By Nic Corbett
DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER
Copyright ©2007 Tallahassee Democrat.
All rights reserved.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Robert “Doc” Boissiere, a paramedic who announced his retirement after 35 years, remembers his first 911 call on Aug. 15, 1972.
It was a car crash at Appleyard and Tennessee, and it was the first emergency medical services call in Leon County.
Before that time, emergency calls were handled by funeral homes’ employees, who carried patients to hospitals in hearses.
“Doc was in that first set of people who were trained to be emergency medical personnel in the United States,” said Fran Councill, who met Boissiere when she began working as a paramedic at the hospital 32 years ago.
Boissiere celebrated his retirement Thursday afternoon with family, friends and colleagues.
“I was very fortunate,” Boissiere said. “I got to work with good people. I was privileged to see all manner and type of people in stressful situations and hopefully make them better for having been there.”
Councill said what she will remember about Boissiere is his love for people, no matter their age, race or economic status. He would always sit down and talk to the patients about their situation at a time when they were afraid and the doctors were too busy to explain it to them.
“EMS is about the patient,” Boissiere said. “The patient is a human being. Remember that they are somebody’s mother or father, sister or brother. We may not always be able to fix the situation, but we can show empathy and compassion.”
Steven Tiefel, a paramedic for the Tallahassee Fire Department, said he was assigned to learn from Boissiere when he was studying at Tallahassee Community College. Boissiere taught him to treat the patient as a person.
“Sometimes I think the younger folks tend to forget that,” said Tiefel, who graduated in 1993.
Boissiere said he started out with visions of going to medical school, but he ended up in the army for four years. He acquired the nickname “Doc” while in the army because many others shared the name Robert.
Now that he’s retired, Boissiere said he is looking forward to doing more reading, hiking, guitar playing and photography.