River Valley School students got a surprise tour through an ambulance with EMS workers on Thursday.
As part of this year's National Paramedics Services Week, EMS workers had an ambulance on display in the Sobeys parking lot, but due to a lack of interest from the public, they moved over to the school.
Students were anxiously shouting questions and sharing all kinds of stories with the EMS workers as the professionals showed them a little about what they do.
EMT Connor Gordon showed the students the inside of the ambulance and measured their heart rates, while paramedic Justin Fisher showed them tools outside of the ambulance such as a backboard and oxygen tank.
EMS officials also put an ambulance on display in Olds, Eckville, Three Hills, Hanna, Linden, Drumheller and Lacombe last week. The goal was to educate the public about what EMS does.
But they were also trying to eradicate a detestable label they claim to be often smeared with: ambulance drivers.
“We take offence to that term a little bit to be honest with you. We go to school for a long time and even EMTs, two years of school – it's intensive. We do a lot of hard work,” said Jason Gelleny, an EMT for Alberta Health Services' central zone.
He was working the open house on May 27 in the Olds Wendy's and Tim Hortons parking lot.
“It's like calling a nurse a bedpan changer or a doctor's puppet. They're not. They do so much more than that too. They care for people every single day and it's taking that away from us. It's saying: no, you don't care for people. You just drive them to the hospital.”
According to Gelleny, the term stuck because EMS was born out of the funeral home business, when emergency vehicle operators (EVOs) took hearses and drove people to hospitals.
“Now, you're an EMT or you're a paramedic and you've got skills, assessment tools and you've got diagnostic tools and you've got treatments and drugs,” he said. “Even EMTs alone, we've got 10 different medications we can administer. All of which are various symptomatic relief or life-saving.”
While people are familiar with ambulance staff as paramedics, there are actually three levels within the profession.
The first are emergency medical responders (EMRs), who deliver advanced first aid.
After that are emergency medical technicians (EMTs), who possess greater medical knowledge and skills and are authorized to administer certain drugs.
Last, there are paramedics, sometimes referred to as EMT-Ps. Their knowledge of anatomy and pharmacology is more advanced. They can use an even greater selection of drugs and procedures, such as restarting a patient's heart.
The job encompasses all aspects of health care, from diagnosis to treatment.
“We're just wanting the public (to get) a more generalized idea (of) exactly what we do instead of seeing us as just a white cubed truck that drives around and makes a lot of noise,” said Geoff Pasquill, an EMT of 15 years.
“A lot of our paramedics actually end up moving on and going into the medical line of work,” said Pasquill. “I've known quite a few paramedics that have moved on and became doctors or got their nursing as well.”
Pasquill said the most common questions they get are about the worst calls they've responded to and whether they were called to a specific scene.
To protect the privacy of patients, they can't answer those questions, nor can paramedics comment on the outcomes of people they treat, said Gelleny.
However, they can tell people that there is no typical workday.
Gelleny said the most routine thing they do is check to make sure the ambulance is ready for action – that it is safe and stocked.
"From there, everything changes. We do an awful lot of transfers in this particular part of the province but we do a lot of different calls too,” he said.
"So we can go first thing in the morning to a cardiac arrest and then you can … get called to grandma in the afternoon who – she's a little bit constipated today. And then later on in the evening, you get a call for a two-year-old who's been sick and throwing up and (having) trouble breathing. So you never know where you're going to get called to."
