RDub is right, between the upper and lower valleys things are done very differently. While the County Protocols are the same, procedures are different. Will you be doing your Paramedic time with ALS or AMR? ALS is primarily in the upper valley, AMR is primarily in the Lower Valley where RDub would be better to answer your questions.
n7lxi wrote:
was actually curious about how the system works,
When you call 911 in Yakima County and request medical aid, the closest ambulance will be sent you (determined by a horrible AVL system that never works right) and your nearest fire department (same AVL system, same problems.)
The fire department, whether a County or a City will respond on either the county or city repeater and the ALS ambulance will respond on the ALS repeater. ALS monitors fire department radio traffic, but I think I am the only one in the county that works for a fire department that monitors ALS's radio traffic. (Naches Heights Fire Dept. (County District 9) I think is an exception to that because their fire chief is the brother of the guy that is/used to be part-owners of ALS, I’m not sure)
The ambulance and the fire department never communicate with each other directly until they get on scene EXCEPT if ALS arrives on scene and deems fire is not needed. They will either switch over to the fire repeater and tell them they are not needed or they will go through their dispatch who then has to call over to the fire dispatcher who then has to get a hold of the fire unit over the radio to tell them they are cancelled. (A huge waste of time in my opinion, vs. just doing it yourself, but opinions are like ass holes, everybody has one and they usually stink.)
The fire unit would then return to service and ALS finishes up and transports to the hospital. ALS ambulance’s come staffed with 1 paramedic and 1 EMT. There are NO fire districts/departments in the upper valley that have practicing paramedics on the department. City of Yakima Fire department has 2 that I know, but no equipment for them to use so they have to wait for ALS to get on scene and then they can function as a medic.
I’d feel more comfortable going into more TX and PL details over PM.
Code 99 – CPR in progress
Code 5 – DRT or deceased person
Transporting 2A = Code 2 ALS patient
Transporting 2B = Code 2 BLS patient
Transporting 3A = Code 3 ALS patient
Transporting 3B = Code 3 BLS patient
That’s really about it. If I think of any more, I’ll let you know. Nobody uses 10 codes.
The nursing homes and doctors offices around here have ALS on speed dial. ALS does inter-facility transports as well as running nursing home patients to doctors appointments. While it doesn’t happen often, it does. For example, my mom works in a walk-in urgent care clinic. (They do X-rays, stitches, etc.) There is always a doctor and usually or nurse or at least an x-ray tech in the building. They occasionally get somebody in who is experiencing chest pains and really should go to the hospital. Because there is already a doctor there, they will call ALS to come code 3 to pick up the patient and take them to the hospital without calling fire because in that situation, fire would really just be in the way.
Either or. Some use the phone, some utilize HEAR, just depends on their mood, but it’s mostly the phone.
See above. I believe Sunnyside Fire Department is the only fire department in the county that has Paramedics on the department and utilizes them as such. RDub might be able to correct me on that one, but there aren’t any practicing in the upper valley.
He He. Whole can of worms here with relationships. Google “Yakima EMS levy” We went through that a couple years ago. The basics of it was that The City of Yakima Fire Chief Charlie Hines, decided that he wanted the citizens to allow him to take more money out of the county EMS fund to pay for 12 fire fighting paramedics. He came out and said things like, “ALS Ambulance is a puppy mill for un-experienced Paramedics” went in plain clothes off-duty and knocked on people’s doors with one of his captains and said “Hi, I’m Chuck, this is Tom and we’re off-duty Yakima Fire fighters. We’d like you vote for our upcoming EMS levy.” He also came out and said that Yakima Fire beats the ambulance service to the scene all the time and ALS wasn’t providing a good enough service to the citizens and he wanted to do better etc etc etc. (If you’d like, I’ll send you a letter I typed up about why the EMS levy pissed me off) More and more frequently, we hear the medics getting on the fire repeater and telling the city fire units to cancel just to show that they were indeed there first and it’s become a very big issue. I’m sure in front of the patient things are ok, but I’d really doubt things otherwise, unless things have changed.
I also know for a fact that Hines’s relationship with the neighboring fire districts is equally not well, especially mine. (Not sure if I can release details.)
I hope to have answered all of your questions. You can ask away here or send a PM, doesn’t matter to me. If you do come into town, let me know, I can show you around get you into some com centers or whatever you’d like. Let me know. I also would have incorporated your questions into my response but the forum only allowed 3 quotes per post. (Rich, WTF!?) Hopefully you can decipher through my response.
Take care!
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