For the volly services: What kind of crew schedule??

[steve-in-kville]

I've done the paid gigs already, but I'm a volly at heart. At any rate, I am pushing to reorginize our crew rotation/schedule at the service I volunteer with. We currently have five crews (driver, EMT, plus whatever probationary/underage/ride-along we have to spare). Each crew rotates the nights (1800-0600) they are on call during the week, and each crew has every 5th weekend on call. For example, lets say I'm on call this Wednesday night; next week its Tuesday night; next week its Monday night... and then I have the following entire weekend. The following week I start at Friday night and so on.

This works out okay until we get to the weekends... everyone likes the crew rotation, but having to be on call for the whole weekend is a bummer. Each crew member is responsible to find coverage if he cannot run and the crew chief of each crew is responsible to make sure he/she has two people to staff a truck.

We are the only volly EMS service in our area that has designated crew assignments for the evenings, whereas our daytime crews are sign-up only (90% of the daytime is covered).

Just for my own curiosity, what kind of schedule or crew system does your service use?

Thanks- steve

[Defiant1]

ok, now first off, we have 2 full time EMT's that are on duty from about 700 to about 1600 hours on the weekdays. during weekends, evenings, what have you... it's whoever answers the pager, and to my knowledge, we've not missed a call that often. though it may be different in each area. another thing is that alot of times, there's only 2 EMT's on the rig for most runs; one driving, one in back with the patient. and that seems to work out fine for us.

[BEorP]

ok, now first off, we have 2 full time EMT's that are on duty from about 700 to about 1600 hours on the weekdays. during weekends, evenings, what have you... it's whoever answers the pager, and to my knowledge, we've not missed a call that often. though it may be different in each area. another thing is that alot of times, there's only 2 EMT's on the rig for most runs; one driving, one in back with the patient. and that seems to work out fine for us.

And what happens when you do?

[rat115]

We have about 20 folks on our volly service not counting however many students there are at a time. We have a schedule that we sign up on for the upcoming month. We are required to sign up for 144 hours on call a month. We can sign up for a full 12-hour shift or if there is a reason that we can not do that half of the shift. (0600-1200 for example.) There are a few who work odd hours and some that have young children so the other half of those shifts are normally easily covered. We are required as part of our 144 hours that we take 3 weekend shifts. They can be all in one weekend or spread out. Then, if something comes up and we are unable to work our shift, we are supposed to find someone to cover our shift and either trade shifts or take one that was not signed up for. The one exception to finding someone is if it's an emergency, and we're required to get hold of the director and let him know what's up in an emergency so he can get someone else to cover.

[strippel]

144 hours a month, Damn. The last place I volunteered we had a minimum of 24 hours a month. You must be pretty rural with low call volume to have that many on call hours.

When I volunteered, daytime was it's own thing. There was supplemental paid staff, because nobody would run on Saturdays or Sundays. Sunday-Friday nights had a set crew, with the same people usually running the same night 18-06.

As call volume increased, so did the paid people, and the volunteers dwindled. Now, it's paid 24/7 with ALS, but there is still room for volunteers. Call volume went from 1600 a year, to about 5000 in less than 12 months. Got to love progress.

Steve, if you are from the place where the grass is green, make your operations manager work weekends.

[bandaidpatrol]

And what happens when you do?

Same thing that would happen if they were all tied up and had another run... Call Mutual Aid.

[JakeEMTP]

Same thing that would happen if they were all tied up and had another run... Call Mutual Aid.

Call mutual aid because no one answered the page? Hmmm....

We are required to sign up for 24 hrs a month. As your service, the shifts are 06:00 to 18:00 or 18:00 to 06:00. weekdays, weekends doesn't matter. We have a some paid staff members who function in the Paramedic capacity and rotate weekend coverage. It's irrelevant as the county has put all 911 service up for bid except for the City of Greenville which is taken care of by Greenville Fire & Rescue.

[Defiant1]

ok, this is in response to all those who want to know what happens when the squad i'm on doesn't answer the page. what happens is they'll page us like 2 or 3 times, if we don't respond on the 2nd or 3rd page, then county will page Menomenie Fire for the run. as far as what happens after, i'm not sure, it's only ever happened once to my memory.

[BlackSheep]

Our county has paid EMS services 0600-1800 and again 2300-0600. The paid folks cover Monday-Friday, with the night medic covering Sunday-Thursday. I should also add, just recently an EMT-B was added to the daytime paid crew, normally they run 2 medics to a truck, with 2 crews during the day and 1 medic w/a volunteer driver at night.

Paid medics are not allowed to respond to “off hours” calls, yet volunteers assist paid medics 24/7!

My particular squad members cover Sunday 0600-1800 ALS & 1800-2400 BLS (EMT-J), Monday 1800-2400-ALS, Tuesday 0600-1800 BLS to assist paid EMS & 1800-2400 ALS, Wednesday 1800-2400 BLS (EMT-J), Thursday 1800-0600 ALS, Friday 1900-0300 ALS, and Saturday 0600-0600 BLS. Our squad expects folks to run 24 hrs a month, most do.

I should note there are 5 other rescue squads as well as numerous first responders in our county. We have a population of less than 30,000, in a rural location with the closest hospital 35+ miles away. We also have mutual aid from surrounding counties and "birds" available for rapid transport.

There has been a push to go to full time paid EMS, a vote more than likely will be cast next month to move in that direction, without much say from the volunteers. Our county has been going through the biggest growth spurt in 30 years-the board of supervisors are saying-"People moving here expect the same amenities they had where they lived, we have to go paid". [/font:2d0ed8f131]

[Dustdevil]

WTF is an EMT-J?

An Orthodox Jew? :?