Emergency Medical Services
The Salina Fire Department EMS division is responsible in overseeing Emergency Medical Services delivery for not only the City of Salina but for all of Saline County. The Salina Fire Department has a long history of providing Fire Service Based pre-hospital medical care at both the basic and advanced life support level.
The Salina Fire Department is the only provider of 911 EMS in Saline County, and is the primary ground ambulance service providing inter-facility patient transfers from Salina Regional Health Center to tertiary care facilities throughout the mid-west. Destinations that patients are frequently transported to include hospitals in Wichita, Kansas City and Topeka, transfers are done on a routine basis often times several times each day. Occasionally a patient may require a specialized physician or procedure; the SFD has transported patients as far away as St. Louis MO, Dallas TX, and Denver CO as well as both Lincoln and Omaha Neb. The Salina Fire Department is one of only a few ground based ambulance services that have the capability of providing “Critical Care” during transport. Currently 11 of the 30 Salina Fire Department paramedics are Nationally Certified Critical Care Paramedics who have all received training and certification through the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Two additional paramedics are currently enrolled to attend the intensive two-week critical care certification class in July of 2016.
Representatives of the Salina Fire Department actively participate in local, regional and state organizations including the Kansas Board of Emergency Medical Services and Kansas Emergency Medical Services Association. In addition to the Region 4 EMS council that covers all 13 counties in the North Central Homeland Security Region in Kansas.
The Salina Fire Department EMS Division oversees a community CPR and First Aid education program instructing an average of 300 citizens in the community each year, which includes employees of large corporations to small businesses as well as several governmental agencies such as the Kansas Department of Transportation.
We work closely with Salina Regional Health Center, which is our primary destination hospital for 911 medical and traumatic emergencies. Over the past year we have co-sponsored several educational opportunities to include the annual SRHC Trauma Conference as well as several Stroke Boot camps. This is in addition to a partnership with SRHC to provide mandatory certification classes such as Advanced Cardiac Life Support and Pediatric Advanced Life Support.
The partnership between the Salina Fire Department and Barton County Community College remains as strong as ever. Over the past 18 months we have had 5 Salina Fire Department employees attend the Paramedic program through Barton County conducted at the Salina Fire Department. All 5 of those employees are now Nationally Registered as well as Kansas Certified Paramedics. The paramedic program in itself is an intense 15-18 months of didactic training in the classroom, skills labs, 2-3 months of hospital clinical rotations as well as a minimum of 480 hours of paramedic field internship working with experienced veteran paramedics.
The next year looks to bring additional changes to the Salina Fire Departments delivery of pre-hospital patient care. These changes will allow Salina Fire Department Paramedics and EMT’s to continue to improve delivery of patient care procedures to the citizens and visitors of Saline County. Plans are underway to implement additional advanced life support procedures and medications that are “evidenced based”. Under the direction of Doctor Sean Herrington M.D who has served as the Medical Director for the Salina Fire Department for several years, we anticipate implementing some of these new procedures and medications within the first quarter of 2016.
Through nothing more than a commitment to the public, the Salina Fire Department Paramedics and EMT’s responded to nearly 7000 EMS related incidents in 2015, the yearly EMS call volume has nearly doubled in less than 10 years. The increase in call volume has and will continue to lead to more challenges, but also opportunities for the members of the Salina Fire Department.
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