Bement EMS Receives Sizeable Donation for Long Needed Chair

By CHRISTY JANKOWSKI
Staff Writer

A few months ago Bement EMS received a sizeable donation from a source that prefers to be anonymous for a new chair.

Wendy Price, the EMS Director for the past three years in Bement, and has been a part of the Department for the past 18 years spoke with me about the much needed donation. She also works at an Emergency Room department. “I absolutely love working with people and that is what I was meant to do.”

The department really was in dire need of a new chair. Price stated she inherited the chair from another department and it is at least 15-20 years old. “They don’t come cheap of course, and we are not funded by the tax payers we areonly funded by donation.”

So, when someone in the community made a donation for a chair she was thrilled. “We were not sure we would be able to buy a stair chair with the donation. I had not priced one in a long time. Some of them are upwards of a couple thousand dollars.” However, they were able to purchase a chair.

Price stated this chair will enable them to sit the patient up and drive them much like a temporary wheelchair. “This one has four wheels on the bottom instead of the one we have right now that has two wheels on the bottom so the patient would have to lay back, this one we will be able to drive more like a wheelchair.” Adding, “It also has extensions on the front in order to pull out extension bars to lift a patient ya know let’s say off a porch into another area of the home if it is.”

In Bement and loads of small communities the houses are older and have tight spaces. This obviously creates problems for emergent situations at times. “A lot of the houses here are tight spaces, or have been added onto and you can’t get an ambulance cot in there. Say they are in a back bedroom we are not going to be able to put them on a cot, put them in a stair chair until we can get to a cot for the ambulance. Instead of waiting for an ambulance to get there and get their stair chair out, we should be able to get to them quicker. So that will be very helpful.”

“With this chair, use it anyway and not risk further injury and any other ya know, I think it will be great.”