Time of essence for Maine wilderness EMTs

I spotted a blog entry on DownEast’s website and thought it interesting. It is about rural emergency medical care and the need for certain adjustments to be made so a patient gets essential medical care in time.

It reminded me that for most of my childhood the closest thing to a doctor we had was a physician’s assistant in the next town, Ashland, some 11 miles away. I believe that is where the closest ambulance was located, too.

A doctor? A hospital? We had to go more than 30 miles past Ashland to the big city, Presque Isle.

In the city where I live now there are several hospitals and countless medical offices. You can hardly go a few city blocks without passing a medical office of some kind. The nearest ambulance may be just around the corner. Really. Just around the corner.

I do not recall ever seeing an ambulance in the town where I grew up. That does not mean there were not medical emergencies when I was a child; I just do not recall seeing an ambulance. Patients suffering from medical emergencies either waited for an ambulance to come from another community or family, friends and neighbors packed off the wound and loaded the patient into a pickup to drive them to the nearest medical care.

And I may not have heard an ambulance siren outside of Presque Isle or nearby Caribou until I went to the University of Southern Maine. Seriously.

The gist I get from the blog is that rural medical care now is far superior to what it was back then, that the men, women, training, equipment and support are all far, far better.

Even so, my city neighbors might not understand the difference between rural emergency health care and what they have come to expect from emergency medical pesonnel. The blog entry is especially interesting because it was written by a wilderness EMT on a Maine island with fewer than 100 residents. For her and other emergency medical responders in similar situations, it is not about how many blocks away the nearest ambulance or hospital might be. It is about weather – clear or gale – and tide – high or low – and about time of day – daylight so an air ambulance pilot can see to fly or night when the challenges of nighttime flying can be deadly. Waiting too long sometimes means a patient is bounced around a bit in a lobster boat chugging to mainland. It is about reminding a patient – forcefully, if necessary – that while they may feel fine now, it is essential to go before the sun goes down, to go while the tide is up, to go before the storm has taken hold and closed down chances of making the mainland for emergency hospital care that they need.

I am sure there are places in this country that are even more remote and provide emergency medical responders even greater challenges. All we can do is give them the training, equipment and support needed to do their jobs. And to remember as a patient to get into the ambulance … or lobster boat … when the EMT says to.