Hitchin' a ride with Allied EMS

by Paul Glahn
HARBOR LIGHT NEWSPAPER

The average employee will go to work with a pretty good idea of what they plan to accomplish in the next eight hours, go home, then repeat until the work week is over.

There is no such thing as a typical day for paramedic Erik Slifka and EMT Chris Heckman.

When Slifka and Heckman start their shifts for Allied EMS on Monday mornings, they could be in for the busiest day of their lives, or the most uneventful yet...they never know. On top of that, the 'go home, repeat' aspect doesn't arrive until Tuesday morning, 24 hours later.

The work week for the two consists of a 24-hour tour, Monday morning to Tuesday morning, then another on Wednesday morning to Thursday morning. Of the 48-hour work week, 36 is spent in house and 12 is spent on call.

Allied EMS covers all of Emmet County north of Powell Road. In the event of a patient transfer by a Petoskey ambulance, Allied will park one of their ambulances somewhere near the geographical center of Emmet County in case a call comes from either of the neighboring cities.

During one such transfer on their shift Wednesday, Aug. 8, while parked at the Spring Lake Park on M-119, Slifka and Heckman received a call from the KOA campground on the Petoskey side of Emmet County. Being nearby, they responded and provided assistance to the victim, getting her to Northern Michigan Hospital quickly and efficiently, despite Petoskey medics being tied up elsewhere. Had a call come in on the Harbor Springs side of Emmet County, backup Allied employees on call would have responded.

After a successful transport of the patient to the hospital, and word that Petoskey's ambulances were again available, the two headed back to Harbor Springs, making a stop at the airport to assist in a fixed wing patient transfer.

A North Flight jet from Munson Medical Center in Traverse City was parked on the runway waiting for the delivery of a patient from Northern Michigan Hospital for transport to Wisconsin. When the other ambulance arrived with the patient, Slifka and Heckan assisted in loading the patient aboard. The winged ambulance then took off and headed for its destination across the lake.

Another success.

Returning to headquarters, already nine hours into their day, the two joked about only being three hours away from the midpoint of their shifts, still unaware of what the rest of the day had in store.

"I love it," Slifka said. "You never see the same call twice in a row. Everything is different."

Allied EMS has an annual target of 3,300 calls. They average anywhere from 2,700 to 3,300 calls per year. Regardless, paramedics and EMTs like Slifka and Heckman still enter each work day completely unaware of what to expect.

"Each day is interesting because you don't know what it's going to bring," Heckman said. "You know you're out to help people, but you have no clue what you're going to have for the day. You have no idea what's in store."

This is part of the August 15, 2007 online edition of Harbor Light Newspaper.

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