“If a call starts bad in dispatch, it’s bad all the way down the line,” Jeff Clawson told me many years ago. Inventor of the Priority Dispatch System and co-founder of the National Academies of Emergency Dispatch (NAED), Jeff has made it his life’s work to make sure that every 911 call goes right by perfecting a protocol that gives dispatchers the tools they need to get the right information to deliver the right resources to the right patient at the right time.
I’ve always had an appreciation for dispatch—while at the Journal of Emergency Medical Services in 1981, I published Jeff’s first article on a new program he had started while fire surgeon for the Salt Lake City Fire Department. Called “medical priority dispatch” with trained “emergency medical dispatchers (EMDs),” his program was revolutionary at the time, not only for promoting a standardized protocol but for insisting that the dispatcher was a medical professional, not a lowly clerk, and was key to a well-functioning EMS system. (He later told me that the response to this and a subsequent article inspired him to create the Priority Dispatch company, and later the nonprofit NAED.)
But frankly, I never fully grasped this world until I took an EMD course 12 years ago, traveled around the country interviewing dispatchers and communications center managers, and helped develop the Navigator conference, NAED’s annual gathering of medical, police and fire dispatchers. This year’s Navigator, held in April in Orlando, once again was inspiring, not just for the educational content, but for the people.
I had the honor of meeting Meridith Jensen, who started dispatching two years ago for the Colorado Springs Police Department Communications Center, an NAED Accredited Center of Excellence (the highest honor for a 911 center). In February 2007, Meridith was a health assistant at an elementary school when she was asked to assist a 9-year-old girl who was unresponsive on the playground. When she arrived at the girl’s side, Meridith discovered the child was in cardiac arrest. She called 911, and for the next harrowing 11 minutes, the dispatcher calmly guided Meridith to do CPR until paramedics arrived. There was no AED on site, and sadly, the girl was not resuscitated. (It was later discovered that she had an undetected heart problem.)
Meridith’s reaction to this, and to the tragic line-of-duty death of her police officer brother-in-law around the same time, was to take action. She helped spearhead an effort to get AEDs in every school in her district and applied to become an emergency dispatcher for the Colorado Springs Police Department, where she could be of greater use to the community, she told me. Meridith was accepted in January 2008 and had her first save when she guided a caller to do CPR on an elderly patient who ultimately survived.
Meridith was awarded the 2010 “Dispatcher of the Year” honor by the Academy. It’s good to know our 911 calls are in good hands like these, guided by a protocol that just keeps getting better after three decades.
Keith Griffiths can be reached at publisher@emergencybestpractices.com
