‘Unsung heroes:’ Ottawa paramedics honour emergency dispatchers

Front-line emergency phone operators are being honoured throughout the week for their hard work in between hundreds of calls. CTV’s Josh Marano reports.

It may be a week of celebration, but for emergency medical dispatcher Willa Mason and her team, it’s business as usual.

Inside the Ottawa Paramedics Dispatch Centre, front-line emergency phone operators are being honoured throughout the week for their hard work in between hundreds of calls.

“We’re balancing the fun and the celebration with the work,” Mason said. “We have a really great team here that’s put on a lot of fun challenges and activities and things like that as well.”

The team responds to an average of 600 calls a day. Sometimes, Mason says, they’ll see double.

“Each call is processed by a whole team of people, and I love that because there’s lots of variety, keeps it really dynamic, and you get to hone your skills in a bunch of different roles and then cycle through them.”

National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week is observed annually during the second full week of April, recognizing and honouring those who answer 911 calls and provide critical communication support during emergencies.

Acting Commander of the Communication Branch with Ottawa Paramedics Breanne Lessard says the dispatchers are the unsung heroes of first responders.

“They’re the ones that are taking the calls and it can be someone’s worst day of their life, and these people are involved in that,” Lessard says.

“They can’t always change the end, but they can be there during and they’re the voice on the other end of the line that can help someone through the worst possible scenario they’ve ever been through.”

While workers like Mason play an incredibly important role in the process, they’ve been given some help.

Thanks to the new Medical Priority Dispatch System, introduced last year, dispatchers can input information provided by a caller and quickly determine if a patient needs immediate care or if it’s non-life threatening.

The purpose of the implementation Lessard says, was to keep some ambulances available and calls quicker.

“It’s given a better response… you’re able to send the most appropriate ambulances, better and more frequently,” Lessard said. “It’s less of throwing a dart at a board, it’s more specific and with the new tier system, it’s really helped with that.”

Most dispatchers work 12-hour days, but Mason says, there’s no other job quite like it.

“As we go through the questions and we get the information we need, we can reassure them, and by the end of the call, they’re calm enough to say thank you. Feels really good,” Mason said.