 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Alleviating the seat of the problemBy BRIDGET HALL GRUMET
© St. Petersburg Times, Sugarmill Woods residents have tried for years to get an emergency medical unit permanently stationed near their community. Maybe they should have started by making the Chassahowitzka fire station a more comfortable place for paramedics to spend 24-hour shifts. Until this month, a paramedic was at the fire station on County Road 480 from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. with a "quick response vehicle," a medically equipped sports utility vehicle. The paramedic can use the QRV to quickly reach the scene and start medical treatment while patients wait for an ambulance to arrive and take them to the hospital. But as members of the Sugarmill Woods Civic Association recently discovered, that paramedic spent much of his 12-hour shift on an uncomfortable old chair at the Chassahowitzka fire station. "It looked like something I threw out 40 years ago," civic association president Skip Christensen said. The day after making that discovery, one of the association's board members dropped off a plush leather recliner that he no longer used. Not long afterward, Nature Coast EMS doubled the on-call hours of the quick response vehicle from 12 to 24 hours a day. Coincidence? "To what extent that got us the 24-hour (quick response vehicle), I don't know," Christensen said with a chuckle. - Staff writer Bridget Hall Grumet compiled this report.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
|
