Airdrie paramedic speaks out on colleague's death: 'He was more than just a paramedic'

On Saturday, December 18th, an Advanced Care Paramedic suffered a cardiac arrest at Airdrie's Urgent Care Center. His name was Mike Hart. 

 

 

"We were pretty casual friends and coming up through the profession itself, we had a lot of aligned values," Fong said. "We knew a lot of the same people. We attended a lot of the same events in terms of the job itself and course, we had a lot of similar employers between standby events, clinical type situations, and of course on ambulance."

 

Though Fong and Hart's paths would separate and ultimately they went to different schools, Fong recalls why he choose a career in first response.

 

"In the late 90s, I volunteered for St. John Ambulance doing first aid. That ability to help others gives me this sense of heroism and an adrenaline rush," Fong said. "It gives me a certain level of pleasure to be able to help others."

 

When it came to his late colleague, Fong observed that Hart always put his patients first.

 

"I remember last year, after a stressful event, he [Hart] was there comforting a family, while we were trying to attend to the patient," Fong said. "He saw what we were doing, so he explained what it was that we were doing to the family, just trying to keep them in the loop, so that they had a measure of comfort. He was always willing to go that extra mile, which isn't necessarily found within most of our practitioners."

 

The sudden and unexpected death of Hart also inadvertently put the discussion of ambulance availability to the forefront in recent days. The day Hart died in Airdrie, HSAA, the Health Sciences Association of Alberta, a trade union representing paramedical technical, professional and general support employees in the public and private healthcare sectors of Alberta, posted on their social media pages that on December 18th there were two red alerts in Airdrie. A red alert is triggered when there are no available ambulances to respond to emergencies within Airdrie. That same day, an Airdrie ambulance would respond to an emergency in Calgary, with an estimated route time of 31 minutes, while a Calgary ambulance would respond to an emergency in Airdrie, with an estimated route time of 26-37 minutes.

 

HSAA  in their statement on Hart's passing made it clear that they had "no doubt [that] immediate care was rendered by trained health-care professionals – care in which our fallen colleague would have participated, had he not become the patient."

 

Due to patient confidentiality, it is unknown whether Hart's chances of survival would have been impacted if an ambulance was available in Airdrie. Alberta Health Services, in their social media reply on Twitter, said that "A shortage of resources did not play a factor in the care and treatment our colleague received." 

 

However, HSAA, believes there is a correlation. In their statement in response to Hart's death, they wrote, "There was no Airdrie ambulance crew available to respond. The fact that they had been pulled away from their community when this happened will be a hardship for our members who lost one of their own. It is unacceptable that communities like Airdrie are being continually left without an ambulance to respond to emergencies. Every minute matters when urgent care is needed – lives are at risk." 

  

For Fong, however, the discussion surrounding resources and wait times is more nuanced, but he did admit there is an emotional toll.

 

"At the end of the day, they can only give me one call at a time and I can only deal with so many patients at once," he said.  "If you're referring to the emotional distress that we have, whenever we're getting pulled out of town to go and do a call for a neighbouring community that's lacking resources. I do feel for our patients that have to call for service and they then have to wait for the next closest ambulance."

 

According to AHS, "The protocol and the international standards for EMS accreditation do not allow dispatchers to give an ETA. An expected ETA may be impacted by any number of factors, including delays caused by trains/transit crossings, collisions, weather and even re-assignment to a higher priority event."

 

Fong said that the issues resource issues surrounding healthcare in the province do not have a silver bullet solution.

 

"There have been attempts at solutions in the past that have been tried and there was never any follow-through or reporting from what I can recall," he said. "This isn't localized to the Calgary zone either. Recently, I had the pleasure of going up to Grand Prairie to assist with a hospital move. I was able to speak to a lot of my other colleagues within the province; from Medicine Hat up to Rainbow Lake, and they tell me exactly the same problems are happening to them with regards to resources and ambulances and call volumes."

 

In the days that have followed Hart's death, HSAA reported five red alerts in Calgary and five in Airdrie. 

"When someone's in and out of your life for 30 years, it affects you when they pass. It's a hard one because I know that when I go down a hallway, or when I'm at Stone Gate I won't be able to see him and shoot the breeze with him," Fong said.

 

Fong shared one of his favourite memories of Hart from Grade Eight. Both young men were presenting their book reports in their Language Arts class. Fong, who is a self-described 'nerd' choose to do his book report on a book by Peter David.

 

"He wrote a Star Trek novel, it was called Vendetta and it was written as a follow-up to the Star Trek Next Generation. That timeline episode of Best of Both Worlds where Captain Picard was captured by the Borg," Fong said. "I did a pretty in-depth book report. I correlated a lot of the events from the TV show and the novel itself. When it was all said and done, Mike, called me one of the biggest nerds in the world."

 

The plot twist? Hart would present his book report on The Hobbit - the comic book version.

 

"What I was mad about wasn't that he called me a nerd. What I was really mad about was that he was able to pull it off using a comic book. At that point in time, I realized Mike and I are going to be competing in one form or another from thereon in. That's one of my fondest memories of Mike."

 

Hart was 43-years-old at the time of his passing. He is survived by his father and two brothers.