County offers leave for EMS volunteers

Key Takeaways

Facing challenges that could further shrink its pool of EMS volunteers, McLean County, N.D. eased the process for county staff to participate. 

The county of 9,700 residents changed its employee policy to allow county staff to use 40 hours of leave to volunteer for ambulance services. County officials hope that as training and certification requirements rise for EMS workers, along with burnout, they can increase the candidate pool by making it easier to serve. 

“In the vast majority of North Dakota, our ambulance and fire department people are volunteers,” said Commissioner Steve Lee. “They might get rewarded with a cup of coffee or a can of pop after a call, but they’re volunteer efforts, and the county should do anything we can do to make EMS work better.”

Lee said some county employees were worried about volunteering because they didn’t want it to interfere with their regular work responsibilities. 

“Emergencies often come out of the blue, so we want to make sure one kind of public service doesn’t stand in the way of another,” he said. “We’re finding that it’s harder and harder to find people to do these things.

“And it also goes the other way, that we don’t want to discourage a volunteer from wanting to work for the county if they wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving work to respond to a call.”

The National Rural Health Association reports more than 50% of rural EMS agencies operate on a volunteer basis, and 82% of counties have at least one “ambulance desert” where residents live 25 minutes or farther from services. That population adds up to more than 4.5 million people.

Lee spent nearly 20 years as part of a voluntary ambulance service in McLean County, primarily as a driver, but he occasionally administered CPR. 

“One of the real difficult things about being on a small rural ambulance service is that a lot of times, you’re responding to calls for friends and neighbors,” he said. “You’re not going and picking up a stranger, and that takes a toll on people, too.”