L.11.2 University of North Carolina: School of Medicine and UNC Hospitals: N.C. Memorial Hospital Oral History Project

1 L.11.2 University of North Carolina: School of Medicine and UNC Hospitals: N.C. Memorial Hospital Oral History Project Interview L-0356 Jeanette Jones 10 October 2012 Transcript - 2

2 Jeanette Jones, Former EMS Director of Orange County, NC Anthony Peters Date: October 10 th, 2012 Okay great. Okay, oh, thank you again for meeting with me. Before Do you have any time constraints at the end for you? Say that again. Any time constraints? No. I mean, I don t want to be here all night. I work tomorrow, and I have to drive to Memphis, so. Okay. Well, thank you for meeting with us Again, I m Anthony Peters, medical student at UNC. I m here with Jeanette Jones. Former EMS Director of the Orange County First EMS. So to get us started, I would like to hear a little bit about your early life here, where you grew up, what your family was like, and maybe we can start there. I grew up in Cornwell County. We moved to Chapel Hill in 74, I think it was no I know, we move to Chapel Hill. We moved to Chapel Hill. When my firs my third daughter was born, my other two were born there in Charlotte I lived in Charlotte first and then we moved to Chapel Hill. So we lived in Chapel Hill, my children went to school in Chapel Hill schools. Okay. That s pretty much my life right there. Growing you had brothers and sisters? I had six brothers and two sisters, very large family. And I was the oldest. I m the oldest. And what was high school like for you? What were you interested in? What did you do? In class or outside class? When I went to high school, all the teachers thought that I was going to be a teacher, so everybody went right Oh! Go to woman s college, you got to go be a teacher, and all that. I didn t go to college then. I just graduated high school and went to work. Like everybody else did back then. I mean, my family was very

3 poor, so we didn t have the facilities that other people had so. Not that I missed anything, but I made up for it. Yeah. What was your first job? It was administrative assistant in a mill in Grand Falls; I was worked in the office. Okay. And then I got married and moved to Charlotte, and then I worked in an electrical contracting office. Okay. Helped them bid the electrical work for houses and things like that. As the secretary so pretty varied I guess. Pretty varied, I guess? Pretty varied. Then I came to when I came to Chapel Hill I was the Kindergarten and Day Care Director for the Carbon Methodist Church. I worked at UNC hospital in the department of biochemistry as the secretary for several years for Dr. Ekelousma Okay. So then I became the Kindergarten and Day Care Director Carbon Methodist Church, and that s where I was when I got involved in with EMS. All right. We ll come back to this story, I cut you off on. That s okay. And so then, like I said the fire departments and business men got together and decided we needed an ambulance service, in the southern part of Orange County because we didn t have any if you needed to go to the hospital, by ambulance, the ambulance had to come from Durham. That s obliviously not life saving. So they started the rescue squad through the fire department. And most of the first members were fire department and or wives and people involved. We took American Red Cross Aid course, as our training. I ve done this ambulance, since and went we didn t even have radios, we had pagers that were set off by the UNC hospital telephone operator, they would call the Sheriff s Department, the Sheriff s

4 Department would call the hospital, and the hospital would set our pagers off. And that would mean you get in your car and drive here to pick up an ambulance to go on a call. So it wasn t exactly short term. Right. How timely was it? But it didn t last a long time. We, like I said we made Brunswick stews, sold it, brought our own ambulances, and we re also lucky enough to have a lot of medical students who wanted to get involved with the EMS about the time we started expanding some, so we had lots of medical students who worked, members of South Andersen squad, it was all called South Andersen Squad then. Okay. So you had medical students, folks form the fire department? And we had nurses. Nurses. And some doctors, who would come by. Then it became routine, I m not going to say required, although I think everybody did, that third year medical students pulled a term of riding on the ambulance with us. Okay. And that s how they got their patient care training in the ambulance. Was riding with us. That s good experience. But after we expanded to be doing other things, we did, we went with the IV s team to learn all about how to start IV s. We went with the respiratory, to learn all about breathing and stuff. We went in the OR and intubated. Did all of our training through UNC hospital. Okay. So we were lucky enough to have all that. We some of us actually took the first paramedic course that was offered in North Carolina. There wasn t. Who offered that?

