EMS Expo 2007 Opens in Orlando

EMS Expo 2007 opened this week in Orlando, Florida in conjunction with the NAEMT Annual Meeting and Firehouse Central. After two days of in-depth pre-conference workshops, the main EMS Expo conference and exhibit hall opened Thursday.

Feature presentations included the opening ceremony's keynote address and announcement of the winners of the annual EMT of the Year and Gold Service awards.

The keynote was provided by Loren Rourke, MD. She explained that her roots are in EMS and that the purpose of her talk, "Matt's Story," was to give EMS providers a glimpse of what results from their work.

"You bring these people to the hospital but nobody ever tells you how they did," she said. "Did they live, did they die, what happened to them?"

She provided this patient perspective by sharing the story of 19-year-old Matt Derrick of Knoxville, TN, who was involved in a major motor vehicle collision and a prolonged extrication, resulting in what were considered "unsurvivable" injuries. She began by explaining his specific injuries and course of treatment. "For all intents and purposes Matt got crushed in this wreck," she said.

She recounted having to tell his parents that he had a severe liver injury and a possible bowel injury, and that he was likely to die on the table during his first surgery. She also discussed some of the difficulties of such cases; for example, that after surgery Matt's body cavity needed to be covered rather than closed, and that his body swelled to become almost unrecognizable from the fluids he was given.

Matt underwent 15 surgeries, including the amputation of his left arm below the elbow. It was a roller coaster for his family, Rourke said, but for much of it Matt remained unconscious and unable to provide his input. The incident occurred Feb. 21, 2004, and Matt didn't begin to wake until March 9. When he did wake, it was only the beginning for him. He had to deal with his open abdominal wound and various setbacks as he began a long journey toward recovery, including seizures, a tremor, vocal paralysis, UTIs and bladder stones. He also suffered a bed sore, the one thing that made him cry, Rourke said, underscoring the importance of the care of such relatively minor details.

Rourke wrapped up the presentation by sharing that Matt is now living an independent life and even has a new car. Finally, Matt himself came onstage to say a few words to the packed theater of EMS providers, and was received with a standing ovation.

The award winners announced during the opening ceremony included Valerie DeFrance, EMT-P, for the Braun Industries/ZOLL Medical EMT/Paramedic of the Year Award. She was nominated five times, from her home in Hope, Alaska, to as far away as Texas and Washington, DC. She operates several websites for EMS providers including the EMS House of DeFrance ( https://www.defrance.org); a repository of EMS instructional materials and multimedia presentations (https://defrance.org/inst); and EMSNetwork News (https://www.emsnetwork.org). She is also webmistress for https://www.emsspeakers.org and for the new National EMS Museum Foundation.

The winners of the Gold Service Award, which honors both a paid and a volunteer service, were Slaterville Volunteer Ambulance Inc., located in Slaterville Springs, NY, and Baxter Regional Medical Center Ambulance, located in north central Arkansas in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains.

Slaterville Volunteer Ambulance Inc. consists of only 16 active providers: two paramedics, three critical care technicians, three basic EMTs and eight drivers. They provide full ALS service 24/7, 365 days a year, and because the coverage area includes a rural 55 square miles an ALS provider is scheduled for every response, to eliminate any additional wait time if ALS is required.

Baxter Regional Medical Center Ambulance has been in operation since 1974 and became the first paramedic service in that area in 1985. The service covers two counties from five ambulance bases, with 10 fully equipped units to respond to a population of 60,000 residents. The ambulance staff at Baxter consists of 60 employees, including dispatchers, EMTs, paramedics, critical care paramedics, registered nurse paramedics and EMTs, LPN/paramedics and respiratory therapist/paramedics. Every patient who receives EMS care is given an opportunity to complete a customer service survey, which, for the past five quarters, has resulted in an average satisfaction score of 94.2%.

The EMS Magazine/NAEMT Gold Service Award is made possible by the support of Everdixie, GKR Industries, Ferno, Impact Instrumentation, Laerdal, Masimo and ZOLL Medical Corp.

EMS Expo 2007 continues through Saturday, October 13. For more information visit www.emsexpo2007.com.