Maintaining EMS quality a top priority
One of the most haunting sounds we experience in our everyday lives has to be the wailing sirens of an ambulance slicing through the air. Not so much the sound itself, though that is certainly arresting enough, but the knowledge of what it represents – the fact some fellow citizen has suffered a grievous injury or life-threatening illness.
We think about the fact it could be someone we know – or even more frightening, someone we love.
But even while we nervously consider those possibilities, in the back of our minds we are glad the injured or sick person, whoever they may be, is being cared for by people who have been trained to help. Those in need of ambulance services are treated with state-of-the-art techniques and machinery as they are racing to the nearest medical facility.
Long gone are the days when hearses doubled as ambulances and were stationed at funeral parlors in a sort of macabre contradiction of their potential purpose. Modern-day emergency vehicles bear no resemblance to the long, black limousines of the past. These days they are packed with equipment and technology, much of it required by state and federal regulations.
They are manned by highly trained and motivated medical technicians who are experts in emergency medical techniques and the interim treatment of trauma victims. These individuals literally keep you alive until you can get to a hospital where physicians and surgeons can perform their medical miracles.
The importance of this service to all of us should be self-evident, and for many of us it is, but some still question the expense to the taxpayers, and it is indeed considerable.
But we have to ask, how can we live without it?
And the answer is, in many cases, we can’t, and we won’t. The importance of this service is, quite simply, life itself.
That’s why the Standard is emphasizing the need for our ambulance service to continue to operate at a high level. The recent resignation of former director George Roberts does not spell gloom and doom, but Roberts was a competent director who served this county well.
We’re confident Leonard Madewell will continue to do a top-notch job. That’s what this county needs and what Warren County citizens deserve.
It’s reassuring to know there are those who devote their lives to saving lives. They devote themselves to extending the precious days we spend with our loved ones.
Though most of us never think about it until we hear that haunting siren sound, even while it evokes a sense of dread, if we think about it, it also evokes another feeling entirely. It makes us feel ? safe.