5 The state. The state offered that. There was one group in I can t remember the county now. It is in the wes the west, it s not Buncombe it s one of the counties there. Their medical director actually grandfathered them in as paramedics, so they were the first group of paramedics in North Carolina. But we were the first group of paramedics that took the course. And let s see, we had paramedics before in Mecklenburg county, or Wikes county, or Durham country, or Guilford County, we were all this was the first group, other than the group in the western part of the state. In North Carolina. So we kind of led the way with the paramedics program. Very neat, very neat. And Miss Jones, what was your role from the very beginning? What was your kind of? First of all, I was a crew just like everybody else, and then I began to teach EMT classes. The relationship with the northern county was a little testy to say the least. They had started first, they actually gave us our first ambulance, which was an old hearst and they somebody gave it to them and they gave it to us when we started. But still there was kind of like the north and the south, literally. But most of us in the daytime anyway, we were all friends with everybody so I taught the first EMT class that Orange county rescue squad had. Which was the northern end of the county. So you were teaching both north and south? I taught EMT classes here, but I didn t teach our people necessarily because I taught them through Durham Tech. Dr Griggs and the others doctors from the hospital set up our training, so we had monthly training, and all that. We took our first EMT class actually through UNC hospital. It was taught through the nurses and doctors in the ER. That was when the Caroline book first came out. The Caroline book? That was the bible for EMT s. But it was fun, it was scary, it was, we thought we were something else, and then we realized [inaudible] only go. But anyway we had lots and lots and hospital of support from the hospital. Most of which we certainly didn t pay for. They would teach our classes. The respiratory therapy department Lucy Fort, was one of the first nurses, who spent a lot of time with us in pack groups, who was Tom s wife, was also a

6 nurse. We had lots of training with nurses. Later on Barbara Overby was the nurse ALS liason between UNC hospital and the Orange County EMS. When, obviously after times goes on, you can t continue to volunteer, which is what we were, volunteers at that time. You can t continue to volunteer, people have jobs and they can t give all their time that is required for training, so South Orange Rescue squad hired three people: myself, Clyde who became my husband, and Barnaby Bloomfield. So we were the first three employees. What were the roles of the second two gentlemen? We were all EMT s when we started. All EMT s? You had to have two for an ambulance, so it took we worked all the time, but three of us got one day off or two days off a week and when get off. We had a pretty good schedule, it wasn t bad. But then with all the other requirements to become a paramedic, and all the other kind of stuff, which of course we wanted to expand. It just became impossible to have it as a volunteer, but although we continued as a volunteer paramedic level at South Orange for several years, before we actually became county employees. And they still have South Orange Rescue Squad, which is volunteer. So but they re not they assist the EMS system. Provide an extra ambulance, they do technical rescue, and field rescue and things that the EMS doesn t that county EMS doesn t do. So they still they still provide a good service. Okay, that s how the two organization works together somewhat? Yes, somewhat. Somewhat. Got it. All right, you mention that, I wonder if I m correct, in the beginning, a little bit, in the funding. You mention selling Brunswick stews, how else, where else did the money come from? Contributions. Okay.

7 Nobody was charged for any ambulance ride. But we got lots of contributions. Did you fundraise? Oh yeah. In order to build the building at South [inaudible] which is in Carver, we sold bricks on the streets. Obviously you didn t get a brick but you buy a brick to build the building. And the building was actually paid for when we built it, that way. But we did lot s of Brunswick s stew. We did fries. We did sold bricks. We just and we just had good contributions. People just sent money. They would send money when they rode in the ambulance even though there was not a charge for it, when they could. But if they couldn t they didn t have to. So good support financially. So how long did it take from the idea generation to the first day that you guys were riding? From when we started? From when everybody came up with the idea, that when you did an EMS. Till we were riding? Probably not very long. Because Harper s call was in of course we were all volunteers I don t really remember when the first call was. It was in 71, whenever it was. Then we had chief. Lloyd Center was our chief and he was the druggist. He was the pharmacist for Carver so he had helped with the beginning of it. He was chief of the operation? He was chief of the he was chief of the rescue squad. Rescue squad. And what was his background? Pharmacy. He was a pharmacist. He owned the drug store in Carver. And was one of the founding fathers out of the rescue squad. A lot of this kind of I don t really remember dates and time and things like that. That s fine. Just getting too old. No, not at all. That was a long time ago. Just trying to get a sense.

