Showing up at the local ambulance station door isn’t a guarantee for faster attention, it could in fact hinder prompt medical treatment.
That’s the message B.C. Ambulance Station 225 is trying to get out to Bowen Islanders after an uptick in people showing up at the Miller Road building.
“We want the public to call 911 and use the system as it’s designed,” said Bowen station’s unit chief Charles (Conn) Breakey.
“We’ve been getting quite an increase in people just showing up to the station with anything from real emergency situations to just things like removing ticks,” he said.
Breakey, who has been this station’s chief for the past decade, said that the station isn’t set up as a clinic or first aid station, the ambulance itself is essentially the treatment room.
“What we’re set up to do is to respond to a call through our 911 system with the ambulance,” he said.
Breakey said that B.C. Ambulance has staff around the clock, but they’re paid on-call, so they’re not necessarily going to be at the station all the time. They could be on other emergency calls, helping out other people, or on a run to town with an injured person.
“This brings us back to always calling 911. There are systems in place to mitigate that,” he said.
“If there is an emergency situation and they’re delaying that phone call by getting in their car, coming to the station, they’re taking a chance that nobody’s going to be there,” he said. “The other side of that coin is the people who are just showing up because they don’t feel it like it’s appropriate to call 911, they’re not sure. It’s maybe not an emergency, maybe it is.”
In that case, Breakey recommends calling 811, the nurses’ line. The line is open 24 hours a day for anyone in B.C.
“They can guide whoever’s calling to the right avenue to get the treatment they need. They could suggest for hanging up and calling 911, they can suggest waiting to see the doctor,” said Breakey.
B.C. Ambulance said that in 2018, paramedics responded to 293 calls on Bowen. Of those, two were immediately life threatening, 56 were potentially threatening, 86 were potentially serious, 144 were non-urgent and five were not serious. A communications person for the organization, Shannon Miller, said in an email that more than 50 per cent of all the calls on Bowen are non-life threatening so they don’t require a lights and sirens response.
“This is true of most rural communities in the province,” she said.
Miller said that in May 2018, B.C. Ambulance introduced a clinical response model (CRM) that colour codes calls so that medical emergencies see faster response times.
“On Bowen Island, as well as many other communities in B.C., we are seeing faster response times to the most urgent calls,” said Miller.
“Prior to the CRM, the median response time to purple and red calls (the highest priority) was: 22:01 minutes,” she said. “With the CRM in place, the median response time to purple and red calls on Bowen is: 17:33.”
Breakey said that the busiest months for paramedics on Bowen are May through Sept. and weekends are busier than weekdays.
