
An article published recently by The New Yorker highlights a public health issue that has been growing every year since I started in EMS back in 1990. As a member a suburban community and an on-call Firefighter/EMT, I have watched as our community has struggled to maintain staffing levels such that we can meaningfully respond to emergencies. When I was growing up in this community, many of our fire department members worked at businesses located within our community and were owned by other community members who supported their member’s duty to respond. Additionally, many members had a spouse or other family member at home to keep an eye on the children so that they could drop everything to help their neighbor. Today, many locally owned businesses have closed and employers cannot or chose not to let their employees leave work to help others in their town. Even if employers will let their employees drop everything to respond, there are fewer people interested in volunteering for their local fire or EMS based service despite an all-time high in volunteerism in the U.S. In addition, those who operate EMS organizations with paid EMS professionals have also been struggling for many years with (more…)