8 We ran volunteer for I can t remember when we actually became when the daytime personnel who were being paid by South Orange and the time; when we actually became county employees I want to say was at was about maybe 75 but it might ve been 78. Because I in it five or six years. We ran the other way. And then --. Five or six years you ran as a volunteer? As a volunteer. Yeah, but we were paid. The daytime people were paid. The nighttime we still volunteered at night and we still had crews at night and weekends that covered. They didn t get paid. They were covered by people who wanted to be there. Like I said a lot of them were medical students. Because they got some really good experience. Hands on kind of patient care experience that medical students didn t get. And they were third year medical students. You had to be third year before, before you could ride. We trained a lot of medical students. We trained a lot of doctors. Who were about to become doctors obviously. Time frame, I m not sure about. I mean I m really not about four or five years maybe. Make sense. Okay. The daytime people became we became paid daytime employees. Which meant since the state eventually got involved with see that was all the EMS, that the state started too because it wasn t even in effect. There wasn t any state thing, but that was all in conjunction with that, and then the rule was made that you can t volunteer, you can you can t volunteer to do the same thing that you get paid to do. And that s fairly standard stuff which took effect. We could do it but once we became county employees, they wouldn t allow us to. But you took a chance that you wouldn t get caught and the county would have to pay for all that time you volunteered and they didn t have the money and they were not going to take that responsibility. So we had to stop volunteering at night. That was really tough. Because we felt like it was ours. Anyway, but it all worked out, so. And then I went to then once we became county employees I don t remember exactly. Bobby Baker was the emergency services director, he also started out at South Orange with the Orange county EMS system kind of all started kind of at the same time, that we started this other thing.

9 There wasn t an EMS system. They didn t have a county department for EMS. So but they hired Bobby Baker, who was a volunteer at South Orange to become the EMS director. The emergency services director because see we needed a 911 center. And Dr. Griggs and I can t remember that man s name raised the money. I mean, they went and got grants and wrote stuff and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation sort of founded the first 911 center. Well see that all started along with it. Because up until then, you d just dialed a regular seven digit number to get whatever you wanted. Fire department or whatever. Yeah, you mentioned previously people would call up the sheriff s office. They d call the hospital. To get us started, they did. But for a citizen, they would call whatever. They couldn t we didn t have 911. So we knew we needed a 911 center so that everybody could dial 911. This is when it really became popular. I don t remember the year for that either. But we those guys went out and got the money and we built a 911 center. The first 911 center was in the basement of the Chapel Hill police department, which is that old building on the corner of Rosemary and Franklin Street, there. And then later on we built the building out on New Hope Church road. And now of course we have the new building in Hillsboro, the Meadow Woods. I think that s where 911 is now. I mean, it s a big county department. It s an 8.6 million department now. Wow, wow. What was your clinical experience before you started this operation? None, none, absolutely, none. Really. None. Did you have a particular interest in providing in medicine, or science or providing care? Or was it kind of community? It was the community thing that needed to be done, and it was something I need to learn, so no I didn t have any background. No medical background. Tell me more about those early trips picking up folks? What were

10 some of the things you were actually being called for and how did you guys deal with it? Normal things like you do right now. Chest pain, falls, cuts and wrecks and lots of wrecks. Things like that. Just pretty much the same kinds of calls you get right now. That really hasn t changed. Do any of them stand out in your mind? Do you remember any memorable ones from early on that, either shocked you or? You mean other than doing CPR for 40 miles and things like that? That s exactly what I mean. Yeah. From early, I mean from Chatham County all the way to UNC hospital? Starting IV s riding down the road. All those kinds of things. No real rememborable calls. I mean from being in the hospital, from being in the ambulance with a patient who was certainly having chest pain and this was after we got to the point that we could start IV s and do all the other new drugs and things. And have him arrest before you get to the hospital. Defibrillating in the back and defibrillating then it wasn t AED s, it was defibrillators. With the paddles on the chest and push the button. And have him come back and say you burned my chest. Thank you. And that was what he said. But he was, he didn t. But he came back, wow. Doing CPR all the way to the hospital on a man who was found out beside the road on Esther s drive, this is one of my memorable ones and have him walk into the building, out on New Hope Church Road, to thank me. That was something. And there were a lot of calls like that. But I don t have specific ones. Those two stand out because they were just so just a turn around. Because we really worked on the guy, on Esther s drive for a long time, thinking. Not meaning, on the way to the hospital. Doing CPR. We really were not sure he was going to make it. But not only did he make it if they made it out of the ER it was a save for us. If they made it out of the ER into the ICU it was a save. But he made it all the way and walked into the building into my office. That s incredible.

