Anything is Possible
It’s a Monday morning, and paramedics are being dispatched to calls for various heart and stroke issues, slips and falls — nothing out of the ordinary for them. But as paramedics know all too well, there isn’t a typical day or night in emergency medical response. Anything is possible.
As Tim drives through his district, his radio crackles with a call that a vehicle jack has slipped on a job site, possibly pinning a worker underneath. Tim can see from the screen that his truck is closest to the scene and may need to respond. He listens intently to the dispatcher. A few intense minutes pass until he hears that the worker is up, away from the vehicle, unhurt.
Tim quietly continues onto his next stop — the Colchester Regional Hospital — where paramedics tend to the patients brought in by ambulance. The paramedics wait to find out when a physician can see their patient and/or if a bed is available here or at another location. This can take hours, even entire shifts, causing what are known as offload delays.
Freeing Up His Crew
Tim will consult the charge nurse or physician on duty to help expedite transfers of care and make his crew available to answer other emergency calls.
Earlier that day, Tim visited paramedics at the Aberdeen Hospital in New Glasgow, including Nick Rockey, who switched careers when his job as a carpenter with Marine Atlantic ended with the completion of the Confederation Bridge. He’s been on both the giving and receiving end of care.
Nick points to fellow paramedic Anne Cummings nearby as one of the colleagues who saved his life when he suffered a heart attack in 2017. That experience gave him greater empathy for his patients. “If you are laid on that stretcher you get how scary it is.”