Answering the Call

Published on 10/25/2007 TheDay.com

Volunteers are the lifeblood of any community—school boards, zoning commissions, conservation committees. It takes a special commitment and stamina, though, to be willing to respond to a beeper at all hours of the night to help out neighbors and town residents in a medical emergency.

That's exactly what emergency medical volunteers do as members of the ambulance services in East Lyme, Lyme, and Old Lyme. Each faced with different challenges and needs based on community size, budgets, demographics, and decisions of town residents, the ambulance services strive to provide around-the-clock coverage by Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs).

In East Lyme and Old Lyme, paid professional staff augments volunteer coverage during daytime hours. The volunteers cover all aspects of the nighttime shift. Lyme, the smallest of the three, has been served by an all-volunteer ambulance service since it was started in 1976. The East Lyme staff and volunteers are trained, certified, and serve as both fire-fighters and emergency medical service. In Lyme and Old Lyme, they work beside fire department counterparts.

All three services are faced with the challenge of keeping an adequate number of active, trained, and certified volunteers. Times change, existing crews age and move on.

In Lyme, the crux of the matter is recruiting new volunteers, according to Carter Courtney, assistant coordinator of recruitment and retention for Lyme Ambulance Association. The town, which is mandated by the state to provide EMT service from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. seven days a week, is down to a 15-member volunteer crew. It also provides ambulance service during the daytime, but often has to turn to the neighboring towns of East Haddam and Old Lyme for help. The three towns cooperate under mutual aid agreements, he said.

“We're like a nine-member baseball team,” said Courtney, now in his mid-60s. He got his EMT certification in 1989 and drove the ambulance a few years before that. “We can still cover the bases, but if anybody gets hurt, we're going to be short. Maybe you can get by without a right fielder, but when the shortstop goes, you're in big trouble.”

Generous donations by unnamed benefactors and the town's annual membership drive provide financial support. The town maintains two ambulances, one at the Hamburg Firehouse on Route 156, the other in the Hadlyme Firehouse, to serve its 2,000 residents.

Ambulance drivers have some training, Courtney said. They know how to drive the ambulance in normal traffic and emergency situations, what the equipment is on it, CPR, and command and communications training called NIMS training, National Incident Management System.

But it requires at least two certified medical technicians for an ambulance run, he said. The first level, Medical Response Technician (MRT), takes about 60 hours of training. This includes basic first aid and what to do as soon as they get to the scene.

All of Lyme's technicians are trained to the EMT Basic level, he said, which qualifies them to perform first aid, administer a few drugs, such as epiphedrine for anaphylactic shock, and to put a patient on the back board, used in the case of spinal injuries.

“It's a pretty big commitment,” Courtney said of the EMT Basic training, which totals about 150 hours. Typically, the courses are offered on two nights a week and some Saturdays. EMTs must maintain their certification with additional training plus pass a 150-question written test every two years, he said.

He estimates Lyme Ambulance makes about 150 runs a year. A run averages about two hours from first beeper to getting to the person's house, loading them up in the ambulance, taking them to the hospital and then returning and putting equipment back in order for the next call, he said.

“If we had two paid people here, maybe 97 percent of the time, they would be doing nothing,” he said. “And you really need the medical runs to maintain your proficiency.”

Volunteers face the same proficiency challenge. A paramedic from Lawrence & Memorial Hospital in New London comes out each month to give them training. At a recent session they spent about two hours practicing putting on splints, he said.

Lyme put on a concerted recruitment drive earlier this year, Courtney said. Despite coverage by print, radio and television, plus brochures delivered to schools, no one stepped forward.

“I think a lot of people have a very false impression that there is blood and vomit splattered all over the place on most calls. It's exactly the opposite,” he said. “For us, many of the people are elderly, they have heart problems, or they've had a little surgery and are really uncomfortable and need a ride to the hospital. Ninety percent of the time it's not a lights-and-siren emergency.”

