Down on the Pharm: Sponsored by Pierce County Partnership for Youth with participation from multiple agencies including local law enforcement, EMS, county agencies, local school districts, and more.

Pharm parties, tussing, skittling and robo-tripping… These are terms associated with prescription and other-the-counter drug abuse, terms familiar to many teens but foreign to most adults.  According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, prescription drugs have become the second most abused drug in the U.S.  come and learn what you can do to help combat this problem.  It’s on our doorsteps.  Let’s kick it to the curb.  Join us…   Thursday, Nov. 10 @ 7PM – 8:30pm  Cross Road Community Church 1.2 miles west of Ellsworth on HWY 10 (W7562 Hwy 10, Ellsworth, WI)

Hello, River Falls!  It is time for our favorite week of the summer, River Falls Days.  If you’d like to catch a glimpse of the River Falls Ambulance crews they will be out and about all weekend long, day and night. 

 These are just some of the places you can see your real local heroes:

 Thursday we’ll be at the Truck Pull

 Friday @ 1pm  Holly Mitchell, Paramedic and EMS Operations Supervisor will be in the Dunk Tank at Locust and Second Streets

                Before the parade we’ll be selling root beer floats at our ambulance garage at second and cedar streets

                During the parade we’ll be in the parade and all over town

                We’ll be at the Dance

 Saturday:  we’ll be at the race @ 8am

                 We’ll be battling at the fire department’s water fight at the fire station @ 10am

                 We’ll be at the Tractor Pull

                 We’ll be at the Dance

 Sunday: we’ll be at the fireworks

 Hope to see you around, Enjoy River Falls Days!

River Falls first annual Safety Camp is this Friday June 24th and there’s still time to register your kids! Any kids going into third, fourth or fifth grade and encouraged to attend this day camp from 8:30-4:30 where they will spend time with EMTs, firefighters, police officers, nurses, city workers and university students for the day learning how to stay safe and what to do in situations that have become unsafe. The day will be filled with activities and each student will be given lunch from Subway, a T-shirt and a healthy snack as well as the knowledge to keep themselves and their friends safe this summer. Throughout the day students will have time to interact and ask questions of any of the agencies present. And, at the end of the day families and siblings of all ages are free to come and explore the vehicles and equipment of the agencies represented and ask questions.

Register today by calling Cindi @ 715 426 3420, or by going online to www.rfcity.org/ , or in person at River Falls City Hall, 222 Lewis St. Cost is $15 for city residents and $20 for those living outside of the city limits. Financial assistance is available, check with Cindi @ city hall for more information.

River Falls’ first annual Safety Camp needs local third, fourth and fifth graders to participate in the activities planned for Friday June 24.  River Falls Ambulance along with River Falls Fire Dept, River Falls Police Dept, River Falls Area Hospital and the River Falls Municipal Utilities are hosting a day-long summer Safety Camp for students going into 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th grades.

 The day will include education and activities about fire safety, bicycle safety, electrical safety, utility vehicle safety, and first aid.  The day starts with check-in between 8:30-9:00am and ends with family free time between 3:30-4:30pm.  In between is fun, learning and time to ask questions about any of the groups listed or anything safety related.  Lunch and a T-shirt are provided.  Activities will be at Glen Park. 

 Registration is $15 for in-city residents and $20 for residents outside the city limits.  Registration can be done online @ www.rfcity.org/  , in person at River Falls City Hall, or by calling Cindi Danke 715 426 3420.  Questions or need for financial assistance can be directed to Cindi Danke 715 426 3420 at River Falls City Hall.

 Don’t miss this summer adventure and educational opportunity!  We look forward to seeing you there!

With the end of May comes National EMS week.  What is that, you may be wondering.  It is a national celebration of emergency medical services.  Different Ambulance Services and localities celebrate this week in different ways. 

Here in River Falls, our service provides a daily cookout lunch for the staff during the week.  We also visit the third grade classes and give them safety books funded by local businesses through the Community Safety Net Program and a safety presentation that includes topics like electrical safety, fire safety, sports safety, seatbelts, strangers and basic first aid.  In doing this every year, we reach all the community’s students to stress the importance of safety and how to use the 911 system in case of emergencies.  And, at the end of the presentation, the students get a tour of an ambulance.  Pretty cool.

Other communities in the area also visit the schools to do various presentations and promote safety and emergency awareness.  Some communities have organizations or groups who organize a meal for the EMS staff, or training on an EMS related topic.  Some of the large hospitals in the twin cities offer activities like an ambulance wash where they wash the ambulances and feed the staff while they wait.  There are many different ways to celebrate EMS week.

