The Fort Worth Fire Department launched a new program over the weekend that will allow them to provide a better medical response to remote areas seeing a spike in population.
“With the city that's ever-growing as quickly as Fort Worth is, we have some issues of some of these new areas and getting out there in the time allotted that we want to make,” Craig Trojacek, spokesperson for the Fort Worth Fire Department said.
“We've kind of dubbed it the Fire Station Paramedic Program,” Trojacek said. “The purpose behind it all is really for the fact that we're looking at trying to bring better patient care from a citywide standpoint to parts of our city where it's tough for us to get out to.”
The fire department attributes part of the issue to the growth and traffic delays.
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"With traffic and highways and the infrastructure issues that we're running against in a big, fast-growing city, that's where we were looking back at response times … to have a better outcome,” Trojacek said.
According to an estimate by the U.S. Census Bureau, the City of Fort Worth welcomes about 50 people a day, bringing last year's population estimate to more than 956,000. And while the city is investing in new infrastructure to alleviate traffic in the years to come, the goal for the fire department is to cut out travel time for paramedics that respond to calls in the outskirts of the city.
“What this program does is essentially brings a credentialed paramedic to every doorstep throughout the city,” Trojacek said.
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The program was launched less than a week ago and schedules one paramedic on each of the three shifts at seven fire stations. Currently, the department employs nearly 980 EMTs and 107 paramedics.
"An EMT is trained to provide basic life support," according to Paulo Gonzalez, an EMT with the Fort Worth Fire Department. "That includes CPR, that includes basic first aid, that includes patient assessment and oxygen administration, along with some basic medication administration."
A paramedic can offer a greater level of care than what an EMT can provide, Trojacek said.
"Whereas a paramedic within their scope, they are trained to provide I.V. access or intravenous administration for medication administration," Gonzalez said. "They are able to provide advanced respiratory care through intubation and also advanced patient assessment and diagnosis."
Three days after launching the program, the fire department put it into use, helping save a woman’s life.
On Monday, firefighters were called out to the 4200 block of Wayward Court in far north Fort Worth. The initial call was for smoke however, Gonzalez said the focus quickly changed.
“When we got off the truck, we saw that we had a female who was injured due to burns,” Gonzalez said.
According to a press release from the department, “When crews from Engine 37 arrived on scene they immediately saw that they had a burned patient and called for both MedStar and a helicopter because of the severity of the patient’s injuries. There was also a fire in the home that a neighbor was able to put out before the fire department’s arrival.”
While firefighters cleared an area for the helicopter to arrive, a paramedic helped provide advanced life support, or ALS, to the burn victim in minutes.
“The paramedic had to transition from a firefighting mode to a patient care mode, and he was able to do that, you know, pretty quickly and seamlessly,” Gonzalez said.
A seamless transition that provided the proper care to help the woman survive the helicopter ride to the hospital where she continues to recover.
“It’s just an overall better patient care treatment plan for our citizens,” Trojacek said.
