By Laine M. Rutherford
The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, Virginia)
Standing behind the accident victim she’d leaned against her legs, Ann Morse hustled to assess the girl’s injuries.
She could see a 3-inch-long object poking out of one eye and the red-stained bandage wrapped around the teen’s left calf.
But in Morse’s many years of experience — as a trauma nurse, paramedic and 20-year veteran of the Virginia Beach Volunteer Rescue Squad competition team — she knew there could be more injuries, unseen and critical.
“I’m right here, honey. I need to know where you’re hurt so we can help you. Can you talk?” the nurse practitioner asked, her voice soothing and calm despite the frantic activity around her.
Soothing despite the passing seconds recorded on stopwatches.
Calm despite the looming presence of judges watching and listening intently to everything happening in around her at the Virginia Beach Convention Center on Sept. 29.
“She’s breathing. She’s moaning. She’s got a busted jaw,” Morse, 49, called to her fellow team members participating in the Basic Life Support competition at the 72nd annual convention of the Virginia Association of Volunteer Rescue Squads.
“OK , honey, we’re going to take care of you,” Morse said, feeling not only the pressure of the competition, but the full weight of the 50-pound pack strapped on her back.
Morse hoped the sweat beading on her forehead wouldn’t drip onto her patient.
Led by team captain Jack Dye, a 30-year volunteer with Rescue 14 who has brought back more trophies to the station house than he can count, the team’s goal was to learn, have fun and to place among the top 10 in the state Basic Life Support, or BLS, competition.
Not that the team had a lot to prove.
They’re international champs in BLS.
For two years running they’ve taken first place honors at the International Rescue and Emergency Care Association Annual Conference and Competition, competing against teams from all over the world.
At the 2006 competition held in June in Puyallup, Wash., other emergency service workers sat in bleachers, studying and photographing the Beach team, clad in their signature white uniforms, as they worked together to “rescue” their patients.
While both the international and state competitions follow similar rules - one minute to read over the situation, one minute to gather supplies and emergency equipment they think they’ll need, and 15 minutes to perform the rescue - the scenarios, or pretend rescue situations, vary widely.
Before they headed to the convention center to compete, the team held a lengthy, “skull session.”
They checked the stretcher they would take into the judging room, securing equipment they’d packed and piled on top of it, calling out to each other to ensure nothing was forgot d Army captain.
“You need to be ready for anything. Last year, they pulled Judy out and gave her a written test. One year, they told Ann, ‘You’ve just broken your ankle,’ so she treated herself and had to treat the patient also. This year we brought a toy bear with us, because we never know who our patients are going to be.”
After waiting 30 minutes in a back hallway for their turn to compete, the team entered the conference room.
Judges Jeff Higgs and Megan Rossetti explained the rules and, with a brusque “Time starts now,” the competition was under way. Teams compete individually and are awarded points for assessment, treatment, patient interaction and speed.
Dye read the situation aloud. A young person hiking at the Scouting Jamboree had gotten hurt when she slipped on moss-covered rocks. As he read, Jackson, Morse and Jim Heartwell were pulling equipment off the stretcher, asking questions, working quickly.
With their two minutes expired, the group headed toward the “victim,” portrayed by Brittany Boothe of Swoope, Va., , who sat on a 7-by-9-foot piece of brown flooring representing a mountain ledge.
Pieces of paper just outside the right and left sides of the rectangle read “cliff.”
The space was crowded, and Dye quickly became a fatality himself. Removing a snake he found at the scene, he exited the area the way the team had entered, only to be told by Higgs that he’d just fallen off the cliff.
“It’s the first time I’ve ever been disqualified in 30 years,” a dejected Dye said . “But I surround myself with excellence, and they’ll do the best they can without me.”
At the end of 15 minutes, after nonstop dialogue and activity between three remaining team members Jackson, Morse and Heartwell, Boothe had been bandaged, secured to a board and taken off the “mountain.”
“This team is so fast paced we always have to put senior judges with them,” explained Higgs. “I judged them last year, too. They’re really fun to watch.”
Heading back to Station 14 on Virginia Beach Boulevard after the team’s breathing was restored to normal and their sweat had dried, Morse and crew joked about Dye’s mishap (“We did get a point for calling search and rescue, and for a body recovery team,” Jackson said, laughing), their chances of winning (slim) and their experience (good).
“We learn something new at every one of these we go to ,” Morse said, as the ambulance backed into its dock. “This (rescue) is what we do every day, one call after another after another, and we can never tell in advance what it’s going to be.”
Morse’s words proved prophetic.
Within seconds of stepping out of the ambulance, she called to her teammates.
“We have a patient out here with chest pains.”
Thirty minutes ago, the five team members - along with their Squad’s historian Bobby Hill - had been in a conference room demonstrating their skills in dealing with a pretend rescue.
Those same skills were now essential to performing Basic Life Support on a real patient.
The team worked seamlessly as a unit--calm, assured and efficient. Jackson knelt in front of the patient, who’d been brought into the station house in a wheelchair, asking questions and getting a medical history.
Morse wrapped a cuff around the woman’s arm and measured her blood pressure. Dye reached onto his belt for a flashlight, shining it into the patient’s eyes to check pupil response. Degges fit an oxygen tube gently into her nostrils. Heartwell went to another ambulance to retrieve a stretcher. Hill walked to the front of the building to radio in the report and while there encountered another patient the team would soon be helping.
“We just never know who’s going to need us, or where, or when,” said Jackso n, 44, a cardiac technician and employee at the Virginia Beach Emergency Training Center and Owl Creek Tennis Center.
The team had to wait the next nigh t to find out the results of the competition.
While they won’t have bragging rights to first place in the state - they finished s eventh - the group will return to the international competition next summer to defend its title.
“It’s a tremendous honor for us to win, but more important is what we do in our own city,” said Heartwell, 48, an information technology specialist at Fleet Forces Command when he’s not running rescue.
“We volunteer to do this because it’s what we love to do and we’re extremely good at doing it for real people in real life.
“And we’d better be. People’s lives are in our hands and they’re trusting us to take care of them. Winning competitions feels good, but nothing beats the feeling when you leave a patient at the hospital and you know you’ve made a difference whether they live or die.”
WANT TO VOLUNTEER?
The Virginia Beach Department of Emergency Medical Services is the largest volunteer rescue service in the country with more than 780 volunteers.
Volunteers are needed in many different capacities. Call the Department of Emergency Medical Services at 385-1999, or visit www.vbgov.com.