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expense, time and effort. “The medic unit provides advanced life support, and out here that’s important bacause of our distance from hospitals,” Hannon said. “It’s like doing what the hospital could do to stabilize the patient. ”
Another important reason for the medic unit involves the national statistics on deaths caused by heart failure. “About 350,000 heart attack victims die within the first three hours following an attack before they get to a hospital,” Hannon said. “Besides providing advanced life support, we are also encouraging lay people to learn CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation), and we try to educate people about what we can do and what they can do to save lives.”
An operational medic unit essentially gives the patient a head start in emergency care. “Once we get to the hospital, much of what can be done in the emergency room has already been done as far as drug therapy goes,” Roach said. "The emergency room staff can then look at other avenues of treatment if what we’ve done isn’t working.”
The medic unit will add to the history of the Washington Department’s service that began in 1938. The department moved into the bottom of its present headquarters in 1977. This year, enough funds have been raised to finish the second floor of the building.
Finding enough funds to operate is one of the major problems for the department. The department saw a 70 percent increase in the number of rescue calls last year, and Roach said that the number of calls this year is keeping up with that increase. An increase in fire calls for the department has already been forecasted since the numhpr of paIIr last vpar utqq fKn
88.9%