Firefighters add medical care

By Ed Runyan | January 9, 2012 at 12:05a.m.

Nussle

WARREN

This week, the Warren Fire Department should have the ability to provide an additional service to Warren residents: a limited amount of emergency medical care.

The department has been confronted numerous times over the years with situations where firefighters were first on the scene of a fire, car accident or other circumstance in which people required emergency medical care.

Technically, Warren’s firefighters were unable to provide medical care in such emergencies because they didn’t have what Fire Chief Ken Nussle calls “protocol” — certification from medical professionals that fire department personnel have a sufficient level of training to provide such care.

Before a year ago, there was little reason to have such protocol because few of the department’s firefighters had emergency-medical-service training.

But with the hiring of 15 firefighters last year who also are emergency medical technicians, the department has EMTs to staff nearly every shift. By this week, the final paperwork should be in place to give the fire department its protocol, Nussle said.

To get the protocol, the EMTs took an examination given by a physician at St. Joseph Health Center.

It will be helpful to have authorization to provide limited medical care to Warren residents whenever firefighters get to a scene before the city’s private ambulances do, Nussle said.

Furthermore, whenever EMTs from Howland Township or Warren Township are called into the city because the private ambulances are busy, Warren firefighters have an agreement that they send Warren firefighters to the scene as well.

There’s a good chance firefighters will arrive at such a scene first, so it will be beneficial to have firefighters with the authorization to provide CPR, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, oxygen or to clear a victim’s airway, Nussle said.

The department hopes to equip one fire engine in each of the three fire stations with limited types of medical equipment such as cervical collars, masks used for mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and oral-airway-clearing devices, Nussle said.

Firefighters will not be certified to start IVs or administer drugs because that requires a higher level of certification, Nussle said.

“We’re starting to see the benefits of paramedics,” Nussle said of the 15 firefighters hired in March 2011 with a two-year, $5 million federal Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response program grant.