One day last Fall, I was on scene at a small stone house, in the early morning hours. I was speaking with a gentleman in his late sixties who was potentially a critical cardiac patient. It’s funny how certain emergency calls stick out to you; it may have been the house -which was quaint and cozy, something I admire in a house- or it may have been the fact that while attempting to assess the patient, I was continually met with “Just take me to the hospital, you are not a doctor”. While the majority of that statement is factual, I could not find a way to get the patient to actually expand on his emergency, other than the fact that he was experiencing “chest pain”.
The problem is, there are a magnitude of reasons for chest pain, some of which are benign, others that are potentiality life threatening. As paramedics, we have the ability to assess chest pain using our training, experience, and our equipment. Along with providing medications, we are able to perform a test called a 12-lead ECG which shows us how the electrical impulses travel in the heart. How the impulses travel through the heart helps us to determine whether the heart is healthy, or damaged. Damage, specifically heart cells that are actively being deprived of oxygen from a heart attack, can drastically change the look of a cardiac rhythm on the ECG. Sometimes, paramedics can watch these changes occur right in front of our eyes. When this happens, the closest hospital may not be the best option for the patient, as what they need is immediate intervention from a cardiologist at a Cardiac Catheterization Lab.
In this particular case, I was unable to perform my duties because this patient was fearful for his life. In that moment, in his eyes, I was the thing standing between him and definitive care. The look in his eyes, and the condition of his skin, said it all… he was experiencing the feeling of impending doom. He didn’t want to answer my questions, allow my tests, or accept my medications, all of which had the potential to help him, simply because he did not have the knowledge to understand what a paramedic was, or what a paramedic could do. Unfortunately, in my 16 years of being a paramedic, this was not the first time this had happened to me… And it won’t be the last.
This call -a term we use for attending to a patient- made me reflect on why this happens so often. Why do we get “The ambulance drivers are here”, a name that died decades ago, or “Oh, you can do that?” or “Maybe let the hospital worry about that”. It could be the fact that we are the newest of the emergency services, respectfully still in its’ infancy compared to the Police and Fire services. It could also be the exponential growth and continued expansion of our medical directives. Every year we are adding new education, new training, new medications, all with the same goal… to save lives. Still, the highest likelihood is that Paramedic Services as a whole have failed to educate the public on the services that their tax dollars are paying for. That is how the concept for our #NowYouKnow campaign came to fruition.
Every year, during the third week in May, Paramedic Services Week is celebrated across Canada and the United States. It is a week dedicated to celebrating the profession and bringing recognition to the dedication of the Paramedics who provide care to the public. This year we, OPSEU / SEFPO Local 381: The Professional Paramedics of Northumberland County, chose to focus on highlighting some of the critical skills that the public may not know we can perform. We created a series of short social media videos, or “reels”, with a new video released each day, along with an informational poster. The skills highlighted were: Emergency Childbirth, Thoracentesis (Needle Decompression), STEMI Bypass, IV Initiation, Community Paramedicine, and Cardioversion. These were chosen because the majority of these skills are not performed every day. In my experience, a lot of people, including some of our own allied agencies that we work with day in and day out, are unaware that we execute these interventions.
Bluntly, these are just a fraction of the procedures, skills and medications that we can provide, with more being added every year our scope of practice continues to grow. The downloading of medical knowledge to frontline Paramedics has greatly expanded our ability to improve patient outcomes. It is forcing the colleges to add another year to the program, just to have the time to adequately teach new paramedics the basics.
Over the past decade, some of the skills we have added are: advanced birthing procedures for complex deliveries, the introduction of multiple medications, gastric suctioning during cardiac arrests, dual sequential defibrillation for patients in cardiac arrest in recurrent ventricular fibrillation or tachycardia, the ability to treat palliative patients at home with the intent of honouring their wishes of staying home, the introduction of Community Paramedicine, which is focused on the aging and at-risk population and reducing hospital admissions, the treat and discharge for hypoglycemia, seizures and stable tachydysrhythmias, and many more that are not listed.
Paramedics in Northumberland receive two Continuing Medical Education days per year, and for as long as I can remember one has been a focused review and the other on new procedures or advancing medical knowledge. Here at Local 381 we endeavour to do better, to answer the call, to educate the public on the services available, to continue to update as our profession advances. The public deserves to know the prehospital care that can, and should, be provided to them during an emergency.
If you would like to see our videos, you can find us on Facebook at OPSEU / SEFPO Local 381: The Professional Paramedics of Northumberland County, or Instagram @OPSEU Local 381: Paramedics. Like and follow us for continuous information and thank you to everyone who has taken the time to do so already.
Sincerely,
Chris Hopkins, ACP, President of OPSEU / SEFPO Local 381
Author: Pete Fisher
Has been a photojournalist for over 30-years and have been honoured to win numerous awards for photography and writing over the years. Best selling author for the book Highway of Heroes - True Patriot Love
