On call EMS policy

[DaRock98 76]

Question for those of you who have shifts or on call times for your EMS agencies. I have noticed that some of the local VAC's in my town have shifts or on call times, during this time SOME of the agencies are aloud to ride with a full crew around town. I have noticed a lot more lately that these VACs are "joy riding" (for lack of a better term) out of district. So I guess my real question is, isn't there some form of liability issue if god forbid they got into an accident out of their jurisdiction just riding around not responding to a call?? I feel like, if you are on call in district A) you should not be riding around in district Not only does it delay response time but it puts the public you serve and your crew at a much higher risk responding lights and siren from one town to another.

[firemoose827 324]

Well, I know around me, especially in my old squad, we do have 24 hour schedules that we encourage people to sign up for. Some agencies have schedules for nights and weekends in 12 hour blocks. They dont always get filled but atleast the Officers know what times are covered and which ones are open.

I have never seen the crews using the rig as personal vehicles around here, the gas is too expensive for any volunteer agency to afford its members cruising around picking up laundry or dropping the kids off at school. But the schedule does help plan ahead for timesf the day that may need auto mutual aid to cover, instead of waiting for the tones to go off and hope someone shows.

[Guest ff164]

I think its a good idea for all emergency responders to drive their neighboring districts for a few GOOD reasons not just joy riding.

First, it familarize themselves in the event of a mutual aid response. As we all know all emmergency services especially EMS in this county rely heavily on only mutual assistance 24/7. The increase of call volume, the abuse of the system and the lack of manpower results in the increase of mutual responses.

Secondly pre-planning & size-up is crucial in a positive end result of any incident. Respone routes, building access, vehicle placement and hazard identification can be easily done from the street.

Lastly, be out there. Let the public see you not just the hear you responding to calls. Just the simply wave the person walking down the street, washing their car or the child walking with their parents goes a long way when that persons experiences an emergency needing any or all of the emergency services to respond.

As for the for the delay response comment, if the is atleast a qualified crew is on the rig to respond may cut response time since the members are not responding from where ever (with blue/green lights) to their HQ to get the rig.

Which is a higher risk blue/green or Red Lights & Sirens?? That could be a whole other discussion

Just a few thoughts

STAY SAFE!!!

[20y2 43]

  ff164 said:

I think its a good idea for all emergency responders to drive their neighboring districts for a few GOOD reasons not just joy riding.

First, it familarize themselves in the event of a mutual aid response. As we all know all emmergency services especially EMS in this county rely heavily on only mutual assistance 24/7. The increase of call volume, the abuse of the system and the lack of manpower results in the increase of mutual responses.

Secondly pre-planning & size-up is crucial in a positive end result of any incident. Respone routes, building access, vehicle placement and hazard identification can be easily done from the street.

Lastly, be out there. Let the public see you not just the hear you responding to calls. Just the simply wave the person walking down the street, washing their car or the child walking with their parents goes a long way when that persons experiences an emergency needing any or all of the emergency services to respond.

As for the for the delay response comment, if the is atleast a qualified crew is on the rig to respond may cut response time since the members are not responding from where ever (with blue/green lights) to their HQ to get the rig.

Which is a higher risk blue/green or Red Lights & Sirens?? That could be a whole other discussion

Just a few thoughts

STAY SAFE!!!

Very well put!!

[Guest]

  ff164 said:

I think its a good idea for all emergency responders to drive their neighboring districts for a few GOOD reasons not just joy riding.

First, it familarize themselves in the event of a mutual aid response. As we all know all emmergency services especially EMS in this county rely heavily on only mutual assistance 24/7. The increase of call volume, the abuse of the system and the lack of manpower results in the increase of mutual responses.

Secondly pre-planning & size-up is crucial in a positive end result of any incident. Respone routes, building access, vehicle placement and hazard identification can be easily done from the street.

Lastly, be out there. Let the public see you not just the hear you responding to calls. Just the simply wave the person walking down the street, washing their car or the child walking with their parents goes a long way when that persons experiences an emergency needing any or all of the emergency services to respond.

As for the for the delay response comment, if the is atleast a qualified crew is on the rig to respond may cut response time since the members are not responding from where ever (with blue/green lights) to their HQ to get the rig.

