N.C. names top paramedic team
at annual conference
GREENSBORO – Two paramedics from Stanly County unseated last year's defending champions and outperformed four other regional teams to grab the title as the state's top paramedic team.
Austin Nabet and Shane Lisenby were announced as the top team in the state during the Tuesday night awards banquet at the 2006 North Carolina Emergency Medicine Today Conference, held in Greensboro .
The announcement followed recognition of the state's five regional winners of this year's sixteenth annual competition, held Sunday afternoon before a standing room audience of more than 300 of their peers.
“This competition helps assure that North Carolinians receive the best care from their first responders,” said Drexdal Pratt, chief of the N.C. Office of Emergency Medical Services, sponsors of the conference. “The regional competition and this championship require tremendous preparation by all the participants, and that helps to sharpen everyone's skills.”
The paramedic competition also encourages continuation of valuable education and training, provides experience functioning under stressful conditions, and allows teams to represent their EMS agency for state recognition.
At Sunday's competition the teams were sequestered as each was called to respond to the same mock emergency, set at a boat landing at a lake. Four judges graded their performances. They were scored as they provided care to a diabetic grandfather who had taken his epileptic granddaughter's medication in error, causing him to have medical and communication problems, and eventually a heart attack beside his boat at the landing.
The paramedics were alerted to the situation by N.C. Division of Wildlife officers who were first at the scene. After their arrival the paramedics discovered they had their hands more than full when a drunken boyfriend carried his girlfriend in minutes later screaming in pain from a copperhead snake bite, and a check of the grandfather's pickup truck turned up his 5-year-old granddaughter unconscious in a car seat in the sun-baked cab.
“This was a tough one,” Pratt said. “They had to pay attention to a lot of detail to figure it out.”
Last year's defending champions from Stokes County Emergency Medical Services are Fred Lawson and Scott Brown. The four other regional winners and their counties are: Robby Smith and Devin Micacco of Union County EMS, Tony Graham and Matt Trotta of Lincoln County EMS, Michael Bachman and Jason Wells of Wake County EMS, and Burt Hendricks and Mike Lassiter of Wilson County EMS.
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