By Chantal M. Lovell
Redlands Daily Facts
REDLANDS, Calif. — Running from one emergency call to the next, the Redlands Firefighter Paramedics need to be ready for just about anything they come across.
So when Firefighter Paramedic Dustin Whitaker responded to a call last month and encountered a medical device he’d never seen before, he had to do the best he could with the knowledge he had at the time.
“I ran a call on a patient and I get there and he’s got two huge battery packs (on the sides of his torso), wires connected to his heart, wires going into his arms and legs,” Whitaker said. “I’d never seen anything like that before.”
The patient was wearing a Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD), an implantable mechanical pump that pumps blood from the heart to the rest of the body that is typically worn by patients awaiting heart transplants, Whitaker learned. A battery pack is worn on the outside of the body to keep the pump going.
Whitaker said on that call, he and the other firefighter paramedics had to rely on their knowledge of the heart and mechanics to figure out why the patient was having chest pains.
Fortunately, the patient and his wife were able to explain the then-unknown device to paramedics who treated him before he was transported to the hospital.
“We get there and it was on-the-job training,” Whitaker said. “His wife was extremely knowledgeable, he was extremely knowledgeable.”
As the city’s primary medical response, Whitaker said the last thing a paramedic wants to be is unprepared, so as soon as they returned to the station, they looked into the LVAD devices.
“A handful of us made phone calls to Loma Linda University, we talked to (the patient’s) wife and him and we went out and pursued the training,” Whitaker said. “We went out and solicited the training. Loma Linda was phenomenal. Within a day, they sent us a huge packet of information, a DVD, and it was self-trained. We all took the training ourselves as paramedics then distributed the training throughout the department.”
Fellow Redlands Firefighter Paramedic Ryan Gallagher said there are two Redlands residents known to have the LVADs and they must be treated differently than patients who do not have the external pumps. He said it is important for everyone within the department, whether they be the person treating patients, driving the squad or truck or calling ahead to the hospital, to know how to do just about anything.
“We’re utility players,” Gallagher said. “We all need to be well rounded and understand what to do.”
“Essentially we have to know as much about every body system as possible,” Whitaker said. “As a paramedic, we have to intervene and fix any problem with any system in the body. If it’s a cardiac problem, an endocrine problem, a pulmonary problem, an allergic reaction, you name it, and we have to have some solution to the problem prior to getting that patient to the hospital.”
Captain Bill Conway said he expects Redlands firefighters and paramedics to encounter more LVAD patients as the devices, used primarily on patients awaiting heart transplants, become more common.
“There are always new things for us to deal with,” Conway said. “Medicine is always changing. I like to think of it as the automobile industry, there are always better, safer cars being built. Just like that, medical devices are always evolving and we have to make sure we’re up on all the information that’s out there.”
Whitaker and Gallagher said many of the city’s firefighters have spent their entire lives in Redlands, so they are particularly vested in keeping up with the latest treatment so they can give the best possible care to the patients they encounter.
“We are products of Redlands and continue to provide service here,” Whitaker said. “We’re invested. We can’t know everything but it’s our goal to know as much about everything as we can or at least a little bit about every system, that way we can at least make some educated decisions in ways to most appropriately treat a patient.”
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