IN an emergency every second counts, but for ambulance service providers, minutes are often wasted trying to turn stretchers in narrow hallways and down cramped staircases, making it more difficult for them to save lives.

Basil Ferguson, emergency medical technician and operations manager at Medic One First Responders, voicing his frustration on the long-standing issue and the strain it puts on the crew of first responders, said that a lot of homes and new developments are not emergency-friendly.

“The issue is the passageways are too narrow to be able to turn the stretchers to get into the room. That is where the big thunder is because some of them, they have some narrow passageways, so when you get down to the room, you are unable to turn to get into the room themselves,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

Ferguson said that when these situations arise, the medical team is forced to leave the stretchers in the hallway and carry the patient to the door, an activity that presents its own set of challenges.

“A lot of these new developments they are not emergency friendly,” he stressed.

“I remember a patient we encountered where the patient was roughly anywhere over 400 pounds, and access was one of the biggest issues…in terms of getting [them] from the room and out to where we could possibly carry the stretcher because the passageways to get to the room were very small. The stretcher couldn’t access the room, and we had to improvise to get the patient to the stretcher,” he recalled.

This task, he said, is particularly dangerous as they run the risk of dropping the patient or causing further harm trying to transport them to the doorway. As such, they have to be very careful, causing more time to go by.

“It really has an impact on the whole time of gaining access to the person, treating the person, and getting them out to more advanced care. If you were to go out to some of these recently developed townhouses and apartment complexes and even go with one of the crews on one of their runs, [you would] get to see how difficult it is to actually make some of these turns and you would be amazed,” said Ferguson.

He chastised developers for not thinking about emergency service personnel during their building processes, noting that by trying to maximise profits, they are putting lives at risk.

“Developers are [thinking] more about how many rooms they can fit on a building to make the most out of the money; nobody thinks about an emergency. The only time [people] think about health care is when they are sick or have a relative sick. Nobody plans for health care. It’s always at the last minute when something goes wrong,” said Ferguson, adamant that this practice needs to change.

“I think even with the parish councils for some of these developments, they really need to think about what will happen in the case of an emergency on some of these buildings,” he charged.

In addition to the narrow hallways, cramped staircases, inadequate elevators, or lack thereof, are a nightmare for these first responders.

Enoch Gooden, CEO of Life Call Ambulance Service, said that in most cases high-rise buildings will have elevators, but they are inaccessible.

“We have had to take patients down staircases because the elevator is too small. There are homes that in building them they didn’t actually set up and infrastructure for disabled persons, and so it makes the job difficult,” he told the Sunday Observer.

“Luckily, we have stair chairs, so sometimes going down the stairs might not be bad if the patient can sit. But when they can’t sit and you have to carry them in a flat position, that proves difficult, especially when there is probably no family member to maybe help you with the patient, and it might just be two or three persons,” said Gooden.

He noted that in many First-World countries like the United States, it is a standard practice for high rises to have a designated elevator for first responders, and similar action is needed in Jamaica.

“In Jamaica, there is no such thing, so I guess people just put in the small cheaper ones. As long as people can stand up in it, that’s their priority, not taking into consideration the emergency aspect. I think there needs to be a building code to address that,” he said.

Ricardo Russell, managing director of Affirm Ambulance Services, in a warning to citizens, urged them to place great consideration into where they want to live, noting that location and building structure are key, especially in the face of an emergency.

“In an emergency every second counts so persons [need] to be aware of their surroundings and have ample space for us to move,” he said.

“Location is key. I’ve seen persons living in houses and having the elderly live upstairs, and they are downstairs, but when we get there, we have to be transporting the elderly from upstairs to the stretcher and then to the unit, so we have to take those things into consideration.”