morning, but often, responder speed is critical. Krieder says that for her, the most daunting situation is “the patient you can’t fix, and time is their enemy.” That could be a trauma patient who is bleeding out and can’t get a transfusion until he or she reaches the hospital. The paramedics can replace blood with intravenous fluid, Kreider says, but the IV solution only helps so much.
If the weather’s clear, the crew waits for the helicopter. “If the weather’s not good, you go by ground,” Kreider says. Transporting a patient by ground to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, a trip she’s done many times, can take more than an hour.
In June 2013, Kreider was the victim in an auto accident while she was responding in a medic unit to a call for a woman with trouble breathing. A driver ran a stop sign and hit the passenger side of Kreider’s vehicle, sending her across Route 4 and into a driveway. “I have scar tissue on my knees,” Kreider says. “But I’m mostly fine.”
For all they do, medics ask little from the public in return. You can make their job easier in several ways, though: Get a brief health history and list of medicines together, and attach it to your refrigerator. Make sure your mailbox and house numbers are reflective and visible from the roadway. And when you hear sirens and see flashing lights, move over already.
City Campus
It’s a different pace and work environment for Justin Gregg, an EMT and crew chief of Georgetown Emergency Response Medical Service, which serves the Georgetown University campus and surrounding neighborhoods. The GERMS crew is all-volunteer, he says, manned by students. Many student-EMTs are pursuing health careers, while others take on the role as a unique but temporary opportunity.
Relatively minor injuries, such as twisted ankles or broken bones, are the most common calls, Gregg says. “The next-most complaints we receive, as you might imagine on a college campus, are things like alcohol overdoses and other substance-abuse-related calls,” he says.
To a lesser extent, GERMS, which is a free service, deals with medical issues such as chest pain, breathing difficulties and diabetes complications. The most unusual call Gregg has taken involved the electrocution of an outside contractor. “That was something you’d never expect to see, especially on a college campus,” he says. “We just have to be ready for anything like that.”
GERMS also covers home sporting events at Georgetown. While football players can suffer broken arms and legs, Gregg says, “It’s the cheerleaders that give us more to do. We’ve had a couple cheerleading-related incidents where one of them would be up in the air and fall down a decent 10-foot drop.”
At times, giving care on your own campus can make for awkward situations. “We’re surrounded by our patients, and you never know who you’re going to run into,” Gregg says. “So we don’t address the patients afterward if we see them. We maintain professionalism and act like nothing happened.”
Gregg finds himself increasingly drawn into emergency services. “Last semester, I was on duty for a portion of almost every day,” he says. “It’s something your entire life gets dedicated to.”
Community Fabric
Volunteering in the community where you grew up, alongside people you once went to high school with, builds a deep sense of camaraderie, the paramedics agree. But with the growing educational requirements, the multiple certifications and college courses; travel, day care and even clothing expenses; and the sheer time commitment for paramedics, firefighters and EMTs, all-volunteer services like CALS may eventually become unsustainable.
In a way, that will be a shame for people like Bowen, who thrives on giving back to her friends and neighbors as well as on the autonomy and activity of her volunteer role. “It’s waiting that makes you tired,” she says. “I get back on the ambulance, and I’m happy.”
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Paramedics and EMTs: Health Care in the Fast Lane originally appeared on usnews.com
