More room for dispatchers in BCAS office

By: Andrea Klassen in News, Safety Kamloops This Week

The men and women who field about 100,000 of the calls for emergency medical care made in the province each year have a lot more elbow room these days. Earlier this year, the Kamloops Dispatch Operations Centre underwent a $1.2 million renovation that doubled the available space for B.C. Ambulance Service dispatchers to field calls, arrange patient transfers and co-ordinate with ambulance teams. “This is a fabulous facility we have now,” said Supt. Doug Garland, centre manager. “All our pieces of the dispatch operations can be here together. My office is here, the quality operations branch is here in the same facility, just off the floor.” Before the renovation, some of those pieces were housed in separate buildings, on opposite sides of B.C. Ambulance’s Dalhousie Street lot. Those pieces that were in the same room weren’t always set up in the ideal way. “We had a very small space that was not designed specifically for emergency dispatching,” Garland said. “It was very linear and it caused some problems with our workflows. It wasn’t as ideal as it should have been. “So, now we’ve been able to assemble our dispatching staff around our supervisor, so our supervisor can monitor what happens.” The centre has room for 12 attendants to take calls at any time, though usually only nine are required during peak emergency calling hours. A backup centre offers room for another 12 operators in critical situations. The Kamloops centre is responsible mainly for calls made between Hope and the Alberta border, though it sometimes handles calls from the Lower Mainland when needed. When a call comes in, a dispatcher will enter the address of the emergency into a computer, which is immediately sent to another staffer whose sole responsibility for the day is to send crews to the scene, allowing the dispatcher to continue assisting the caller. Garland said it’s key that callers know where they are calling from so crews can be dispatched as soon as possible. “There’s nothing more frustrating than to have a 911 call where people are trying to help and people don’t know where they’re calling from,” he said. “It’s not like what you might see on television in the fiction world, where we can instantly pinpoint where a cell phone is. “It’s important to stay on the phone even if you’ve misdialled. We want to make that contact.” Garland said 911 callers should also be prepared to answer questions about the status of any injured parties, and need to stay on the line until an operator says it is alright to hang up the phone.