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As a student paramedic at Algonquin College, Lynea Finn learned a lot about her job, from anatomy and physiology to toxic drug interactions and medical ethics. But what she didn’t learn is where the job she loves came from.
“I just assumed that paramedics had always been here. Nobody told me otherwise,” said Finn, who was hired full time with the Ottawa Paramedic Service in 2005.
“When I started working, I was with an older, more experienced paramedic, and he told me of how we’d lobbied to get paramedics and the citizens of Ottawa had lobbied as well. That’s when I realized there were so many other people who had a hand in getting me this awesome position.”
Now, after eight years of research, Finn has published a 182-page hardcover book, Paramedicine in Ottawa 1845-2001: A century and a half of saving lives in the nation’s capital.
Paramedic Lynea Finn has written a book on the history of the Ottawa’s ambulance and paramedic service.
The book begins with the city’s first ambulance ride: a sick man brought to the newly opened General Hospital on May 10, 1845 by the hospital’s founder, Elisabeth Bruyère and her fellow nuns from the Sisters of Charity.
It would be nearly 50 years before the city got its first public ambulance. It was operated, oddly enough, by the agency that would become the Ottawa Humane Society. Eventually, funeral homes got into the ambulance business, too.
“The funeral homes openly admitted they would secretly hope that the patient would pass away because then they’d turn around from the hospital and go to the funeral home,” Finn said. “They made more money with a deceased patient than with a live one.”
One of the more than 200 interviews Finn did for her book was with George Simpson, a former ambulance driver for Hulse and Playfair funeral home, who described answering a call for a young boy struck by a car downtown.
Simpson had no medical training and, since he was alone in the ambulance, the badly injured boy was left by himself in the back as Simpson raced to hospital.
“This was the first time I was alone on a call and I was so scared,” Simpson told Finn. “I had no first aid training so I couldn’t provide any care on the scene.”
At the hospital, “I was supposed to bill that boy for his ambulance trip, but I didn’t have the heart to even ask,” Simpson said.
Eventually, two private companies — Twin City Ambulance and Exclusive Ambulance — began to dominate the Ottawa ambulance business. But problems with care, in Ottawa and elsewhere, forced the province to begin regulating the industry and establishing minimum standards for ambulance attendants.
The idea that attendants could do more than just transport a patient got its start during the Vietnam War when a study showed soldiers wounded on the battlefield had a better chance of survival than did someone injured in a highway crash. Trained combat medics coming home from the war were soon putting their skills to work in civilian life.
The paramedic movement started in California and was soon adopted in cities across the United States and Canada. Ottawa’s paramedics got a boost in 1995 when provincial laws were changed to allow them to use medications in certain instances.
“I still have people calling me an ambulance driver,” Finn said. “And it’s true. I am an ambulance driver. But I’m so much more. If you say ambulance driver, you could still be talking about Elisabeth Bruyère. I’m not offended, it’s just that there are other terms more suited to what I am.”
The Heron Road Bridge collapse of Aug. 10, 1966. (City of Ottawa Archives)
Finn’s book describes some of the mass casualty events Ottawa paramedics have dealt with over the years, such as a 1942 train collision in Almonte that killed 33, the deadly Heron Road Bridge collapse of 1966, and the 1999 mass shooting at the OC Transpo garage that killed four.
Finn researched her book, digging through libraries, reading old provincial studies and legislation, and poring over personal histories of former ambulance businesses and workers, while working full time as a paramedic and raising her own kids, ages seven and eight. The book ends with the regional amalgamation of 2001.
“After 2001, our service explodes,” she said. “We get a tactical unit. We get a marine unit. … I don’t want people to think that this book means that we’re done changing and we can all just go home. We’re still evolving.”
The first copies of Paramedicine in Ottawa arrived two weeks ago and are being distributed to investors in Finn’s Kickstarter campaign that funded the project. She’s hoping to eventually have it sold in local book stores. For now, you can order a copy by emailing Finn at Lynea.Finn@ottawa.ca
Does Finn have a favourite story? Her “aha” moment, as she calls it, came when she realized the link between the modern paramedic — with a sophisticated modern vehicle, advanced training and a suite of medications and life-saving tools at his or her disposal — and those first nuns who dedicated themselves to saving lives.
“The more I looked at it the more I realized that, yes, the ambulance is changing, but really, it’s still a stretcher in the back of some sort of truck that picks people up and moves them from here to there,” Finn said. “That’s what Elisabeth Bruyère did on that very first transport.”
bcrawford@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/getBAC
Elisabeth Bruyère and her fellow nuns from the Sisters of Charity were involved with the city’s first ambulance ride in 1845.
A tactical police officer escorts emergency workers rushing to bring stretchers to the shooting victims at OC Transpo’s headquarters on St. Laurent Boulevard in 1999.
