Recipients of the Excellence in Fire-Based EMS Awards

This year’s Annual National Fire and Emergency Service Dinner gave a special nod to emergency medical services in the fire service. At the event, the Congressional Fire Services Institute (CFSI) and the MedicAlert Foundation presented three departments with the first-annual Excellence in Fire Service-Based EMS Awards.

New Recognition for EMS Innovations
The awards were created to champion unique practices that enhance the quality of emergency medical services, and to encourage other fire departments to consider similar practices to improve their own EMS systems. “The institute developed the idea of this award to heighten the awareness of the good work going on in fire-based EMS,” explains Bill Webb, executive director of CFSI. “You see the statistics on the number of EMS calls made by fire departments. These departments need to come up with ways to meet the growing demands of their communities–and they need innovative ways to do that.”

Shortly after CFSI decided to implement the new award, Webb met with Andrew Wigglesworth, president and CEO of the MedicAlert Foundation (www.medicalert.org), a nonprofit organization that’s been providing medical information on individuals for 55 years. “MedicAlert works every day with fire-based EMS services and other first responders, in terms of our members,” Wigglesworth says. “A huge part of every fire department today is EMS response, and we thought this award would be a great way to recognize top EMS services in volunteer, combination and career departments.”

Perhaps more importantly, CFSI and MedicAlert want to share the innovations and best practices submitted by all award applicants with the entire fire service to expedite future innovations and to help fire-based EMS services meet the growing demands of an aging population.

And the Winners Are …
One department from each category–volunteer, combined and career–was selected for its best practice in EMS and for its leadership in implementing innovative solutions. The Odessa (Del.) Fire Company (OFC) received the award for volunteer fire department, for their safety-focused EMS services during rapid growth in a previously rural area. Just 15 years ago, the award-winning department had no ambulance service. “We’ve been striving for a number of years to keep safety our number one priority,” says Frank Gant, president of the OFC. Recently, the company adopted a bylaw that all new members, including drivers, must obtain first responder training.

The Friendswood (Texas) Volunteer Fire Department received the award for combination fire department, honoring its innovation in inducing hypothermia as part of a multifaceted approach to optimize neurologic resuscitation on return of spontaneous circulation patients. “We’re a small town and we don’t run a lot of codes, but last year when we used this treatment, two people walked home because we chilled them in the field,” says Lisa Camp, EMS chief of the department.  “We get all of our money from donations, and our department has only 52 EMS volunteer members and 20 paid paramedics. If a little town can do this, why can’t others?”

Northwest Fire/Rescue District in Tucson, Ariz., received the award for career fire department, because of its exceptional training in EMS. “We approached the University of Arizona’s College of Medicine about partnering with them for training with their [high-tech] mannequins,” says Brad Bradley, battalion chief of EMS. The department staged a mass-casualty incident with the mannequins, and ran their crews through it multiple times as university students watched remotely. Battalion chiefs used the training to practice incident command. Three weeks later, many of the trainees responded to the mass shooting involving Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords on Jan. 8.

“The medical commander at that scene cites our mobile, high-fidelity training exercise with preparing him for commanding that incident,” Bradley says.

In Conclusion
If you’re interested in reviewing–and possibly adopting–some of the best practices submitted by this year’s award winners and other applicants, visit the CFSI or MedicAlert websites, both of which will publish all innovations: www.cfsi.org or www.medicalert.org. Applications for the 2012 Excellence in Fire Service-Based EMS Awards will also be available on both sites later this year.