By Randy Arrington
LURAY, May 15 — During Monday night’s regular meeting, the Page County Board of Supervisors took a break from budget discussions to pause and thank members of the Page County Fire-EMS staff, as well as local volunteers, for their efforts to save two lives in February.
“While the job of an EMS provider is often thankless and often our efforts feel futile, I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight this particular instance where everyone’s training, teamwork, and the county investment in the EMS system, saved a life,” Page County’s Director of Emergency Services Matt Cronin said on Monday night.
On Feb. 7, Page County’s EMS was dispatched to help a 38-year-old female in cardiac arrest. Her husband had started CPR when volunteers with the Luray Fire Department arrived 4 minutes after the call was dispatched. Cronin and Odessa Shenk, a county EMS employee and a volunteer with Rescue 3, arrived one minute later — as did Nicholas Shifflett and Becky Hartsell, both Page County EMS staff, who responded from the hospital after clearing another call.
“As a team, crews worked together to provide CPR and advanced cardiac life support to the patient until she regained a pulse after approximately 24 minutes in cardiac arrest,” Cronin reported to the supervisors on Monday. “The crews then worked together to get the patient out to the ambulance and transport her while continuing to provide advanced cardiac life support en route to the hospital.
“After a nine-day period in the hospital, the patient was discharged back home neurologically intact,” Cronin continued. “Without the combined efforts of the 911 call taker, the patient’s husband, personnel from the Luray Fire Department, Page County Fire-EMS, and the Luray Rescue Squad, the patient would not have survived in order to receive subsequent care at the hospital.”
On Feb. 17, Page County EMS was dispatched to the home of a 71-year-old female complaining of chest pain.
“After arriving on scene and performing a proper patient assessment, EMS Technician I, Paramedic Matt Rinker determined the patient was presenting with a life-threatening cardiac condition that would benefit from air medical transportation to a specialty cardiac hospital,” Cronin stated in a second report. “Working with his partner and Page County ECC, a medivac helicopter was dispatched to rendezvous with the EMS crew at the Page Memorial Hospital landing zone.
“While en route to the landing zone, the patient suffered a lethal cardiac arrythmia requiring that the EMS crew take immediate action to identify and treat. Rinker correctly identified this arrythmia, provided appropriate life saving treatment, including defibrillation and CPR,” the emergency services director continued. “Working as a team, the crew was able to stabilize the patient and continue transport en route to the landing zone while treating additional arrythmias with defibrillation and CPR.
“Due to the efforts of EMS Technician I, Paramedic Matt Rinker and EMS Technician II, EMT-A Morgan Coffman, this patient was safely transferred to the flight crew where she was then able to arrive at the specialty cardiac hospital to receive the additional care she needed,” Cronin added. “This EMS call is a textbook example of how cardiac emergencies should be handled and thanks to the efforts of Rinker and Coffman, this patient was afforded the best chance at a successful outcome from her life threatening medical event.”
Both of the survivors of these events were present during Monday night’s board meeting, but neither addressed the crowd or the supervisors during the presentation.
“Although this level of performance should be expected since this is what we are paid to do, the survival of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is exceedingly rare in our country, as low as 10 percent of all patients. Of the patients that actually make It to hospital, only about half of those patients end up surviving,” said Cronin, putting a finer point on the essence of teamwork in a situation where every second counts. “Every link in the chain of survival worked in this particular case, and I hoped to recognize each individual for the important role they played.”
Formed in 2003, Page County Department of Fire-EMS is staffed with full-time and part-time employees. The county staff provides emergency medical services and fire response training for the volunteer fire departments and rescue stations in the county, and works alongside them in emergency situations.
The Life Saving Award(s) presented by the Page County Board of Supervisors read: “In recognition of your life saving actions at the scene of a medical emergency…” Those receiving the award for the incident on February 7, 2023, include:
- Nicholas Shifflett
- Rebecca Hartsell
- Odessa Shenk
- Damian Clark
- Eric Breeden
- Brandon Marston
- Sam Blosser
- Caden Speaks
Those receiving the award for the incident on February 17, 2023, include:
- Matthew Rinker
- Morgan Coffman
The Page County Fire-EMS Department encourages all citizens to sign up to receive notification of an emergency or weather event (tornado, flash flooding, etc.).
For more information, or to sign up for alerts visit the Code Red website.
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