Waukesha Fire Department Trains on New Defibrillators [PHOTOS]

Editor's Note: The following information was provided to Patch via a news release from the Waukesha Fire Department.

More than 40 of Waukesha Fire Department paramedics recently trained with Jeff Preston, sales representative from Physio Control, on new ALS heart monitors/defibrillators. The training culminated a yearlong process to replace monitor/defibrillators that are 10–15 years old.

The purchase was made possible when the City of Waukesha was awarded an assistance to firefighters grant.  The Fire ACT grant is administered by FEMA and required a 20 percent fire department match.

The ALS monitors will allow paramedics to monitor a patient’s heart rhythm, perform a 12-lead EKG, provide energy or electricity to certain heart rhythms including defibrillation, cardioversion, and pacing similar to an internal pacemaker.  In addition, the new ALS monitors are able to monitor a patient’s vital signs including pulse, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, and carbon monoxide levels.

Finally, these new monitors will be able to take all that patient information and transmit it to local hospitals. The goal is to provide the best patient care possible and to get all this patient information to a receiving hospital faster so they are able to be better prepared and for people that are having heart attacks they are able to activate their protocols to eventually get these patients into the cath lab for life-saving procedures.

The total cost of this project was $150,000 and replaced six aging monitor/defibrillators.