Paramedic Services

Service Commitment Statement

The Paramedic Service of the United Counties of Prescott-Russell is dedicated to ensuring the highest standard of emergency medical care for its community. We are committed to:

  • Providing an advanced or primary care response for every emergency call within our service area.
  • Delivering professional, timely, and compassionate care tailored to the needs of our patients.
  • Ensuring the safety and well-being of our patients, our paramedics, and the community.
  • Continuously improving our practices through training, innovation, and collaboration with health and emergency services partners.

This commitment reflects our unwavering dedication to the health and safety of the people we serve.

Responsibilities

  • Seeing to the operational and strategic planning of the emergency medical services.
  • Offering advanced primary care pre-hospital emergency services.
  • Insuring quality and supporting the delivery of services according to standards and arrangements under the Ambulance Act and Regulations on emergency medical services.
  • Insuring assessment, medical treatment and patient transportation by ambulance to the hospital and/or any other health care institution.
  • Insuring professional development of paramedics.
  • Ensuring follow up on requests for access to patient records.

Financing

The Province transferred the financial and operational responsibility of the land ambulance services to the United Counties of Prescott and Russell on January 1st, 2001. The cost of the service is equally shared between the provincial and the regional governments.

Call Management

Ambulances are deployed out of height stations and posts that employs more than 120 employees.

How are calls distributed?

The call to 9-1-1 is routed towards our Central Ambulance Communication Center (CACC) which is located in Ottawa and is managed by the City of Ottawa, with an agreement overseen by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. The dispatcher will ask you several pertinent questions to establish the priority of your call. An ambulance will be dispatched to the scene of the emergency while you are in communication with the dispatcher. It is important to stay in communication with the dispatcher and listen carefully to the instructions that he will give you.

Workforce breakdown

Our ambulance attendants are at work 24 hours a day to ensure a reasonable response time, even with the major area of the territory to cover. Did you ever notice ambulances parked in some random place? These strategic spots have been set in order to be able to cover a bigger territory when other ambulances are busy on the scene of an emergency and are not available for new calls.

Ambulances are deployed out of four stations. These stations are in Embrun, Hawkesbury, Plantagenet, and Rockland. We also have five waiting stations located in Alfred, Bourget, Casselman, Vankleek Hill, and St-Isidore.

Other Services

Pre-hospital emergency services

Definition

Our goal is to provide assistance within the best possible time frame, provide necessary care and offer access to the nearest appropriate hospital, according to the patient’s condition and accommodation capacity of the institutions.

In order to improve the quality of our service to the patients, our land ambulance services offer two levels of service: primary care paramedic and advanced care paramedic.

Our paramedics can provide authorized medical procedures in order to assure rapid treatment to a person in distress.

Advanced care pre-hospital emergency services are essential in a rural area like Prescott and Russell where the travel distance to get to a hospital is usually further than in an urban setting. Thus, in order to offer our citizens with the best possible service in a set response time, paramedics of Prescott and Russell provide advanced care that would normally only be offered in the emergency room.

Delegate medical acts

Paramedics practice delegated medical acts, which means that under the direction of a physician designated by our base hospital, they can provide medical care in a pre-hospital environment within established protocols. For example: use of defibrillator, intubation, starting an intravenous line, administering medications, etc.

Become a paramedic

If the paramedic profession interests you, please check with the colleges and universities in your area for information on courses and requirements.