By Khalida Sarwari
The morning of Feb. 22 started off like any other day for Barry Bakken.
The 67-year-old Los Gatos resident went to his early morning spinning class at the Addison-Penzak Jewish Community Center. Feeling disoriented, he drove home afterward and took to his massage chair, thinking it would help him relax. On this particular day, though, the chair didn’t do much good.
Then, realizing he could be having a heart attack, Bakken drove himself to the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, where someone immediately called 911. The rest of the afternoon is now a blur, but one thing Bakken does remember is being told that for at least a few minutes, his heart stopped.
“It was kind of a soft fading away,” he recalled. “So when I felt that was happening, I told the guys I was passing out.” What he didn’t realize in that moment was that his pulse had stopped.
He might not have been here nearly four months later to tell his story had it not been for Santa Clara County Fire Capt. Mike Evans, emergency medical technician Marty Collins and paramedic Greg Hernandez. The three paramedics shocked and stabilized Bakken before taking him to Good Samaritan Hospital for further evaluation.
Bakken later called and visited them to extend his gratitude for saving his life.
“I thanked them for basically doing their job,” he said. “It seems like it’s more than their job when it’s something that’s life threatening and probably brought me back to life.”
Bringing people “back to life” is one component–albeit a very important one–of the work paramedics and emergency medical service personnel do. As it turns out, they do a lot more. They’re the ones who typically respond to fires, heart attacks, strokes, diabetic emergencies, trauma-related incidents such as traffic accidents, hikers lost in the wilderness, pedestrians hit by cars, water rescues, people trapped in confined spaces and hazardous spills. Sometimes they even respond to calls about stomach pain.
Recently, the Santa Clara County Fire Department added yet one more to that list: active shooter incidents.
“All of those are very specialized circumstances that require special training and equipment,” noted EMS coordinator Mickey Brunelli.
Every firefighter in the department is trained as an emergency medical technician or a paramedic, he said. The department added EMS as a service in 1974.
Technicians are required to take a semester-long class at a community college, where they get an introduction to the medical field, basic anatomy, physiology, expanded first aid and medical terminology. They then advance to paramedic school, which involves an additional year of schooling that includes six months of classroom instruction and upwards of 200 hours of hospital rotations and 480 hours of ambulance ride-alongs. To become licensed, they have to pass a comprehensive written and skills exam.
Brunelli joined the county in December after 14 years with the Merced Fire Department, so he’s been in the game long enough to see certain trends emerge, one which favors guys like Bakken.
“We’re starting to see an increase in survivability incidents,” he said. “Even 10 years ago, if your heart stopped, there wasn’t a chance you’d be brought back.”
As the EMS coordinator for the county fire department, Brunelli’s work doesn’t take him far from his desk. He is responsible for tracking medical training and licensing throughout the department and tracking the EMS supply inventory and durable medical equipment. He also serves as a liaison between the department and other fire agencies and represents the department on cardiac care and trauma committees.
But in Merced County, he had his share of getting life-and-death calls, the kind that force emergency officers to recall everything they’ve ever learned about saving a life in a matter of seconds.
“You know that statistically every minute that goes by without their heart beating, their chance of survival decreases by 10 percent. Usually by the time we come in, five minutes have passed,” he said. “It can be pretty chaotic. You have family members watching their loved ones laying down, not responding, so it’s a pretty traumatic thing, not just physically for the patient but mentally for the family watching.”
It’s those moments that are most stressful for emergency personnel, said Brunelli. And those stressful occasions contribute to a sad statistic in the long term: firefighters and paramedics have shorter life expectancies than the average population. In the short term, there’s sleepless nights to deal with.
“You never fall into a deep sleep because your mind is racing,” he said.
Bakken’s story has a feel-good ending, but not every incident does. There are times, Brunelli said, where emergency responders will whip out everything in their arsenal and apply every skill they know, to no avail.
“To have to say, ‘I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do for this patient’–that’s tough, you know?”
Within the past few months, for example, Santa Clara County firefighters responded to six cardiac arrest calls, he said. Only two were revived; the others didn’t make it.
But those times when they get a patient’s heart beating again keep them going, Brunelli added. “That’s why we do it, right? That’s why we come to work every day.”
The fire department took part in Emergency Medical Services Week May 15-21 to tell the public how the fire department has evolved over the years, explain what services it provides in addition to fighting fires and address some misconceptions about paramedics and emergency personnel.
One recurring question they get asked, said Brunelli, is “why does the fire engine show up for every emergency response?” The answer, he said, is that the department anticipates there will be a medical component to every emergency, whether it’s a rescue or fire.
EMS Week was also a chance to share a few not so commonly known facts. According to fire department spokeswoman Stephanie Stuehler, each white fire engine always has one paramedic and two emergency medical technicians on board. Fire engines are big, she said, because they are “like rolling toolboxes.”
“Firefighters are able to quickly respond to each emergency with the proper tools without having to drive back to the station,” she said.
About 90 percent of the time, paramedics get to the scene within four to six minutes of a call, Brunelli said. The goal is to get to the scene within eight minutes. “We meet that with no problem,” he said.
County fire responds to medical calls to assess, administer medications and provide advanced life support to patients before ambulances come and transport them to the hospital.
Aside from their regular duties, technicians and paramedics also engage in public education efforts and outreach programs, basic first aid and CPR training and programs such as the California Highway Patrol-sponsored Every 15 Minutes program, an intense two-day simulation program that challenges high school juniors and seniors to think about drinking, driving, personal safety and the impact their decisions have on their family, friends and community.
Michael Kerbyson, a Santa Clara County firefighter and field training paramedic who serves as a department liaison for the program, said the latter is easily the most difficult and yet most gratifying part of the job for him.
Also gratifying? Saving the lives of folks like Barry Bakken.
Link:
Santa Clara County Fire Department paramedics, EMTs play a vital, life-saving role in the community
