New monitors allow paremedics to work faster, communicate better

Cape County Private Ambulance Service will be the first EMS agency in Missouri, and one of the first in the United States, to utilize brand new cardiac monitoring technology.

CCPA recently acquired eight Philips Tempus ALS monitors and eight defibrillator units that are used together to replace the ambulance service's current, bulky machines.

"Right now, we currently utilize a cardiac monitor that has a defibrillator built into it, so we can defibrillate or cardiovert patients having dysrhythmias," CCPA Paramedic Fred Gross said. "We can only do that on one patient at a time. We currently utilize the monitors that we have, they're like 26 pounds, and the monitor portion of this one is about 11 pounds total. So it's 6.4 pounds on the monitor, and the defibrillation portion is like four-and-a-half or five pounds."

Aside from being lighter and less cumbersome, the new monitors allow paramedics to communicate directly with doctors, who can monitor the patient's heartbeat while they're being transported to the hospital using Bluetooth.

"They call it advanced communication," Gross said, "and we can send stuff from here to the hospital. They can view it in real-life time, as the patient's in the back of our truck, and send us orders back, telling us what they want us to do for the patient in real time."

Cape County Public Ambulance Service paramedics hope to phase out their old cardiac monitors by next week.J.C. Reeves

The units also allow paramedics to chat back-and-forth with hospital staff, which reduces radio traffic.

"Now they can view in real life, as it's happening," CCPA Paramedic Christina Degenhardt said, "and they can talk back and forth to us without utilizing the radio, and all the other radio traffic."

The new monitors are also more user friendly than the older units, allowing the paramedics to customize the layout on the monitor's touchscreen to access certain features quicker. This, along with advanced communication and lighter equipment, allows responders to work much quicker, which can help save more lives.

"We say, 'time is muscle,' " Gross said. "We say that with strokes and heart attacks, because time is muscle, essentially. The more time you waste, the more muscle is going to be unrepairable. So, obviously that organ that's affected, whether it's the brain or the heart, is going to be, essentially, more dead by the time we get to the hospital. Obviously we want to minimize that."

Gross, Degenhardt and one other paramedic with CCPA have been training with a Philips representative on how to use the new equipment. Eventually, each paramedic with CCPA will be trained on how to use the new equipment, but it being so user friendly helps with the minor learning curve.

According to Degenhardt, CCPA hopes to have the new monitors operational by next week

"It's also the capabilities in the ambulances to have the Wi-Fi settings, that all hasn't been installed yet," Degenhardt said, "and once we start installing we have to finish it. Right now we have capabilities. These (old monitors) work. We can send our 12 leads to the hospital, but once we take this network down these no longer work. We have to be ready to do the switch in the same day. That takes a lot of moving pieces and getting everything ready"