Texas Fire Chief - Fall/Winter 2008 - (Page 31)

By Captain Randolph Paul Rust II, Waxahachie Fire Rescue ALS or BLS? staffed with firefighter/EMTs, limiting our level of care to BLS. In an effort to validate our current strategy and address the paramedic shortage issues, I set out to perform research on both of these issues. I looked for “expert EMS opinions” on the value of an ALS first responder program like ours. I also examined data from our incident reports to determine how often our first responders’ ALS skills are utilized. Armed with facts, I hoped to make an informed decision and answer the question of whether our department should provide ALS or BLS care to our community. And, if the answer is ALS, what would it take to offer it 100 percent of the time? In researching the arguments for ALS, I found no clear answers for first responder programs like ours. I even found an article from Prehospital and Disaster Medicine (1996) that attempted to answer the question “Does the level of prehospital care influence the outcome of patients with altered levels of consciousness?” The conclusion of 31 s a first responder organization, what level of care (advanced or basic life support) should we provide to our community? That sounds like a simple enough question, but, as I searched for information to make an educated decision, I found many conflicting reports. The fire department that I work for and where I carry the title of “EMS Officer,” among others, operates as a first responder organization. For many years, we have contracted with a private EMS transporting agency that provides ALS care. We have always had a first responder program to assist this agency with any incident determined to be life threatening. Until approximately five years ago, we had always thought of ourselves as a BLS first responder agency. With only five paramedics in our department, the majority of our first responders were trained as Emergency Medical Technician-Basics (EMT). Eventually, growth in our city and an increased demand on our fi rst responder responses caused us to rethink our role as fi rst responders. Without any hard evidence, we decided that it was time to raise the bar and formulated a plan to gradually develop our firefighters as paramedics. With a community college EMS education program in our own backyard, we began enrolling “volunteers.” Our strategy was simple: an increase in the level of training of our first responders to paramedic would better prepare us for the increasing demand on emergency medical services in our community. Today, we have twenty paramedics in our department with 38 percent of our firefighters certified as paramedics. Since our change in philosophy on first responding, it has been our goal to staff our first responder units on a “when possible” basis with at least one firefighter/paramedic, and provide ALS care to our community. This goal has proven to be difficult to accomplish with our current number of firefighter/paramedics. Vacation, holiday and sick leave often creates shortages in fi refighter/ paramedic staffing, and first responder units must be TEXAS FIRE CHIEF Fall/Winter 2008 A

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Texas Fire Chief - Fall/Winter 2008

Texas Fire Chief - Fall/Winter 2008 Contents Executive Director’s Report Texas Fire Chiefs Academy Project Reports Southwest Fire Rescue Conference Program Membership Application Customer Service Orientation in Fire Rescue Departments A Visit to the E-One Plant Index to Advertisers

Texas Fire Chief - Fall/Winter 2008

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