IAFC testifies on pipeline safety
In April, Dan Eggleston, president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs, testified before the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, chaired by Rep. Dan Lipinski (IL). Eggleston stressed that local emergency responders must be prepared, trained, and equipped to respond to these events whenever they occur. However, he warned, “An effective response requires pipeline operators, local fire departments, and other state and local officials to work together. This cooperation cannot start on the day of the incident. It requires the public and private sectors to plan, train, exercise, and equip themselves beforehand.”
Eggleston recommended that the subcommittee request that the reauthorized pipeline safety programs include the following provisions:
- The promotion of coordination between local authorities and pipeline operators. Local Emergency Planning Committees, which are present throughout the country, were designed to bring together industry officials, local emergency responders, and other affected stakeholders to plan and exercise for potential pipeline and other hazmat incidents.
- Support for training and exercise programs that bring stakeholders together. Pipeline operators and local emergency responders should develop emergency response plans ahead of time and should meet regularly to practice them throughout the year.
- Support for the funding of equipment and staffing for local fire departments. Fire departments, especially those in rural areas, may not have the equipment they need to respond to a complex incident like a pipeline rupture, Eggleston explained. He pointed out that the Assistance to Firefighters Grant program provides matching grants for local fire departments to purchase equipment for pipeline incidents and all other hazards and that the SAFER grant program provides matching grants for hiring firefighters and recruiting volunteers to help staff fire departments in communities bordering pipelines. He asked that these programs be funded at $405 million each for fiscal year 2020.
NHTSA offers CPR toolkit for 911 and EMS
“The research clearly shows that the impact of interventions early after a cardiac arrest are the most important,” says Ben Bobrow, MD and CPR [cardiopulmonary resuscitation] LifeLinks project lead. “This underscores why 911 and EMS systems are the most crucial parts of the chain of survival.”
To this end, CPR LifeLinks was developed to support 911 and emergency medical services (EMS) agencies interested in working together to save more of the 250,000 people who experience out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and has developed a toolkit for 911 and EMS agencies aimed at improving survival rates in their communities.
The toolkit can be downloaded at https://www.911.gov/project_cprlifelinks/index.html or https://www.ems.gov/projects/cpr-lifelinks.html/. It includes information about the science of cardiac arrest, how to recruit leadership support for CPR improvement programs, training and continuous quality improvement efforts, training tools such as videos and audio recordings of 911 calls, and suggestions for overcoming common challenges and establishing survivor recognition programs that connect telecommunicators and EMS personnel with the people whose lives they save. The toolkit was created with the support of the University of Arizona’s Emergency Medicine Research Center, the RedFlash Group, and Resurgent Biomedical Consulting.
Mobile app tracks on-the-job exposures to carcinogens
The National Fire Operations Reporting System (NFORS) Exposure Tracker (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgJw2eYTSCQ) is an app firefighters, paramedics, and officers can use to record work-related exposures to carcinogens and other occupational hazards. The app can be used to create a personal diary for logging exposures and incident details in a private, encrypted, and secure online environment. Fire departments will not have access to the data. The app can be downloaded for free from app stores. Fire departments participating in the NFORS Analytics (CAD module) will receive periodic aggregate, not individual, reports about overall exposure trends.
The NFORS Exposure Tracker was developed through a partnership of fire service research partners, including the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), International Association of Fire Chiefs, the Metropolitan Fire Chiefs Association, the International Public Safety Data Institute (IPSDI), Underwriters Laboratories, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Urban Institute, the University of Texas at Austin, and the Center for Public Safety Excellence. Funding was through the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency Assistance to Firefighters Grant program and the Ramsey Social Justice Foundation.
As more governments enact legislation providing workers’ compensation coverage for firefighters who contract cancer or develop post-traumatic stress disorder, the NFORS Exposure Tracker record will provide detailed data on personal work-related exposures, which can be accessed anytime, even in retirement, notes the IAFF. The IAFF and IPSDI are working together to ensure that firefighters using the Tracker can also easily register to be part of the National Firefighter Cancer Registry and other major firefighter cancer studies by opting in to share exposure data with researchers. The Firefighter Cancer Registry will provide researchers with a centralized database of high-quality data, such as work history and number and type of incidents, to determine how firefighters are contracting cancer. Visit www.i-psdi.org for more information.
2019 National EMS Scope of Practice Model available
The first revision to the National EMS Scope of Practice Model (Model) since 2007 reflects the latest evidence and best practices in emergency medical services (EMS) care and moves the requirements for EMS personnel licenses toward consistency. The recent revision of the Model reflects changes within the profession and advances in medical science that have occurred over the past 12 years and covers the four national levels of EMS clinicians: emergency medical responder, emergency medical technician (EMT), advanced EMT, and paramedic; facilitates reciprocity; standardizes professional recognition; and decreases the need for each state to develop its own education and certification materials.
In addition, it is being used as a guide in the revision of the National EMS Education Standards and Instructional Guidelines (https://www.ems.gov/projects/ems-education-standards.html) now underway. Additional information is available in the hour-long webinar “The New National Scope of Practice and What It Means for You” (https://www.ems.gov/ems-focus.html). “Revising the National EMS Education Standards to align with the new Model aligns with the original EMS Agenda for the Future and will help move EMS forward toward the vision described in EMS Agenda 2050,” explains Jon Krohmer, MD, director of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration Office of EMS.
The National Association of EMS Educators (NAEMSE), in conjunction with a development team of EMS educators led by co-chairs Paul Rosenberger and Bill Young, is leading the revision of the standards. Three drafts will be released for public comment throughout the course of the project. The initiative will also include updating the EMS Instructional Guidelines for emergency medical responder, EMT, advanced EMT, and paramedic certifications. For updates and opportunities to participate, sign up for notification e-mails from the Office of EMS at https://public.govdelivery.com/accounts/USDOTNHTSAEMS/subscriber/new. You can follow the project’s progress at https://www.ems.gov/projects/ems-education-standards.html. A pdf of the Model can be downloaded at https://www.ems.gov/pdf/National_EMS_Scope_of_Practice_Model_2019.pdf.
NHTSA: Next Generation 911 to transform EMS
The National 911 Program, housed in the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) Office of EMS, is supporting the upgrade of the nation’s public safety answering points (PSAPs) from analog to digital technologies or an Internet Protocol (IP)-based 911 system, commonly referred to as “Next Generation 911” (NG911).
The recently published NG911 Guide for Leaders in EMS (https://www.ems.gov/newsletter/may2019/NG911-for-EMS.html) explains the benefits of NG911 for emergency medical services (EMS) systems, clinicians, and patients. They include an increase in reliability and data- and information-sharing capability. Emergency number services will be facilitated in creating a system that will enable voice, photos, videos, and text messages “to flow seamlessly from the public through 911 telecommunicators to EMS providers,” according to the NHTSA. The new digital NG911, points out the NHTSA, “will also improve a PSAP’s ability to help manage call overload and ensure proper jurisdictional responses using location tracking” and will also coordinate emergency communication, public safety, legislative, and governing entities.
NG911 guides for other sectors of public safety are available at https://www.911.gov/project_ng911publicsafety.html/. See also “Improving EMS Patient Care with Communication Technologies,” an interview with Barry Luke, deputy executive director of the National Public Safety Communications Council, at https://www.jems.com/articles/2019/03/improving-ems-patient-care-with-communication-technologies.html/.
