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 August 2020, Issue No. 35
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Stepping Up to Respond During the Pandemic
Building Capacity
This past January, Todd LeCours, the Public Health Specialist who oversees the volunteer registry of medical professionals that includes doctors, nurses and physician assistants called Alaska Respond (AK Respond), saw the need to include EMTs, as part of this responder registry. Until Todd had advocated for this inclusion, paramedics were the only EMS Responders’ represented on this volunteer list. In April, the State Office of EMS sent out emails of solicitation to ask all certified pre-hospital providers, which included EMT-1, EMT-2 and EMT-3s, to sign up with AK Respond.
The need to increase AK Respond's capacity was becoming more apparent, through listening to our partners' and lessons learned from State EMS systems throughout the country. This increased capacity would help AK Respond assist with requests for first responders to help cover gaps, identified locally, that may be caused by the pandemic.
Registering for AK Respond
We currently have 166 EMTs signed up with AK Respond (57 EMT-1s, 18 EMT-2s, 39 EMT-3s, and 52 Paramedics). Registering to sign-up for AK Respond is an open, online process that can be completed at: https://akrespond.alaska.gov/index.php.
Volunteer EMT’s that are deployed are hired through the State of Alaska as temporary non-permanent employees. This ensures that volunteers are covered by workmans compensation and are paid an hourly rate, including per diem. The State of Alaska will arrange any air or water transportation needed for the deployment and help compensate you mileage for any approved ground transportation expenses after the mission has been completed.
If a volunteer wants to be prepared for a deployment's hiring process, it is recommended to have current copies of their driver’s license, passport and their social security card, as a PDF, ready to be submitted, along with the hiring paperwork. This preparation will assist with making deployments more efficient. For any Alaska hospital, health care facility, or other organization in need of healthcare resources during this disaster please follow the Resource Request Process for COVID-19 Response.
Answering the Call
One resource request received, this past month, was from Debbie (Deb) McCarty, the Clinical Manager at the Yukon Flats Health Center in Fort Yukon. Deb’s resource request went through her local Incident Command first and then followed the resource request path found here. Once the AK Respond team was notified of Deb’s request for two EMTs, a call for available responders was sent out through the AK Respond network. This network consists of responders who have completed the AK Respond online registration.
Two providers, an EMT-1 from Wasilla, Jose’ Camacho-Lopez and Craig Malloy, an EMT-3 from Fairbanks answered the broadcasted request. Both Craig and Jose’ volunteered for a two week deployment to Fort Yukon. While in Fort Yukon Jose’ and Craig covered EMS Calls and assisted clinic staff with testing the community and these two EMT’s performed over 200 CoVid-19 tests.
In a recent phone call with Deb, she said, that through the assistance and help that both Jose’ and Craig provided the clinic staff, Deb was able to take her first days off since March. Deb said, “Those two (Craig and Jose’) were an absolute godsend!”
Jose’ and Craig were the first two EMTs to be deployed through the AK Respond system. Their professionalism and care they provided to both the clinic staff and members of the community really have set the standard high. We are all proud of how both Craig and Jose’ have represented their EMS Community!
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Pediatric Emergency Care Coordination
Pre-hospital Pediatric Resuscitation Discussion
Thursday, August 20th at 5pm Register Here
Survival from pediatric out of hospital cardiac arrest remains poor in Alaska. This presentation will feature an approach taken by colleagues in Polk County Florida that optimized current protocols and resulted in significant improvements in outcomes.
Prior to the discussion, please review the information supplied by the discussion facilitator and presenters here.
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Sepsis in Children During COVID-19, Society of Critical Care Medicine, The Intensive Care Professionals
Members of the Surviving Sepsis Campaign (SSC) children's sepsis guidelines task force offer their perspectives on treating children in the COVID-19 era in this Pediatric Critical Care Medicine (PCCM) article.
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Your Mental Health & COVID
Living Well and Leveraging Adversity and Stress Over the Long Haul
Thursday, August 20th at 11am Register Here
Adversity and stress are unavoidable aspects of serving as EMS clinicians, thanks to the challenges of everyday EMS work and the added difficulties brought on by extraordinary events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. There are ways, though, to cultivate resilience, recognize and manage stress, and turn adversity into an opportunity for personal growth and becoming a better version of yourself.
In this EMS Focus webinar, two EMS veterans, leaders and resilience experts will engage in a conversation about self-awareness, self-care, and specific actions, practices and wisdom for living well.
Psychological Wellness Guide for EMS
This wellness guide is offered with the aim of helping EMS providers cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. It's content reflects the consensus ideas and recommendations of Emory, Grady, and the Morehouse School of Medicine mental health professionals. This guide offers tips and other helpful resources you may consider trying to help you and your family cope better.
Download the Wellness Guide Here.
Caring Communities: Emory, Grady, and Morehouse School of Medicine. May 20, 2020. COVID-19 Psychological Wellness Guide: EMS Providers, Version 2.
Your Input is Vital
Please take just a few minutes out of your busy day to fill out this short, one-page survey to provide input on training and support needs for health care providers, disaster relief workers, police, fire and EMS. Your valuable input will be used to plan future training opportunities for this unique workforce throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
This new project is made possible through a collaboration between UAA’s Center for Human Development, Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority, and the DHSS Office of Substance Misuse and Addiction Prevention. Participation in the survey is voluntary and all responses are confidential. Questions may be directed to Jill Ramsey, Alaska Training Cooperative, at jill@alaskachd.org.
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EMERGE
The Emergency Medical Education for a Generation of EMTs program, also known as EMERGE, is an online EMT-1 program designed to train individuals already associated with an EMS service to become EMTs.The purpose of the EMERGE program is to help ensure readiness during the COVID-19 pandemic. Once students have successfully passed the online didactic course they will pair with a station mentor to learn skills.
The first EMERGE class, EMERGE-1, took place in June and was our beta course. 36 students successfully passed the course final and were awarded a EMT-1 Student Provisional certification and have begun working with their station mentors to complete a skills portfolio.
EMERGE-2 began August 10 and is well underway with 60 students enrolled. Future EMERGE programs are in the planning phase with EMERGE-3 expected to begin in mid-October, EMERGE-4 after the new year, and finally EMERGE-5 in spring of 2021. If your EMS service has responders that are not yet trained to the EMT-I level and want/need to be to better serve your community, consider enrolling them in one of the future EMERGE programs. Please contact the State EMS Training Coordinator, Gene Wiseman, for more information.
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Funding Opportunities
Online Public Notice (OPN)
Find State of Alaska Grant Fund Opportunities through the State's Online Public Notice (OPN) site. There is currently an opportunity for First Responders listed as, “Restore Hope in Linkage to Care Collaboration Program” and is posted here.
COVID-19 Funding Sources Impacting Rural Providers
The Technical Assistance and Services Center (TASC), in coordination with the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (FORHP), are pleased to the release of a new resource: The COVID-19 Funding Sources Impacting Rural Providers guide. This funding resource is intended to support rural health care providers, along with their state and local partners, navigate the availability of federal funds to support the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic response and recovery efforts.
Statewide Job Opportunities
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