Sewanee EMS Will Integrate With Grundy EMS in January

by Leslie Lytle, Messenger Staff Writer

Sewanee Emergency Medical Service (SEMS) will be integrated into Grundy Emergency Medical Service (GEMS) under a new plan outlined by University Provost John Swallow in a press release on Nov. 18. At present, both SEMS and GEMS offer transport with ambulances docked on campus. Under the new policy, which goes into effect in January, SEMS emergency medical technicians (EMTs) will travel with the GEMS unit. The 12-member SEMS team consists entirely of EMT-certified student volunteers.

In 2011, under the tenure of Police Chief Jim Parrott, the service area of SEMS was reduced from the greater Sewanee area to on-Domain calls, according to Doug Cameron. Cameron retired after 30 years of service as an EMT with SEMS. At the time of the policy change limiting SEMS to on-Domain calls, many of the EMTs were community volunteers who lived off campus.

No community members participate as SEMS volunteers currently, making the service unavailable during holidays and summer vacation, when the students are gone. Backup support from GEMS dates back to 2007 when the University entered into an agreement with GEMS to improve response time in the Sewanee area when SEMS volunteers were not available or in limited supply. GEMS began parking an ambulance on the Domain. Previously, when SEMS was not available, Sewanee residents waited for an ambulance to travel 13 miles from Winchester. The GEMS on-campus unit now operates out of and docks its ambulance at the Mabel Ward building next to Southern Tennessee Medical Center/Emerald-Hodgson Hospital.

When the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office Communications Center (known as Franklin 911) receives a call requiring an ambulance, they notify the Sewanee Police Department.

“The Sewanee Police Department dispatches GEMS first on all calls,” said Sewanee Police Chief Marie Eldridge. “SEMS is paged as secondary service for on-campus emergencies. Both services work together while responding to calls.”

The SEMS ambulance is a Basic Life Support (BLS) unit. The GEMS ambulance is an Advanced Life Support (ALS) unit with more sophisticated medical technology and a paramedic on board.

“We have a responsibility to send the service that can offer the highest level of care, and that is the ALS unit,” Eldridge said.

Provost John Swallow agreed, stressing the importance of “making sure patients receive the best level of care available.”

Eldridge heads up the SEMS. According to her, there are no plans to replace the aging SEMS ambulance.

The decision to modify the role of student EMTs was the recommendation of a committee chaired by retired professor of mathematics Laurence Alvarez. The committee included community members with EMT backgrounds and former student Taylor Stavely, C’13, who served as SEMS director.

The committee formed to address concerns regarding changes made by the State of Tennessee for certification of ambulance EMTs, which will require student EMTs to commit to 400 hours of coursework, twice the number of hours previously necessary for certification.

The current SEMS director, Seth Burns, C’15, said all 12 student EMTs participated in a bridge course to acquire the necessary advanced EMT certification. For incoming students, the advanced certification will take three semesters to complete instead of two, Burns said. He does not expect the increased courseload to deter prospective student EMTs.

Burns worries, however, about the consequences of integrating SEMS into GEMS.

“The way things are moving could end student involvement,” he said.

At the present, on-call student EMTs are paged in class and return to class after responding to a call. The SEMS ambulance is docked on central campus at the police station, and students can be on the road in two minutes after being paged.

Under the new system, on-call student EMTs will be required to be on site at the Mabel Ward building, forcing students to “remove themselves from other activities,” Burns said; he said he could probably only commit to one weekend a month. With the new certification requirements and new University policy, new enrollees in the SEMS program will encounter both greatly increased training time and greatly increased barriers to active participation.

“We’re one of the few collegiate EMSs in the country that run a full ambulance service,” Burns said. “We provide a very vital and important service to the community, and we would like to see that continue. It’s the essence of community involvement.”