Kansas emergency medical workers respond at a moment’s notice, no matter if they just sat down for dinner or laid down to sleep. Many are volunteers with full-time jobs and families. First responders in the Sunflower State are trained to deal with a multitude of calamities, from traffic crashes to plummeting blood sugar levels in diabetic patients and everything in between. But they often provide non-emergency care that doesn’t receive much recognition or funding. Emergency health care professionals across the state are working to bring awareness to non-emergency practices long implemented by local ambulance crews and paramedics, for the purpose of categorizing those services to potentially receive state and federal funding. The practice is called community paramedicine, and for Deb Kaufman, former Sheridan County EMS director, it’s just another phrase to convey what her staff of 20 volunteers have been doing for years. “It takes a lot of dedication,” she says. “We don’t fill all the needs (of our community), we still have patients who need additional care who aren’t getting it.”
Source: KLC Journal