Which is a higher risk blue/green or Red Lights & Sirens?? That could be a whole other discussion

Just a few thoughts

STAY SAFE!!!

exactly! as long as their is a purpose to be on the road, thats fine...even if their isn't and the crew wants to get out of hq for awhile, thats fine too. i mainly do night time shifts, so we check local hospitals for equipment, get a meal...and coffee and usually go back to hq and watch some movies and get more coffee midnight/1am. our response times are fantastic, that's not even in the question. i'll even do drivers' training at 2am if im awake and the trainee im on with wants to drive. personally i'd rather them drive 2am compared to daytime...no ones on the road!

Edited March 13, 2008 by vacguy

[Guest]

  Darock98 said:

I feel like if you are on call in district A you should not be riding around in district B.

if you go to other districts frequently for m.a. calls, it's probably beneficial to know a little bit of those districts to better your response time. and speaking of the response times, in my vac we encourage crews to stick together for the duration of their shifts, whether it's in quarters or "driving around" who cares...the response times are still better than crews responding from home and thats kind of the point.

i try to do things logically, rather than traditionally....

**i'm adding my response to DaRock, but here its says it's jcarps quote. something off here?

Edited March 13, 2008 by vacguy
changed quote by portion of quote for member

[GAW6 66]

  ff164 said:

Lastly, be out there. Let the public see you not just the hear you responding to calls. Just the simply wave the person walking down the street, washing their car or the child walking with their parents goes a long way when that persons experiences an emergency needing any or all of the emergency services to respond.

I agree, if you are driving around YOUR OWN DISTRICT during normal hours.

I don't buy the "getting familiar with the districts" that you do mutual aid for. After all, everyone in our Town knows where MacDonalds and the Diner are!!!! And also doing drive-bys of a particular agency just to harrass them is not called for. As the Captain of my VAC, if my members were caught doing this, they would be suspended on the spot.

[DaRock98 76]

  vacguy said:

if you go to other districts frequently for m.a. calls, it's probably beneficial to know a little bit of those districts to better your response time. and speaking of the response times, in my vac we encourage crews to stick together for the duration of their shifts, whether it's in quarters or "driving around" who cares...the response times are still better than crews responding from home and thats kind of the point.

i try to do things logically, rather than traditionally....

**i'm adding my response to DaRock, but here its says it's jcarps quote. something off here?

I agree you need to know about your neighboring districts BUT if you go there frequently and you are living in the town Im pretty sure you already know a lot about it. I was just asking because in my dept. it's not the "norm" to do driver training out of town/district or at 2 or 3am.

[Guest]

  GAW6 said:

I don't buy the "getting familiar with the districts" that you do mutual aid for.

that wasn't a joke...

Edited March 13, 2008 by vacguy

[Guest]

  DaRock98 said:

I agree you need to know about your neighboring districts BUT if you go there frequently and you are living in the town Im pretty sure you already know a lot about it. I was just asking because in my dept. it's not the "norm" to do driver training out of town/district or at 2 or 3am.

sorry, must of forgot our vac only operates 9-5, mon-fri, i'll remember that in the future.

the thing with our vac is we have MANY people who are not from the area, so 'no' there are many members who do not know m.a. areas at all. having members not from the area is very feasable bc we have shifts and it does work out really well. hoping someone responds to hq when the tones go out isn't great for ems in our area, but for the vfd's it seems to be fine. its a much more reliable system

i'll be ending my share of this topic here

[DaRock98 76]

  vacguy said:

sorry, must of forgot our vac only operates 9-5, mon-fri, i'll remember that in the future.

the thing with our vac is we have MANY people who are not from the area, so 'no' there are many members who do not know m.a. areas at all. having members not from the area is very feasable bc we have shifts and it does work out really well. hoping someone responds to hq when the tones go out isn't great for ems in our area, but for the vfd's it seems to be fine. its a much more reliable system

i'll be ending my share of this topic here

I ended mine about 2 weeks ago when I wrote the topic

[ex-commish 490]

I don't buy the "getting familiar with the districts" that you do mutual aid for. After all, everyone in our Town knows where MacDonalds and the Diner are!!!! And also doing drive-bys of a particular agency just to harrass them is not called for. As the Captain of my VAC, if my members were caught doing this, they would be suspended on the spot.

I couldn't agree with you more. You beat me to it...

