2005 Community Report - Brandywine Health Foundation

TRAINING PARAMEDICS TO ENHANCE
EMERGENCY SERVICES
As Chester County has grown and the
number of hospital-based paramedics
has declined, the need for more people
trained in advanced emergency
medical services has never been greater.
“More and more local ambulance
services are filling the void by providing
their own paramedic-staffed Mobile
Intensive Care Units, and more
advanced life support-trained paramedics
will be needed,” says Timothy
N. Bossert, chief operating officer of
Good Fellowship Ambulance and EMS
Training Institute in West Chester.
To support such efforts, the
Foundation issued a $50,000 challenge
grant enabling Good Fellowship to
offer Chester County’s first-ever
Advanced Life Support (ALS) Training
Institute. As a result, 21 dedicated
emergency medical volunteers are now
undergoing a rigorous yearlong training
program at Good Fellowship.
When an ambulance responds to a
medical emergency, those aboard the
ambulance can provide one of two
different levels of emergency service –
depending on their training and
certification. Most ambulances are
staffed by emergency medical
technicians trained in basic life support
skills. These are noninvasive services,
including oxygen therapy, spinal
immobilization, basic cardiac life
support, splinting fractures and
controlling bleeding.
But many patients need advanced life
support skills that involve invasive
treatments. These include providing
intravenous fluids, administering
medications, monitoring heart
arrhythmias and intubating patients
who are having trouble breathing. All
such ALS skills are performed by
paramedics or registered nurses.
Typically, in the past, these hospitalbased
professionals have responded in
separate vehicles and have followed
ambulances to the scene whenever
dispatchers determine they are needed.
But with more of that responsibility
falling to local ambulance units, the
need for ALS training within Chester
County is becoming more essential.
Good Fellowship’s extensive training
runs September through August, and
includes work at ambulance units,
Chester County and Brandywine
hospitals and 120 hours in the field
with local paramedic units.
“It gives you more tools to provide
patient care,” explains Scott Runge, a
Cochranville custom cabinetmaker and
two-year EMT with the West Grove
Fire Company’s Ambulance Division. He
recalls the frustration of answering a
call from a woman with diabetes
whose sugar levels were so low she
was barely conscious. The 911
dispatcher hadn’t been given enough
information to determine if a paramedic
also should have been sent. But
because Runge was not certified for
advanced life support, he could not
give the woman medication to help
her. All he and his colleagues could do
was rush her to a hospital.
The training also couldn’t be more
convenient – and that’s one of the
major attractions for the trainees.
Most county paramedics in Chester
County have received their training in
Lancaster County, but that program is
now closed, and the closest training
now available is in Philadelphia.
“This is the only way I could pursue
something I really want to do,” Runge
says. “With a wife, three children, a
full-time job and living in the western
part of Chester County, taking this
course in the city would have been
virtually impossible.”
“This is the only way I could pursue something
I really want to do. With a wife, three children,
a full-time job and living in the western part
of Chester County, taking this course in the city
would have been virtually impossible.”
Scott Runge, paramedic trainee
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