Niagara officers recognized for bravery
Two Niagara police officers, one of whom suffered serious burns after responding to a domestic disturbance in Vineland that claimed the life of a son and his senior mother, have been recognized for on-duty acts of bravery by the Governor General of Canada.
On July 5, 2015, Niagara Regional Police Consts. Philip Sheldon and Dale Culley responded to a call at an Epp Street home and heard cries for help coming from inside the residence.
Upon entering, they encountered a 50-year-old man standing in the living room beside his 73-year-old mother, who was in a wheelchair.
Within seconds of the officers entering the home, the man ignited gasoline that had been poured throughout the room.
Sheldon, now 42, attempted to rescue the woman but slipped and fell to the floor. His body caught fire.
Both officers were able to escape the home, where Culley was able to extinguish the fire burning on Sheldon.
Culley then attempted to return to the home to aid the occupants but was forced to retreat due to the intensity of the fire.
Both the man and woman inside the residence did not survive.
Sheldon was rushed to hospital in Hamilton by air ambulance with life-threatening internal and external injuries. He spent 28 days in a medically-induced coma. When doctors brought him out of the coma, he went into cardiac arrest. They put him back into the coma for another two weeks.
At a ceremony in Toronto on Tuesday, Sheldon was presented with the Star of Courage by Gov. Gen. Julie Payette. The Star of Courage recognizes acts of conspicuous courage in circumstances of great peril.
In a statement, Sheldon thanked his wife and three children for their support on his long road to recovery.
“Numerous members of the community have reached out to me and my family since my injuries, their kind words have meant a lot,” he said.
While fast response times remain a priority for critical patients, he said EMS must also ensure paramedics are reliably available to respond to immediately because “it’s not minutes, it’s seconds that matter.”
“The rest of the system is based on outcomes where we’re actually using evidence to make informed decisions about how we model the system, how we are going to respond. Every patient does not require the same linear response that the traditional system currently provides. You call, the ambulance shows up and we check you out and take you to the hospital.”
That, Smith added, is not the best use of resources “when we’re facing a mountain of challenges.”
Instead, he said, the strategy would require an “innovated use of resources to collaborate in ways in which we’ve never collaborated before, with many community partners and stakeholders.”
Smith said Niagara EMS has been working with Brock and McMaster universities, as well as Sheffield University in England, to develop a unique strategy for delivering services.
That strategy includes hiring a project co-ordinator and project manager, clinical advisers, a physiotherapist, a crisis worker, new software and training programs to help triage patients who call 911 to ensure that they receive the care they need.
“We have a unique opportunity in Niagara to change the way we deliver medical services. When we’re talking about 10 per cent of the patients we see are actually true critical emergencies, really what we’re talking about is how we can provide better mobile integrated health services,” he said.
“Niagara is set up in such a way that we have an opportunity to try things here that won’t effect our neighbours or the rest of the province … We do things in Niagara much different than the rest of the province as far as the delivery of service.”
Smith recommended tapping into the $1.275 million in the region’s ambulance communications reserve to provide funding for the strategy implementation.
Regional councillors are to consider the funding request at their March 22 council meeting.
Several councillors Tuesday suggested the province or Niagara hospitals be asked to provide the funding.
Fort Erie Mayor Wayne Redekop said the province will ultimately benefit from a program that could be implemented across Ontario. As a result, he suggested asking the province to pay for it.
“It’s in everybody’s best interest to do things differently,” Redekop said.
Considering resources that have been tied up delivering patients to hospital emergency departments, Welland Coun. George Marshall is one of several councillors who agreed with the initiative, although he was also particularly concerned about the “staggering” amount of time paramedics spent waiting on offload delays at emergency departments last year.
“How many ambulances, and we just bought a whack of them and have more people to look after them, they’re sitting there doing nothing,” he said, adding the cost estimates related to the offload delays doesn’t event include overtime costs.
Smith called the record-setting offload delays “extremely alarming.”
Although he added that the problem is not unique to Niagara, “it doesn’t make it OK.”
“This is a serious issue for us,” he said, calling it a complex issue that needs to be address through working with local hospitals.