[Guest alsfirefighter]

There wouldn't be anymore liability then if you are in district and start responding to a call if you did something outside the scope of the law or within the standard of practice. As far as just driving around there isn't any increased liability again as long as you follow the rules of the road. You have insurance to operate the vehicle and can anywhere...your insurance isn't just district wide.

I think this comes down to common sense and if its something at a management level you don't want occurring, is something simply fixed by having a written policy. No written policy no leg to stand on. Personally I don't feel that crews should be driving outside of district for the sake of driving. If you hop across the border to get a meal because there are little to no options within your own, understandable. Performing official business...obvious.

I like the drivers training thought process and couldn't agree more. If you want to be successful, particularly in volunteer agencies you must try to do what best accomodates persons you are bringing in. If that means doing drivers training at 2 am...so be it. Just understand that your drivers training program should introduce and expose your candidates to all conditions (within reason) they will operate in. So at some time it would be a good idea to get them out when possible during rush hour/heavy traffic times.

As far as other districts...if you feel that is the best for you agency...who is anyone to judge otherwise. Communication is best with management of the other agency as we all know opinions and hard feelings run wild in some aspects. While I would rather just have a map in all units and go over map reading and how to stay oriented to what you are reading..again...anyone who does what they feel is best for their agency and even more so have it in writing I will always give kudos to.

[DaRock98 76]

  alsfirefighter said:

There wouldn't be anymore liability then if you are in district and start responding to a call if you did something outside the scope of the law or within the standard of practice. As far as just driving around there isn't any increased liability again as long as you follow the rules of the road. You have insurance to operate the vehicle and can anywhere...your insurance isn't just district wide.

I think this comes down to common sense and if its something at a management level you don't want occurring, is something simply fixed by having a written policy. No written policy no leg to stand on. Personally I don't feel that crews should be driving outside of district for the sake of driving. If you hop across the border to get a meal because there are little to no options within your own, understandable. Performing official business...obvious.

I like the drivers training thought process and couldn't agree more. If you want to be successful, particularly in volunteer agencies you must try to do what best accomodates persons you are bringing in. If that means doing drivers training at 2 am...so be it. Just understand that your drivers training program should introduce and expose your candidates to all conditions (within reason) they will operate in. So at some time it would be a good idea to get them out when possible during rush hour/heavy traffic times.

As far as other districts...if you feel that is the best for you agency...who is anyone to judge otherwise. Communication is best with management of the other agency as we all know opinions and hard feelings run wild in some aspects. While I would rather just have a map in all units and go over map reading and how to stay oriented to what you are reading..again...anyone who does what they feel is best for their agency and even more so have it in writing I will always give kudos to.

Thank you that was the answer I was looking for!

[trauma74 111]

As Captain of my VAC, I came up with an SOP a while back in reference to taking the bus out "for a ride" or to "get something to eat". It states that the crew on call "the duty crew" may take the bus out to go anywhere in our district whether it be to eat or take care of something personal or stop by their residence etc. If the crew wishes to leave the district for any reason, they must contact a Line Officer, state the reason why they want to leave the district and ask permission to leave the district.

In our district there are no eating establishments that are open 24/7 except McDonalds, so often times my duty crews call me and ask if they can go to the neighboring town that has a 24/7 diner. 99.9% of the time, we will grant the crew permission to leave the district. One of our other neighboring Towns has the hospital that we take the majority of our patients to. Without asking for permission, any of the duty crews may take the bus to go "hospital shopping".

I do not mind having my crews out driving around our district. I feel that it shows the public that we are out there and available if they need us for some reason. When they get toned out for a job, they immediately drop what they are doing and they respond to the job. We do not have any rules that state that when our members are "on duty" that they must be at our HQ. Many of my members ride from home and when they get a job, they respond to our HQ to get the bus. This sometimes takes several minutes. Having a crew already out on the road leads to a quicker response time. Even if they are in a neighboring Town, they can get to the call in around the same time it would take a crew that is riding from home to assemble for the job. The two most common places that my crews go to outside of the district are very close to our district line and the highway and another main road that leads back to our area, so it does not take them long to get back into the district.

I do not feel that there is any extra liability when our crews responds code 3 thru another district while going back to our district to take a job. We have spoken to our insurance carrier numerous times and they have no issue with it either. They have stated that if something happen outside of the district our coverage would be the same as if something happened within our own district.