Daily Training at Station 4

On average our firefighters will be dispatched to around 8 calls during their 24 hour shift rotation at Station 4 in Forest Grove. One of the most frequently asked question is what do the firefighters do between calls? At FG&R firefighter training is the top priority for our crews between calls. In fact each of our shifts are required to perform 200 hours of training each month, which works out to 40 hours for each of the five firefighters assigned to each of our three shifts. This training covers the range of topics and scenarios that our crews are expected to be prepared for, and can be everything from basic firefighting techniques to more advanced topics like specialized rescue or advanced life support care.

Today our B Shift crew worked on Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) skills with our Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Chief Rick Schneider. Rick has worked in Washington County EMS since 1969, and was our A Shift Lieutenant until he retired from his full time position with FGF&R in 2007. Back now as a volunteer Division Chief, Rick (he also currently works as a Paramedic on Lifeflight) brings his 40 years of experience and knowledge back to our community training our EMT and Paramedic Firefighters in the high stress field of patient care.

All of our career firefighters are EMT's and of the 15 line firefighters at FGF&R eight are EMT-Paramedics, which is the highest level of certification. Each EMT level requires particular hours of training in certain topic areas every two years to maintain your certification. Today's ACLS training focused on the always intense cardiac emergencies. When your heart stops the blood flow to your brain stops with it. Every minute that your brain is without oxygen your chance of survival decreases by 10%. Our training focused on getting our medics to think quickly and make decisions that would be beneficial to the survival of the patient in these types of emergencies. Each of our firefighters were able to lead a different scenario today where they had to interpret exactly what type of cardiac emergency the patient was having and what treatments were appropriate to manage the scene and hopefully create a positive outcome.

In this photo B Shift Captain Dwight Lanter and FF Ivan Bratchuk are preparing to perform CPR on a patient while FGF&R's newest Paramedic Keith Baas (kneeling back to camera) prepares the correct medication for the "patient".

In each scenario our firefighters were presented with a patient that at first started with either a breathing problem or chest pain, and as the call progressed, their condition worsened. Our crews had to make split second decisions on what procedures would improve the situation based on the information that was presented to them just as they would on a real emergency. Paramedics practiced advanced skills like interpreting cardiac rhythms on our heart monitor (which is seen in the photo above), starting IV lines, administering medications, airway device procedures, and the basic skills of CPR and understanding symptoms and vital signs. It may be hard to believe but our medical equipment and medications are similar to what you would be treated with in an emergency room of a hospital, and the training between being a Paramedic and being an emergency room nurse is not all that different, in fact all of our EMTs are supervised and trained regularly by an actual Hospital Emergency Room Physician. It sounds cliche, but in a real emergency seconds do count, this training is invaluable to prepare our crews to act quickly and hopefully help them create a positive outcome if one of their calls is this serious.