DECATUR, Ala — Decatur Fire & Rescue has started sending out more crew members on cardiac arrest calls; not only does this help further serve the people of Decatur, it also helps everyone involved.
Before this decision was made, the Fire & Rescue team was sending out one truck with three of four crew members on calls regarding heart attacks.
Now, they are sending out two trucks with six to eight crew members, of course depending on staffing.
So, how does this benefit both the patient and the crew?
"What that does is that's going to increase the number of people that we have on scene, which would entirely increase and allow those to provide even better care to the patients because once you get on there- historically we have three people on our trucks and we have two people in ambulances, that's a total of five. Each person has a job that they do," said Chief of Training with Decatur Fire & Rescue, Ashley England. "We send an extra truck- that's going to give them an extra set of hands, that they can do their job, they can fill in the gaps it also when we start moving the patient from their residence or wherever they're at in their house, to the ambulance - it gets a little hectic, so that's gonna give us an extra set of hands, two extra sets of hands to help move the patient more safely for the patient and also while providing care for the patient, but it's also going to be a little bit safer on our guys to help prevent back injuries and strains and things like that."
Switching things up is all a part of what Decatur Fire & Rescue does, constantly innovating in order to bring emergency assistance to all Decatur residents that need it.
"We're always looking at what other departments are doing and how they are doing things, getting ideas, we are brainstorming ideas all the time of how we can do things better. One of the things that we noticed is that some departments across the nation and in Alabama are running these run into crews on cardiac arrest. So we decided if this is better for our citizens and visitors and people pass through then we can do that," said England.