Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 25, 1994 TAG: 9409260007
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-10 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Long
Calls for help have increased more than 50 percent in the past six years, said Captain Rick Graham. Troubling trends are an increase in accidents on Interstate 81 and other busy routes, and a growing number of calls during the day when most volunteers are at work.
At the same time, the squad has lost more than a half-dozen volunteers.
As veteran volunteers cut back on their hours or leave rescue work altogether, the squad loses training and experience. Rebuilding takes time with new members, Graham said.
The crew receives 60 percent of its calls between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., including an escalating number for heart attacks and other ailments associated with an aging population and the recent hot weather, Graham said.
Graham had hoped the increase in calls was a temporary blip, but the trend has continued for 12 months.
Last October, the squad logged 246 responses to calls for help. By December, the number burgeoned to 270.
"We haven't backed off since then," Graham said.
By July, the squad had answered 1,580 calls. At that rate, the captain estimates the crew will respond to 3,000 calls this year. That's 29 percent more than the crew answered just two years ago.
It's 1st Lt. Tom Beeken's job to beef up the membership rolls, and he's done it well, Graham said. Active membership had tapered off to 27, including the loss of two paramedics. By late July, the squad was back up to 35 members.
New members, though, require hours of training, Beeken said.
Members are divided into four categories: emergency medical technicians, shock trauma, cardiac technicians and paramedics. EMTs must have 110 hours of classroom training in addition to a hospital internship. Paramedics require 450 hours of classroom training.
"It's increasingly difficult to find people who have the time available for total commitment to a volunteer rescue squad," Beeken said. "Most people ... spend more time here than they do on their job."
Graham and Beeken said that once new recruits are on board, a balance must be found so that those who have lots of time to devote, and those who have little, are scheduled so there's no burnout.
"They come in with a bundle of energy," Graham said of new recruits, then burn out fast if they run too many calls too soon.
At that pace, Graham fears, many of the new recruits won't make it to 10 years of service to receive the life membership designation.
Life members aren't required to respond to calls regularly. But a few of them have become a sustaining force in the past few months, Graham said, answering as many as 17 calls per month.
As the squad leaders wrestled with declining membership, they surveyed other rescue squads to see if they were experiencing similar problems. Some were worse off than the Christiansburg crew. Others were finding creative ways to deal with volunteer shortages.
Ford Wirt, captain of the Floyd County Rescue Squad and the chairman of the Western Virginia Emergency Medical Services Council, said, "We tend to think of it as a problem unique to our area and it's not. ...It's just a common problem statewide."
"It comes back to ... the public takes it for granted" until a rescue squad is needed, and then help - the best of help - is expected immediately, Wirt said.
"Somehow, we've got to get that thinking turned around."
What are the options?
A state statute does require localities to have fire departments but there is no mandate or legal obligation to provide emergency medical services, Wirt said.
Local governments and volunteers that provide rescue squads "do it as a moral obligation," Wirt said.
If declining membership continues to be a problem, Wirt sees two alternatives.
Either local governments will have to provide the service with paid workers or commercial agencies will provide the service at the level they choose.
"We're constantly working to try to help squads continue the service," Wirt said of the EMS Council. ... It's getting more and more difficult."
Graham hopes to use the information from his surveys and some independent brainstorming to come up with solutions for volunteer shortages. For example, people may not have hundreds of hours to dedicate to emergency medical training, but they may have a few hours a week to give, Graham said. Those people could mow the lawn at the Stone Street crew hall or wash the ambulances, which are responsibilities now shouldered by emergency volunteers.
For information on the Christiansburg Rescue Squad, call 382-9518. Or write: P.O. Box 176, Christiansburg, Va. 24073.
by CNB