A group in Lloydminster is lobbying for paramedic service for the city and causing quite a stir.
The Lloydminster Concerned Citizens for Seniors’ Care Society is pushing to bring advanced life support paramedic services to Lloydminster by keeping pressure on both WPD Ambulance Service and the Prairie North Health Region to strike a contract. WPD Ambulance currently provides emergency medical services solely with EMTs.
The LCCSCS is looking for ALS paramedics who are not only trained in advanced life support but are certified to perform more advanced life saving procedures like tracheal intubation and IV support. Both EMTs and paramedics have the knowledge and skills to transport patients and provide them with emergency care, the main difference being the amount of education paramedics receive and what they are allowed to do for patients.
“Over the last number of months this issue has been discussed…we’ve had meetings with the ambulance people and they say the problem is Prairie North. We’ve had meetings with Prairie North people, they say the problem is the ambulance provider. So we talked about getting the public involved in this,” says Graham Brown, President of the LCCSCS.
The Lloydminster Source reports that even Owner/Operator of WPD Ambulance based in North Battleford, Walter Dutchak, agreed that people in the Lloydminster region are not being serviced adequately without ALS.
“Our MLAs have been working on this also. And here we are a number of months later and we still don’t have a contract…it was time months ago to fix it. But it seems like nobody’s getting anything done and so let’s get the public involved and give the support to the MLAs,” says Brown.
The group, which was incorporated as a society about 3 years ago but initially started 10-12 years prior, was founded by Rod Sellers & Raff Saeed, and now has roughly 250 members, about a dozen of whom are active on a weekly basis at meetings. Brown says they want to get the more people in the community involved, and invites the public to come out to their regular meetings.
Brown explains, “The strategy we’ve taken is we’re not taking sides of the ambulance provider or Prairie North. We’re just taking the side of the community. People in the community find out we don’t have paramedics they are very surprised. We want to get the community to say ‘this isn’t good enough, we need paramedic service in Lloydminster,’ and every day we don’t have it, we’re putting lives at risk.”
To learn more or get involved with the group, find Lloydminster Concerned Citizens for Seniors’ Care Society on Facebook or go to their Tuesday meetings at the Legacy Centre at noon.