MOUNT VERNON — This week, the week of May 18-24, has been designated as Emergency Services Week. The theme for 2008 is “Your Life is Our Mission.” This statement was chosen to recognize the commitment that emergency medical personnel make to the communities they serve. This dedication to their mission provides round-the-clock care to communities across the nation.
According to the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians, EMS is much more than an ambulance service: The delivery of emergency medical care is made up of many parts, together which are called the EMS system. The EMS system includes the call center that receives the call for and dispatches help, first responders such as police officers and firefighters, an ambulance transportation team of EMTs and/or paramedics, physicians and nurses who provide advice via radio or phone, air medical services such as helicopters and small airplanes, hospital receiving facilities, governmental and medical oversight.
In our area, there are both paid EMS personnel and volunteers who are ready to provide lifesaving care to those in need 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Amy Lanuzza, unit and trauma coordinator and EMS liaison at Knox Community Hospital said those individuals are a priceless community resource for the sick and the injured. “They do invaluable work to start the patient care process. They are the unsung heroes. Many are paramedic/firefighters, and a lot of them are volunteers. The amount of volunteer hours they put in is unbelievable — it’s astronomical.”
Civilian ambulance services in the United States began in Cincinnati and New York City in 1865 and 1869, respectively, according to the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians. Hospital interns rode in horse-drawn carriages designed specifically for transporting the sick and injured. The first volunteer rescue squads organized around 1920 in Roanoke, Va., and along the New Jersey coast.
The modern EMS system, which encompasses more than just transport services, was born more than 40 years ago following a national report on accidental injuries and deaths. Congress responded to the report by enacting the National Highway Safety Act of 1966, which mandated the newly formed Department of Transportation to establish minimum standards for provision of care for accident victims.
Emergency physicians also recognized that mouth-to-mouth breathing, chest compressions and defibrillation could save more lives if they were brought out of the hospital into the ambulance. At the same time, medics returning from Vietnam recognized that lives could be saved by using trauma treatments, once reserved for the hospital, on patients in the field, thus reinforcing the notion that EMS is, in essence, an extension of in-hospital emergency medical care.
The members of emergency medical services teams, whether career or volunteer, participate in thousands of hours of specialized training and continuing education to develop, update and enhance their skills. Marianne Helphrey is the public safety training coordinator at Knox County Career Center. She is also one of the program’s instructors and serves as a paramedic/firefighter with the Utica EMS. Helphrey said 97 people went through EMT training at the center in the past 18 months. There were three EMT basic classes, and one EMT Intermediate class, each consisting of 130 hours of training. Of those participants who took the National (EMT) Registry Exam, Helphrey said, the current pass rate is 92 percent. “That’s really high for the state,” she said, “because I have very dedicated instructors, and we have been recognized for that. We’re striving to do even more than the basic training. We’re now affiliated with the Emergency Care and Safety Institute, so we’ll be able to expand our offerings.”
Helphrey said the training program gets a lot of support from all the local [emergency services] departments. “They’ve been very supportive of the career center and helping us to expand our program,” she said. “We work together and that’s what it’s all about.”
Much of the historical information in this article comes from the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians Web site.
