Fire Department takes over EMS

These services were under the jurisdiction of Naval Hospital Jacksonville, but due to a realignment at Commander, Navy Instal-lations Command, all Navy fire departments will be taking over the responsibility of transporting emergency patients to treatment facilities by Oct. 1.

"The official transfer was supposed to take place here in October, but the hospital requested we take over the services now because their personnel are being deployed to support the war effort and their staff here is needed to handle patient care," said NAS Jax Fire Chief Randy Hall.

"We looked at the situation and decided we could definitely do this. After clearing everything with our base commanding officer, we proceeded with the transfer."

NAS Jax Firefighter/Emergency Medical Technician James Fletcher puts some shine on the station's new ambulance.

Fortunately, everything fell into place quite easily. "I thought it was pretty amazing that the entire transfer only took six weeks. The hospital financial personnel transferred the funds quickly and we were able to hire several new full-time employees for the transition. We had five openings anyway and were able to add on another six positions, so we are gaining 11 new firefighters and emergency medical technicians (EMTs)," explained Hall, enthusiastically.

"Everyone came together to coordinate this effort. We've been actually working towards taking over this service for some time."

"We're here 24 hours a day, seven days a week, have a stable workforce and many us have years of experience and know the ins and outs of the base," added Hall. "It just makes sense for us to be handling the med unit. We've always been first responders and now we will be transporting patients as well."

The fire department now has one staffed ambulance to provide basic life support as needed. A secondary ambulance is available as a backup. "Under the transfer agreement, no advanced life support drugs are allowed on the ambulance because we have the hospital here with a 24-hour emergency room. We can respond anywhere here within three minutes and should be able to get them to the hospital within 10 minutes from onset of a trauma type of situation. We also have the authority to call Life Flight in if we deem it's necessary," said Hall. "Basically a trauma patient has what we call the 'golden hour,' they have to be in a trauma center within one hour after their injury in order to make a viable recovery. That's what we strive for."

From left, NAS Jax Firefighters/Emergency Medical Technicians Tracy Tomes, Shawn Wardlaw and Robert Pellerin inventory the supplies in their new ambulance.

All base firefighters are EMT certified either through the state or nationally. "We are in process of getting all our personnel state certified because we also respond to emergencies outside our gate on Highway 17. Under the Good Samaritan Act and mutual aid agreements we believe we are protected, but we want to ensure we fall under state guidelines," continued Hall.

The hospital also provides fire department personnel with training as needed. "Before we could take over the ambulance service, we had to qualify our personnel to drive them. We are all certified to drive fire and crash trucks but we had to get Emergency Vehicle Operator's Course certified to drive the ambulances. The hospital training department helped us with this and continues to help us with our EMT certifications. They really have a great training division and wonderful instructors," Hall said.

By taking over EMS for the base, the fire department plans to continue providing top-notch care to its customers. "We are really happy about this. We think we can offer good patient care and our familiarity with the base makes us good candidates for handling this job. We've been treating patients for years, now we are just adding the transport part as well," stated Hall.

Another big plus is that many of the base fire department personnel have worked here for so long they know the quickest, most direct routes throughout the base. "This is really a good thing. It gives a better continuity of care to our customers because the Navy corpsmen transfer in and out. Our turnover rate is not as high as the military personnel turnover here," said Firefighter/EMT Shawn Wardlaw.

"Most of our command officers here have more than 30 years of experience, so we've seen quite a lot. We are also really proud of our younger folks. They are really outstanding. We've done well by hiring quality people at NAS Jax. They are willing and wanting to learn," added Hall.

In the next couple of weeks, fire department personnel will collect data pertaining to the service to determine whether the ambulance is stationed in the right location to ensure calls are handled in a timely manner, if they need to offer advanced life support services, if they need to upgrade the staff to paramedic status and to see if they are taking care of their customers properly.

"I'm really happy to offer this service to our customers at NAS Jax and having a great working partnership with the hospital," said Hall. "We know we may have a few hiccups taking over this new service and there are always things we can do better. We welcome our customer's comments and concerns and are always in the process of continual improvement."