Emergency services manager reflects on 'outside the box' paramedic care during pandemic

An emergency services manager in Greater Sudbury says more paramedics are expanding their duties into outreach efforts during the pandemic.

Melissa Roney says COVID-19 has been tough on front line workers, so they consider it a positive step to help deliver Covid testing and flu vaccinations to people who have trouble accessing them.

"We made COVID-19 testing equitable for those who could not make it to the assessment centre. Those who required tests were able to get them timely and a lot of safety planning was set up for those patients, whether they be those experiencing homelessness or those in their home," she said.

Roney says community care medicine is part of their scope of work, but during the last few months, more frontline paramedics have been pressed into community service to assist public health during the pandemic.

"That is certainly outside of the box of regular paramedic care or service delivery, and it was aligned with work we do with health promotion and that sort of thing with community para-medicine. However, there was a lot of frontline paramedics who became community paramedics quickly, to be able to stand up and respond to the ask."

While the paramedics on her team have never dealt with a pandemic before, Roney says they are trained in infection prevention and control.

"It's really within all health care services. We work in this manner all the time, whether it be exposures to bodily fluids or blood, or including blood, or to infectious or communicable diseases. So we we assume everyone is that way, or maybe positive, to protect our ourselves against infection," she said.

"There's always heightened awareness during flu season. But during the pandemic, there has been an enhanced awareness and caution taken, where we've emphasized with our staff that their safety is number one. We need to ensure that paramedics consider themselves first in terms of their safety, not to be going running in anywhere before a screening has been done. You're only good to your patient if you're safe." 

Roney says, to her knowledge, there have been no infections among paramedic service staff in Greater Sudbury.