Each year, the IAFC EMS Section recognizes the best and brightest at annual Fire-Rescue Med conference in Las Vegas, and this year was no exception.
James O. Page Award
Jeffrey T. Lindsey PhD, EMT-P, CHS IV, EFO, CFO, was the receipient to the 2011 James O. Page award. Dr. Lindsey is the chief learning officer for Health Safety Institute.
This award is presented annually to an individual who has played a key role in creating and/or promoting non-clinical innovation and achievements in fire-service EMS management and leadership that has had a positive impact nationally. It is named in honor of James O. Page, who has been a visionary and a national leader in fire-service EMS for over three decades.
Heart Safe Community Award
Since 2001, Physio-Control has sponsored the Heart Safe Community Awards, presented to systems that use creative approaches to emergency cardiac care. This annual award recognize fire service-based EMS and other EMS systems that have used creative approaches to implement and maintain systems that prevent and treat cardiac related diseases within the communities they serve. It looks at communities holistically and how they have integrated systems to work symbiotically. Agencies must show how they have improved the quality of out-of-hospital resuscitation through bystander CPR, AED deployment (PAD programs), out-of-hospital 12-lead ECGs, 12-lead ECG advanced notification to the receiving hospital and other continuous quality resuscitation improvements. The award is given in two categories, honoring departments representing populations over and fewer than 100,000. The 2011 winners were:
Large Community Category: Hillsborough County Fire Rescue, Tampa, Fla.
Hillsborough County Fire Rescue stood out by developing and implementing several creative elements to their program, including a community-wide bystander CPR training program that resulted in 10,000 Hillsborough County eighth-grade students being trained in CPR.
In addition, they’re utilizing technology and software to review and track cardiac-arrest outcomes as well as to catalog and indentify the physical location of more than 1,000 AEDs throughout the county. They’ve also partnered with all local hospitals, which improved outcomes for patients with acute coronary syndromes and sudden cardiac arrest.
Small Community Category: Sandy Springs (Ga.) Fire Rescue and EMS
Sandy Springs Fire Rescue and EMS “Heart Safe Sandy Springs” program yielded a bystander CPR performance rate of 59% in 2010, more than twice the national average. Highlighting the successful efforts from their program since 2007, Sandy Springs has trained more than 4,800 residents in CPR and AED use and placed more than 156 AEDs in the city, saving more than 17 lives. They’ve also launched a pilot program to train emergency medical technicians to use hypothermia treatment for cardiac arrest victims.
Honorable Mention: Delavan (Wis.) Rescue Squad was awarded honorable mention this year.