By Jennifer Latson
Daily Press
Copyright 2007 Daily Press
NEWPORT, Va. — The baby had already stopped breathing when Sandy Tyler answered the phone.
The frantic mother, in gasping breaths, explained how the 11-month-old had choked on a hot dog and was now unconscious.
“Can you take a deep breath for me?” Tyler asked.
She dispatched an ambulance to the woman’s address. Then she flipped through a Rolodex of flashcards next to her phone, stopping on one marked “Child CPR.” She began to give directions: Lay the baby flat on its back. Lift the chin slightly. Place your cheek next to the baby’s mouth. Listen for breath. And begin chest compressions.
This was a training call -- the mother on the line was an actor practicing CPR on a doll. But Tyler is a real 911 dispatcher, the training coordinator for Newport News’ emergency dispatch center, and the call was like many she’d had before.
But this time, for the first time since she started answering 911 calls in 1979, she was able to give medical help over the phone. Since Aug. 1, Newport News 911 dispatchers can advise callers on a variety of medical emergencies, using information cards scripted by doctors to help treat everything from blocked airways to stab wounds and seizures.
Their goal is to help callers take basic steps to help sick or injured people while they wait for medics to arrive. Before this month, dispatchers couldn’t give any medical advice over the phone.
“That’s the problem. Before we had this, we could say, ‘The medics are on the way,’ ” said 911 manager Gwen Pointer. “That was it.”
It was frustrating for dispatchers and potentially dangerous for patients whose conditions could turn fatal in the few minutes it took an ambulance to reach them. Dispatchers hadn’t been trained to give medical advice, and so were constrained for legal reasons and to avoid giving directions that would hurt instead of help.
“Callers would say, ‘tell me what to do.’ They were begging. When you hear these people, it would give you chills,” Tyler said. “And we couldn’t say anything. We couldn’t afford to do more harm than good.”
Tyler and Pointer had been lobbying for the new emergency medical dispatch program since the 1980s. But staffing shortages barred the 911 center from doing the training it needed to use the program until now. Officials have hired 10 new dispatchers over the last two years, giving the center enough staffers -- about 50 in all, including administrators -- to complete a month and a half of practice with the medical program. Hampton has had a similar program in place since 2000.
Dispatchers rely on the script cards to ask questions and give advice for callers with everything from headaches to gunshot wounds. They can direct callers to give CPR and help deliver a baby.
The instructions are an improvement over the last time Tyler helped a couple deliver a baby over the phone. “I wasn’t able to give medical instructions,” she said. “The poor man was just frantic. I remember telling him, ‘The baby’s going to be slippery. Hold your hands out.’ ”
The dispatchers are already seeing the program pay off. In the first shift of the first day using the new medical training, they helped ease the pain of two men suffering heart attacks and helped slow the blood loss of a woman with a gash on her head, by recommending constant direct pressure.
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