Over in East Lyme, with a population nearing 20,000 residents and significantly more during the summer beach season, the East Lyme Ambulance Fund made about 1,500 calls last year, according to Miles Worthington, president of the fund, a volunteer position. He is also a paid full-time employee of the Town of East Lyme as a firefighter and EMT.

Kyle Foley is chief of the Flanders Fire Department at 151 Boston Post Road and Ronald Pringle is chief of the Niantic Station at 8 Grand Street and Station Number 2 at 227 West Main in Niantic. There is a steering committee made up of five representatives from each of the two departments, Worthington said.

There are about 50 active volunteers who are on call around the clock. East Lyme has seven full-time employees who work during weekdays when most of the volunteers are at work, plus part-time staff who round out evenings and weekends. Worthington said the paid staff in the firehouses gets the equipment ready while the volunteers are coming in, which cuts down the ambulance response time.

“We're always looking for more volunteers,” he said. “I think it's a good way to become a part of the community and help out your neighbors.”

East Lyme also faces recruitment challenges, particularly in the north end of town, the Flanders area, he added.

“We've definitely seen a decline in recent years,” he said. “The younger generation doesn't look into volunteering and being part of our firehouse community the way they have in the past.”

In the last week, East Lyme put a new ambulance into service at the Niantic station. The town runs on a six-year replacement schedule and the older unit had about 100,000 miles. It will be retained as a third backup unit in reserve for three years and then sold, he said.

Old Lyme Volunteer Ambulance Association is a combination of eight paid part-time and per-diem staff and 35 to 40 active volunteers, according to Brett Flynn, president of the association, a volunteer position. He works about 25 to 30 hours a week as a paid EMT and volunteers another night a week. There are no full-time EMT employees in Old Lyme. Barbara McCarthy is EMS Chief of Service.

The paid staff works 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. seven days a week, he said, and volunteers cover the night shift from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. and are on call all throughout the day. The association operates two ambulances: a primary unit from Cross Lane Station and a secondary one from Boughton Road Station. It made 700 calls last year in the community of 7,000 year-round residents and significantly more in the summer.

Although Flynn and four other EMTs have gone on to become licensed paramedics, they do not operate in this capacity for the ambulance service. All three of the towns participate in an intercept paramedic service, where a paramedic from either Middlesex Hospital or L&M Hospital joins up with the ambulance team to provide advanced life support (ALS) if needed.

“We've had real good success rate with volunteers,” said Flynn, who is 32. “There are some evenings and weekends where we struggle to fill the schedule. For the most part we do OK. But we're always looking for new volunteers and people who are enthusiastic about coming out and helping other people.”

Flynn also is head athletic trainer at Lyme-Old Lyme High School. He likes to give interested students an opportunity to come and observe the EMTs at work. Through this approach the service has been able to bring in some “young blood,” he said. Youths must be 16 years old to go through the EMT certification process.

As with the other towns, Old Lyme's service depends on annual fund, or membership drives, for a significant portion of its financial support. For a nominal fee, those who become members and then use the town's ambulance service will not incur fees beyond what is covered by their medical insurance, Flynn said.

“Old Lyme is very much self-sufficient. The town is covering the daytime staff salaries. The association pays for the cost of the ambulance and running it, through its annual membership drive letter and annual appeal. That keeps us going,” he said.

By Suzanne Thompson

Times Staff Writer

For more information, contact:

Lyme Ambulance Association, P.O. Box 911, Hadlyme, CT 06349, Tom Darna, Ambulance Coordinator, 434-7042, Carter Courtney, (860) 434-0057

East Lyme Ambulance Service, 8 Grand Avenue, Niantic, CT, Miles Worthington, (860) 739-3440

Old Lyme Ambulance Association, 22 Cross Lane, Old Lyme CT 06371, (860) 434-0089, Brett Flynn, (860) 867-6399