Messy EMTs lose ‘stopping posts’

It's never been plush offices with easy chairs and big window views for the lifesaving paramedics and EMTs of the Area Ambulance Service.

What the service's front-line troops have had, though, is the ability to rotate in and out of three, low-visibility “stopping posts” around the city, where they can relax a bit, use a restroom, write reports and eat. That was until a week ago.

Tired of what he called some sloppy employees, Keith Rippy, the ambulance service's executive director, temporarily closed the stopping posts to remind employees what it feels like to ride out a 12-hour shift in the front seat of an ambulance.

“The expectation is they pick up after themselves, don't leave half-eaten hamburgers on the table, that they sweep and mop and take the garbage to the dumpster so we don't attract bugs,” Rippy said on Friday.

He said he has 38 front-line employees on emergency crews, with a small group that does most of the cleanup and a small group that “makes all the mess.” Those cleaning are tired of doing it for those who won't, he said.

Employees now have stepped forward to create a cleaning checklist, which has prompted Rippy to reopen the stopping posts.

He acknowledged that some of his employees have turned disgruntled, too, because of staff shortages, a status Rippy called temporary.

Nonetheless, the shortages have required him to ask some employees who have been working three 12-hour shifts a week to work four, and to ask some part-timers to work more than part time. Some employees also have been asked to work an occasional 16-hour shift, he said.

Rippy said he has a few injured or sick employees, someone on maternity leave and someone at Army reserve training. Three of six people recently hired washed out in training, and six others interviewed this week didn't make the grade.

“We're not out here selling shoes,” he said. “We're doing some serious business.”

The service has six ambulances on the street during the day and four at night. On average, ambulance crews are working a call about one-third of the time they are on duty, he said.

Area Ambulance Services serves residents in Cedar Rapids, Marion, Robins, Springville, Bertram, Swisher, Shueyville, Ely, Fairfax, Walford, Atkins, Solon and Palo, and it also has a branch in Buchanan County.

An anonymous letter from an unhappy Area Ambulance employee or sympathizer on Friday talked about grueling work schedules, the closed stopping posts and the long hours in ambulances.

A long-running point of discussion in Cedar Rapids has been whether the Area Ambulance Service and the Cedar Rapids Fire Department - where the majority of calls are medical runs - should join forces.

New City Council member Don Karr recently made mention of the issue, to which City Manager Jim Prosser replied that such a merger “is not low-hanging fruit.”

Rippy on Friday said the Area Ambulance Service needs to be a stand-on-its-own operation, and Mayor Ron Corbett said Friday that flood recovery and boosting the local economy now are at the top of the city's priority list, not making a change in emergency medical services.