Carter Selected as 911 Public Safety Telecommunicator of the Year
Jake Carter, Santa Rosa County Emergency Communication Specialist I, is the 911 Public Safety Telecommunicator of the Year for 2014. This award honors a dispatcher for outstanding effort in processing a Florida medical emergency call. The annual program by the Florida Department of Health, Emergency Medical Services with the Emergency Medicine Learning & Resource Center recognizes outstanding Florida EMS organizations and individuals who make a positive impact on local EMS throughout the state.
Dispatcher Jake Carter was selected as the 911 Public Safety Telecommunicator of the Year for a call he answered in November 2013 from a residence in Pace. The caller described that her 67-year-old husband may have had a seizure. Carter was able to determine that the patient was not responding and his breathing was ineffective. He immediately provided the caller with CPR instructions until the responders arrived on scene. A sheriff’s deputy with an AED was the first on scene; the fire department and EMS arrived less than three minutes later. The patient was transported to West Florida Hospital. Nine days later an email was received from the EMS Coordinator at West Florida Hospital stating that the patient was awake and alert, ambulating without difficulty and was likely to be discharged to his home soon.
“By utilizing his training, Jake was able to act as a true first ‘first responder,’ and was able to provide the caller with pre-arrival CPR instruction for eight minutes until the law enforcement, EMS and fire personnel arrived on scene,” comments Rick Schuster, Assistant E-911 Coordinator and Quality Assurance/Training Coordinator.
Santa Rosa County Emergency Communications staff are all certified as national emergency medical and fire dispatchers. Using a software program called Medical Priority Dispatch Systems, dispatchers follow a set of written and profession-approved dispatching protocols for the evaluation and response to every type of medical and fire call received through our 9-1-1 center. The software also assists dispatchers in providing the caller with life saving techniques like childbirth, choking and CPR until emergency responders arrive, making the dispatcher the first “first responder.” To ensure that protocols are followed properly, the emergency communication center has an extensive quality improvement program where over 200 calls are reviewed monthly.
The award will be presented to Carter at the 24th Annual Excellence in EMS Awards Ceremony at the 2014 ClinCon Annual Conference Wednesday, July 16 in Orlando. For more information about the award, please contact Florida Department of Health Communications at (850) 245-4111.
