A partnership between Renfrew County’s paramedic service and its hospitals called Fit2Sit is allowing paramedics to get back into the field quicker without impacting patient safety.
Paramedics assess patients during ambulance transport to determine if they are able to sit or stand independently at the hospital.
If stable, fully conscious and not showing signs of distress, they are guided to a chair in the waiting room at the hospital rather than staying on an ambulance stretcher.
The program allows a quicker return to service for paramedics.
Paramedic service deputy chief of operations Nick LeRiche said in the past, if a patient was not transferred to an emergency room bed right away, they could be waiting on the paramedic stretcher from anywhere between 15 minutes to four hours.
“This program really allows using specific inclusion and exclusion criteria for these patients to safely sit in the waiting room,” he said.
“They’re still being monitored and cared for, but we’re preventing our paramedics from these long offload times as well.”
LeRiche said there is no reduction in care, as patients whose conditions are more acute and need immediate attention will still remain under paramedic supervision or be transferred to a hospital stretcher right away.
LeRiche said county paramedics have been trained on the use of the program, and they are in contact with hospitals to keep track of how the implementation is going.
He said over 75 patients have been included on the Fit2Sit program since starting in December, allowing paramedics to get back out into the community faster.
