Skip to content

LETTERS: Paramedics focus on safety

Editor: Re: Patients deserve better, July 15 letters.

Editor:

Re: Patients deserve better, July 15 letters.

At 12:30 a.m. on Jan. 9, I collapsed with severe abdominal pains.

My husband called 911. First responders and ambulance attendants arrived very quickly. My condition was assessed and I was transported to Peace Arch Hospital.

This promptness literally saved my life, as my heart stopped after arriving at the hospital.

I am today recovering my full health, thanks to the ambulance attendants, the doctors and other professionals at the Peace Arch Hospital.

Letter-writer Don MacKay in his letter of July 15 is obviously angry at what he witnessed in his apartment building. Where he found the ambulance attendants “terse,” I saw them as forthright, as they need to be when confronted with a dangerously inadequate situation.

The ambulance attendants are highly trained and experienced professionals. Their concern is prompt assistance to the patient. Getting to the patient quickly, then getting the patient to the ambulance appropriately – walking if that is appropriate – is their focus.

Any criticism needs to be redirected onto the landlord or strata council, which has left him and his fellow tenants vulnerable with an inadequate and inappropriate elevator.

Janice Routledge, White Rock