A Delicate Balance

A story from East Hampton Village last week highlighted an issue that could well be percolating beneath the service in many communities, as local volunteer ambulance corps seek a delicate balance of morale and necessary moves to provide reliable emergency care.

A member of the East Hampton Ambulance Association was suspended after he complained about a village decision to add paid emergency medical technicians to the ambulance company, which has 40 volunteer members. He voiced those complaints to two of the new paid EMTs.

The details surrounding the 30-day suspension, labeled an act of “workplace harassment” by Mayor Jerry Larsen, are most intriguing because the nature of the conflict was that the suspended crew member worried that, the mayor said, “paid EMTs are going to ruin the volunteer program.” (It speaks to the nature of ambulance volunteers that the man, a volunteer EMT and professional paramedic, suggested that he serve his suspension after summer ends, so he could keep running calls during the busy summer season.)

Paid EMTs have become necessary in local ambulance companies — that’s a simple fact. There are so many factors at play: rising call volumes, the stress put on the most dedicated volunteers who are relied on most, the difficulty in recruiting new volunteers. For an ambulance company to survive without burning out its members, and still provide a level of emergency care its community needs, paid EMTs are increasingly a fact of life.

But the conflict comes when practicality bumps up against the altruism at the heart of a volunteer ambulance company. As with volunteer fire departments, these organizations are staffed with generous souls who are willing to provide care to their neighbors as a gesture of devotion to true community. They don’t do it for money — there is none — nor for praise. It’s an act of compassion.

So when that volunteer effort is supplemented with men and women who are paid to do similar tasks, it’s only human for there to be friction. Some worry that paying some staff will make it even harder to find volunteers willing to do the same (one of the messages that the East Hampton volunteer delivered). It takes a simple thing, neighbors helping neighbors, and complicates it.

But the move to paid EMTs is not intended as criticism, or surrender. “We wanted to help the volunteers. It’s just providing additional personnel so they can respond even quicker,” Larsen said, speaking for every proponent of adding a paid element to volunteer departments.

Two things can be true at once. In this instance, there is no question that paid EMTs are necessary to maintain ambulance companies’ response times — and, yes, to ease the burden on volunteers who might be willing to take on more than they should. It’s an acknowledgment of the system’s inherent shortcomings and the changing times, not a criticism of volunteer members, who deserve the highest level of appreciation.

It’s understandable that volunteers are sensitive to such a move. But one salve for that wound goes back to what drives the volunteer effort in the first place: the desire to save neighbors’ lives. Any strategy that results in ambulances making more saves is a good one — and if it saves a few volunteers from collapsing under the immense weight of their commitment, that’s even better, and certainly an improvement on doing nothing.