17 Pennsylvania EMS Agencies Earn Expert Rating in Pediatric Care

Seventeen emergency medical service agencies, including six in Western Pennsylvania, are deemed “experts” in providing pediatric care, under a voluntary state program started last fall.

Since the Pennsylvania EMS for Children program began in October 2014 to improve emergency pediatric care and boost related education and outreach, nearly 100 EMS agencies have been recognized for providing basic, intermediate, advanced or master care, records show.

The program added an expert level in June.

The six Western Pennsylvania agencies to attain it are: Medical Rescue Team South Authority in Mt. Lebanon; Cranberry Township EMS and Sports Medic 2 The Rescue in Butler County; Peters Township Ambulance Service in Washington County; and Murrysville Medic One and Penn Township Ambulance Association in Westmoreland County.

“We’re arming our providers so they aren’t as panicked, and they’re less likely to make mistakes when they respond to a pediatric call,” said Josh Stuart, a paramedic with the Mt. Lebanon EMS agency and the state program’s committee chairman.

Stuart, a paramedic for 24 years, remembers becoming anxious when responding to emergency calls involving children. About 17 percent of his agency’s calls involve patients 16 or younger, reflective of the statewide average, Stuart said.

“I was just as scared to take care of people’s children as the parents were to hand them over to me,” Stuart, 42, said.

“When you get calls for a child who is 3 months old and having a seizure, you cannot ask them what’s going on, they can’t tell you where it hurts.”

Stuart said his outlook, and his career path, changed in a 2006, when he responded to a call involving a Mt. Lebanon teen who died from asphyxiation after playing the “choking game.” The so-called game deprives the brain of oxygen, producing a high. Stuart said the teen’s father was his children’s pediatrician.

“At that point in time, there was virtually nothing about the choking game anywhere. No one was really talking about it,” Stuart said, adding he set out to change that with help from a police officer who was doing similar work in central Pennsylvania.

“From there, I went from the guy who said he would never teach an EMS class to one who teaches at conferences, only because I felt like someone was telling me I should,” Stuart said.

To be recognized as a basic provider of pediatric EMS care, agencies are required to have certain pediatric-specific equipment on ambulances. Stuart said that can include equipment that is sized to fit in children’s smaller airways or that comes with pediatric-specific directions or information written directly on it.

Once agencies attain basic status, they can improve from there. Intermediate status requires all EMS providers to complete child-abuse background clearances.

Providers at advanced agencies must complete at least four hours of pediatric-specific continuing education each year, and master-level agencies must regularly hold outreach activities, including child and infant CPR classes, presentations at local elementary schools and a community safety day at their ambulance station.

The new expert status requires agencies to have at least one certified Child Passenger Safety technician; hold at least one car-seat inspection event annually; and provide car-seat checks year-round, either during regularly scheduled hours, by appointment or both.

“I think the program is important because it gives awareness of what can be done and how you treat children differently,” said Thomas McMurray, director of the Peters Township Ambulance Service. “You want to be able to do anything you can for them. Whatever we can do to enhance our service, we’re going to do it.”

Tom Fontaine is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 412-320-7847 or tfontaine@tribweb.com