A table set for four stood in front of the Red Clay Room on Thursday, May 23, 2019, during the 15th Annual EMS Awards Ceremony presented by the Chester County EMS Council, Inc. This Table of Honors was a sobering reminder of those who made the ultimate sacrifice. Each empty seat represented the men and women lost from each service: Fire, EMS, Police, and the Armed Forces.

A firefighter is still a firefighter, even if off duty. If they are willing and able, they will answer the call. Applications like PulsePoint make it possible for first responders (and those trained in CPR) to get a head start on a medical emergency, ultimately with the goal to save more lives.

On November 7, 2018, Po-Mar-Lin Fire Captain Robert Abel was sitting down to dinner at the Kennett Square Inn when PulsePoint alerted him through his phone that CPR was needed close by. Lieutenant Bastiaan DeVries from Longwood Fire Company also responded because of PulsePoint. Life-saving efforts began on the patient before the arrival of EMS.

For every minute that goes by without treatment, the survival rate for a patient in cardiac arrest decreases by 10 percent. Applications like PulsePoint strive to help bridge the gap between the initial call to 9-1-1 and the arrival of first responders.

Robert Abel, Bastiaan DeVries, Richard Franks, Sherry Broomell, Earl McComsey, and Gabriel Gray were presented with the Life Saving Clinical Excellence Commendation award at the 15th Annual EMS Awards Ceremony last week. This award is presented to emergency personnel who were involved in saving a patient’s life where there was imminent danger of death, ALS (advanced life support) or BLS (basic life support) interventions or treatments were rendered, and the patient was discharged from the hospital.