This year the EMS services in the area wish to highlight the fact that many of the ambulance services in the area need more staff and are looking for volunteers.  Some ambulance services will pay for your training, some look for volunteers who have already been trained.  To become an EMT or first responder, you attend a class, usually offered at your nearest technical college, take a national test, and then you need to become licensed by the state.  Both CVTC in River Falls or Eau Claire and WITC in New Richmond offer EMT classes.  To become trained you can enquire at your local ambulance station or at your nearest technical college.  The local ambulance services need people who are eager to learn, willing and able to assist in emergency situations and to be available at all hours of the day including weekdays, weekends and holidays.  It’s a big job but it can be extremely rewarding and the experience you get is irreplaceable.

The Pierce County EMS board wishes to invite anyone interested in becoming an EMT to contact their local ambulance service for more information.

            Ellsworth Ambulance Service:  715 273 4879

            Prescott Ambulance Service:  715 262 3775

            Spring Valley Ambulance Service:  715 778 4452

            Elmwood Ambulance Service:  715 639 2339

            Maiden Rock-Plum City Ambulance:  715 495 2763

            River Falls Ambulance Service:  715 425 0370

So, don’t forget to celebrate National EMS week in whatever way you choose, whether it be to thank your local EMS staff or to just be thankful you don’t need us.  Keep safety in your thoughts and enjoy the beautiful weather.

Code Blue: Just Like on T.V.

“I’m not a doctor.  I just play one on T.V.”  Well actually, in real-life emergency services, things are nothing like on T.V.  We operate in uncontrolled environments dealing with weather like rain dripping on us, wind blowing us and our patients, dark ditches, cluttered environments, and in a moving vehicle while going around corners.  Not to mention limited equipment, basically what we can carry with us into homes and what we can fit into an ambulance as well as limited personnel.  And on top of that we have to make up for these things by carrying lots of equipment, and thinking of everything and by being knowledgeable in many different areas including scene management, safety, medicine, pharmacology, cardiology,  customer service, psychology, and equipment maintenance just to name a few.  “How do you do all that?” you might wonder.  The answer is easy.  We love our jobs and we are dedicated to serving the community.  We don’t always get a lot of thanks, but we know we serve a purpose and have the potential to make a life or death difference in someone’s life.  In this blogisode I’m going to discuss how we use our diverse knowledge, equipment and lots of team work when someone calls 911 when experiencing a cardiac arrest.

 Usually this event begins when someone notices that they are experiencing the most common symptom of a heart attack: chest pain or pressure.  This happens when the arteries that supply blood to the heart muscle become significantly occluded or blocked by plaque formed by cholesterol or fat in the blood.  This can happen slowly over time or fairly quickly.  This is why it is so important to get checked out early in this type of event.  If left untreated, a blockage denies parts of the heart muscle of blood which supplies oxygen to the cells and removes the waste created by cellular respiration.  Consequently the heart muscle can become damaged and eventually parts of the muscle can die.  This can lead to cardiac arrest or the heart muscle stopping completely.  When the heart muscle stops pumping, blood is not supplied to other parts of the body including the brain causing whole body cell damage and eventual death.  During this process the brain shuts down different parts of the body and stops regular processes including breathing.

The purpose of EMS in this situation is to stop this process and reverse the effects restoring the bodily function of putting oxygen into the body, pumping the heart to circulate the oxygen through the body to the organs, brain and other cells and to get the individual to a level one cardiac cath lab where the cath lab team does heart surgery to break up or remove the blockage in the heart.

 When a person calls 911 the dispatch center pages our department to respond to the patient.  When we arrive at a patient, we do many different things all at once which can be overwhelming to the patient and their family but we have many jobs to do and we try to keep the patient and their family in consideration and explain to them what we are doing and why.  We ask questions about medical history, medications, what is going on.  We assess the patient’s level of responsiveness, airway, breathing and circulation and overall status.  We begin treatments based on the findings of our assessments. 

 The worst case scenario is when the person is not breathing and their heart is not pumping.  We then immediately begin manually pumping the heart also known as chest compressions or CPR.  Functionally, this circulates blood to the heart and around the body.  We begin breathing for the patient with supplemental oxygen.  We place I.V. lines to push medications directly into the circulation while manually circulating blood by continuing to do chest compressions to circulate the medications to the heart.  There are different medications that work in different ways depending on what is wrong with the heart which we determine by our assessments and by using our EKG monitors which show 12 views or pictures of the electrical activity in the heart which we are trained to interpret.  We also use the heart monitor machines to give electrical therapy which includes “shocking” the patient.  This is done when the heart is spasming and not functionally pumping.  A fast electrical current stops the heart and gives it a chance to reset itself and begin pumping normally.  We can also use electrical current in conjunction with medications to slow down or speed up the heart if it is beating too fast or too slowly.  In addition, we also often place a breathing tube directly into the patient’s trachea to secure the airway and keep secretions or vomit from entering the lungs.  We can also use ventilators to automatically breathe for patients if necessary.  All these things are started on scene and often continued on scene for a period of time until movement of the patient is feasible.