11 That was really kind of special. Was there a lot of positive feedback from the community, as the program grew? Absolutely. Lots of positive feedback. They almost anything we thought about wanting, they helped us get. Yeah. Do fundraising. Do fundraisers and things like that. Wow. Any negative feedback? Or any experience? You re always going to have negative I don t I personally don t remember unappreciated negative feedback. I don t remember that. But there was some. It just that I wasn t on the receiving end. There certainly was some. If you cut their car up when you cut them out to take them to the hospital, they thought you damaged it more than you should have. I didn t cut cars so. So they didn t yell at you. I didn t do that part. I did drive the rescue truck but I didn t cut the car. Did folks ever complain afterwards that you guys didn t do XYZ correctly, or? Say that one more time. Did people that you came to transport, did they ever complain that you didn t do something correctly or even try to sue you guys? I don t not really. Later on when we would -- we actually didn t transport everybody we told them they could by cars and things like that, you sort of did but that didn t last very long. That was too dangerous to leave them in the field. There was a period of time where you d come assess the situation. Well this is after Mercy Medical. Dispatch started in the number one call center. See we trained all of our fire department personnel to the first responder level. We also all trained our 911 telecommnuicators to the first responder level and they took we called jet carson program for calling emergency dispatch which

12 means there are certain questions that you ask that are going with a certain complaint. And if they do this then they get a paramedic. And this is not still in effect but anyway was what we did. And you may just send a paramedic by himself. Because we did have what we called at one time when we started this service. We called it the initial response vehicle. We had all our paramedics in the vehicles. The ambulance crews consisted of EMT s. And so sometimes both went. Sometimes the paramedic went and would call back and say, Yes I need an ambulance or I don t. Even if a child with a broken arm and a mom sitting there, saying I can take you into the hospital, then a kid with a broken arm no other signs of anything, he ll send them on to a hospital. But they quit doing that that was in the days of Dr. Meer s. I don t know if you know Dr. Meer s? I don t. He was the Medical Director for us, and he also Medical Director he was ER Director, and he was also State Medical Director. I don t know where he is now because he s not the director anymore. I don t know. But anyway, that was something that went on too. Later on, this was very rambling. I ve gone from one thing to the other. Not at all. That s the way it comes into my mind. Absolutely. And nowadays if you call for an ambulance they would have to take you. Right? Or they have to come at least? They ll come, they have to respond. Certainly! And then. And if I mean, if a person is walking towards an ambulance. I don t know if they have I don t know if Jane makes some type of call. Jane is a medical director, Jane Bryce. Do you know Jane Bryce? Yes, I do. Yeah. She s a medical director I mean she s from the ER. She s a Medical Director for Orange county EMS right now.

13 Okay. You see, Jane and Barbara Barbara was the nurse EMS liaison. Barbara is retired. And she worked in the hospital and then. So I don t know if Jane allows them to leave. I mean, billing has a lot to do with it now too. Because if you bill Medicare for instance or if somebody has Medicare and you bill Medicare and Medicare doesn t think they require an ambulance, they won t pay you. So then the patient has had to pay. Most people on Medicare can t pay. So there s all those kinds of issues that go into it now, that we didn t even consider anything like that. Right. So when you but as whether they re made to go, or whether they have to take them in the ambulance, I don t know. I know they don t have a treatment and release. Meaning you can do some treatment and leave them there. I know they don t have that. Because that s just entirely that s not too dangerous if you have good paramedics, and everyone goes by follows the rules. But nobody really follows all the rules. I think that s too much of a danger for the medical director, as well, the patient and for EMS and for Orange County. I am pretty sure they don t do treatment and release but whether they just say we are not taking you, I don t know. Got it. Tell me more about the early folks that were involved in training as such. You mentioned medical students and nurses, and you did some of the training? Well, the medical students, actually rode, we actually trained them. That s what I m saying tell me about, training them. They go on the ambulance and we got to do a lot of stuff. But the training itself we had monthly training sessions, certain topics and the instructors were doctors and nurses from the ER. Oh, no from the hospital not just the ER. From the hospital. You see when we first started when we had monitors we had this thing called an act core, which was a machine in the ICU that we could radio your EKG to and they would call the ER, and then the ER would tell us the treatment. Okay. Cool. I don t know why they did away with that? It was cool it really

14 was cool. That s neat, of course we could also once we learned how to read EKG s, which of course we learn that through the hospital. Everything we learned like that, any kind of advanced training we got through that hospital. