NEW SPRINGFIELD EMS EMS chief responds to call for better service

The dynamic township native has built a high level of emergency response here.
By MARY GRZEBIENIAK
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
NEW SPRINGFIELD -- One of the problems of living in the country is being so far from many services, like ambulances.
It takes 20 to 25 minutes, for example, for a commercial ambulance to reach parts of Springfield Township, which is one of the southernmost points in Mahoning County.
Township fire departments try to help residents by training "first response" teams, or volunteers who give basic first aid until the ambulance arrives.
But Karen Philibin, an energetic 44-year-old Springfield township resident, thought her neighbors deserved "the best care."
Thanks to her, the Springfield Township ambulance provides far more than first aid. It is unique locally in that it always carries a paramedic, the highest level of training for ambulance personnel.
A paramedic studies for about one year and can administer drugs, use a cardiac monitor and intubate a patient.
Philibin is volunteer Emergency Medical Services director, a position that is part of the Springfield Township Volunteer Fire Department.
The dynamic township native has built a high level of emergency response here. A volunteer here for 20 years, she now directs 36 personnel, among them 15 paramedics who answer the approximately 30 calls the department receives per month.
Getting things done
As director, Karen puts in 30 hours weekly doing everything from reviewing every ambulance run for quality assurance to filling out applications for grants and reviewing billing. Since 1994 she has successfully applied for $100,000 in state funds to train the local squad.
She says it is the volunteers who make the department special. "We are like a family. We're very close."
When she's not volunteering, Karen is employed as a Basic Life Support and Ohio EMT instructor at Jefferson Community College in Steubenville, Rural Metro Ambulance/Salem Division, as well as teaching at the Columbiana County Career Center in Lisbon.
Battle with MS
Two years ago, her life came to a temporary halt one day while she was at work and one side of her body went numb. "I thought I was having a stroke," she said. But at the Cleveland Clinic, she learned it was multiple sclerosis, a chronic and potentially debilitating disease.
Her reaction was, "What do I do about it and how do I fix it?" she recalled. She said she decided during her treatment that "If I had MS, it was going to have to live MY life," she said.
After nine courses of an experimental treatment and two years of physical therapy, Karen says she suffers few symptoms of the disease. "I don't write as well as I did before" she said, but she has neither relapsed, nor experienced the vision problems experienced by many MS patients. She travels to the Cleveland Clinic once a year for testing and takes medication regularly.
She recalls that other EMTs -- Mike Gebbhardt, Michelle Powell and Anne Rupert -- took over the township EMS services in her absence. But on her return, even though Karen's husband, Michael, had to drive her to the first ambulance call after her release from the hospital, there was no question that she would resume her work here.
Her 16-year-old son, Michael Jr., may be following in his mother's footsteps. He is a member of Explorer Post 499, a CPR and first aid group at the township that she helps with. The explorers can go on ambulance runs once they are trained.