 Obviously this is a lot of things to accomplish with three to five EMS personnel in a very short period of time.  To do this we train for 9 hours per month and have really functional teamwork.  Often we also utilize the fire department and the police department staff to assist us in moving the patient and equipment as well as to give us extra sets of hands during these types of events.  Our ambulance service is blessed to have a great working relationship with our police and fire department personnel who are knowledgeable and willing to assist however they are needed.

 There are new technologies and equipments coming out very rapidly to assist in the challenges EMS faces in keeping people alive and more importantly, alive with a prognosis of minimal damage to the body, brain and heart.  River Falls Ambulance is committed to giving our community members the best available patient care.  Therefore our main project for this year is to upgrade our cardiology capabilities.  You may have seen the article in the River Falls Journal on our project or our video spot on RFC-TV’s River Falls In Focus with Mayor Don Richards, if not you can check them out on-line. 

 One of the new pieces of equipment that we are raising funding for is called a LUCAS device.  The LUCAS is a piece of equipment that fits around the patient’s chest and does chest compressions in place of a person doing chest compressions.  This frees up a staff member to do or assist in other tasks during this demanding process.  Also, being mechanical it delivers more consistent chest compressions than a human can factoring in the demands of the task and fatigue.  The compressions delivered by the LUCAS are better because the compressing mechanism is a lot like a toilet plunger and it works between chest compressions to expand the chest allowing the heart to refill more completely with blood to be pumped out to the body.  This results in more efficient circulation than regular compressions done by a person.

 Another part of the project is called Post Cardiac Arrest Induced Hypothermia or Cardiac Cooling.  The Idea behind this is: when the heart, brain and other organs are starved of blood the cells are damaged and begin to die.  Cooling the patient to a point of hypothermia slows down the body’s metabolism and in turn slows down the process of damage and death to cells.  So, by cooing the patient, we can slow the damage process to the cells and organs such as the heart and brain. We do this after we have used medications and electrical therapy to restart the heart but before the person wakes up and if the person doesn’t wake up.    Meanwhile, we can be getting the person to a level one cardiac cath lab like the one at United Hospital in St. Paul, MN which we can generally get to in about 20-25 minutes, where they can remove the blockage in the heart allowing the body to go back to functioning normally.  We have worked in partnership with United Hospital to develop the policies we will use to implement this process.

  To cool our patient to the point of slowing metabolism requires medical grade refrigerators that are portable and kept in the ambulances.  We will use saline cooled to a precise temperature, given intravenously to cool the body along with placing the patient in a cooling bag with actual ice cubes.  To keep the saline at the proper temperature requires medical grade refrigerators that we are also raising funds for. 

 Our staff is dedicated to giving our community members the best care and service available.  They offer their time for very little compensation and most of them have other full-time jobs and families as well as other obligations.  They give on-call time as well as give much time toward initial and maintenance training.  We are blessed to have such a dedicated staff and such a supportive community to make this project a reality.  This project will give us more tools in our bag of tricks to use toward not only saving lives but giving a better chance of survival with an intact quality of life.

 If you would like to give to the project, checks can be made out to River Falls Ambulance Service, with cardiology written in the memo sent to 175 E Cedar Street, River Falls, WI 54022.

Welcome to the River Falls EMS family.  Let me introduce you:  We are an Ambulance
Organization comprised of about 40 ‘paid-on-call’ staff members, about a dozen first
responders, four full-time staff and one part-time officer.  We are governed by the city,
the ambulance commission and two medical directors.  What does all that mean?  It means
we are an organization blessed with committed and compassionate individuals who are
dedicated to taking care of the community at its most pivotal individual moments. 
And individuals who commit personal time not just to helping others but to continually
learning new concepts and reviewing old.  People who designate time to give of themselves
to the community which most of the general public may never see.  They bring their unique
skills and experience from other professions as well as from their individual interests
and hobbies to enrich the capabilities of our organization.  We employ all ages,
backgrounds and different levels of care providers to bring you, the community, the highest quality of care when you need it most.  So, in a nutshell, that’s us.

Now, welcome to this blog. At least for the time being  I will be your hostess.  I am
Holly Mitchell EMT-P, Operations Supervisor for River Falls Area Ambulance Service.  I
have worked on River Falls Ambulance since 2001 and have lived in River Falls my whole
life.  This community raised me and I feel privileged to be able to have a career which
is purposeful and gives back to the community.  I anticipate eventual ‘guest’ bloggers
who offer different experiences, opinions and lines of expertise.

I’d like to use this venue for purposes of community education about our service, our
field, new medical research and how it affects you, what you can expect if you call us,
what we do behind the scenes, health trends in the community, upcoming events, services
we provide, myths about EMS and potentially individual perspectives from our staff.

I look forward to the opportunity to connect with you, the community, and hopefully to
share something of interest and usefulness with our readers.

Keep your eyes posted for the next blogisode: “Code Blue; Just like on T.V.”

Until Then, Stay Healthy.

H Mitchell