The 1942 Almonte train collision in which 33 were killed.
查看原文...
“I just assumed that paramedics had always been here. Nobody told me otherwise,” said Finn, who was hired full time with the Ottawa Paramedic Service in 2005.
“When I started working, I was with an older, more experienced paramedic, and he told me of how we’d lobbied to get paramedics and the citizens of Ottawa had lobbied as well. That’s when I realized there were so many other people who had a hand in getting me this awesome position.”
Now, after eight years of research, Finn has published a 182-page hardcover book, Paramedicine in Ottawa 1845-2001: A century and a half of saving lives in the nation’s capital.
Paramedic Lynea Finn has written a book on the history of the Ottawa’s ambulance and paramedic service.
The book begins with the city’s first ambulance ride: a sick man brought to the newly opened General Hospital on May 10, 1845 by the hospital’s founder, Elisabeth Bruyère and her fellow nuns from the Sisters of Charity.
It would be nearly 50 years before the city got its first public ambulance. It was operated, oddly enough, by the agency that would become the Ottawa Humane Society. Eventually, funeral homes got into the ambulance business, too.
“The funeral homes openly admitted they would secretly hope that the patient would pass away because then they’d turn around from the hospital and go to the funeral home,” Finn said. “They made more money with a deceased patient than with a live one.”
One of the more than 200 interviews Finn did for her book was with George Simpson, a former ambulance driver for Hulse and Playfair funeral home, who described answering a call for a young boy struck by a car downtown.
Simpson had no medical training and, since he was alone in the ambulance, the badly injured boy was left by himself in the back as Simpson raced to hospital.
“This was the first time I was alone on a call and I was so scared,” Simpson told Finn. “I had no first aid training so I couldn’t provide any care on the scene.”
At the hospital, “I was supposed to bill that boy for his ambulance trip, but I didn’t have the heart to even ask,” Simpson said.
Eventually, two private companies — Twin City Ambulance and Exclusive Ambulance — began to dominate the Ottawa ambulance business. But problems with care, in Ottawa and elsewhere, forced the province to begin regulating the industry and establishing minimum standards for ambulance attendants.
The idea that attendants could do more than just transport a patient got its start during the Vietnam War when a study showed soldiers wounded on the battlefield had a better chance of survival than did someone injured in a highway crash. Trained combat medics coming home from the war were soon putting their skills to work in civilian life.
The paramedic movement started in California and was soon adopted in cities across the United States and Canada. Ottawa’s paramedics got a boost in 1995 when provincial laws were changed to allow them to use medications in certain instances.
“I still have people calling me an ambulance driver,” Finn said. “And it’s true. I am an ambulance driver. But I’m so much more. If you say ambulance driver, you could still be talking about Elisabeth Bruyère. I’m not offended, it’s just that there are other terms more suited to what I am.”
The Heron Road Bridge collapse of Aug. 10, 1966. (City of Ottawa Archives)
Finn’s book describes some of the mass casualty events Ottawa paramedics have dealt with over the years, such as a 1942 train collision in Almonte that killed 33, the deadly Heron Road Bridge collapse of 1966, and the 1999 mass shooting at the OC Transpo garage that killed four.
Finn researched her book, digging through libraries, reading old provincial studies and legislation, and poring over personal histories of former ambulance businesses and workers, while working full time as a paramedic and raising her own kids, ages seven and eight. The book ends with the regional amalgamation of 2001.
“After 2001, our service explodes,” she said. “We get a tactical unit. We get a marine unit. … I don’t want people to think that this book means that we’re done changing and we can all just go home. We’re still evolving.”
The first copies of Paramedicine in Ottawa arrived two weeks ago and are being distributed to investors in Finn’s Kickstarter campaign that funded the project. She’s hoping to eventually have it sold in local book stores. For now, you can order a copy by emailing Finn at Lynea.Finn@ottawa.ca
Does Finn have a favourite story? Her “aha” moment, as she calls it, came when she realized the link between the modern paramedic — with a sophisticated modern vehicle, advanced training and a suite of medications and life-saving tools at his or her disposal — and those first nuns who dedicated themselves to saving lives.
“The more I looked at it the more I realized that, yes, the ambulance is changing, but really, it’s still a stretcher in the back of some sort of truck that picks people up and moves them from here to there,” Finn said. “That’s what Elisabeth Bruyère did on that very first transport.”
bcrawford@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/getBAC
Elisabeth Bruyère and her fellow nuns from the Sisters of Charity were involved with the city’s first ambulance ride in 1845.
A tactical police officer escorts emergency workers rushing to bring stretchers to the shooting victims at OC Transpo’s headquarters on St. Laurent Boulevard in 1999.
The 1942 Almonte train collision in which 33 were killed.
查看原文...
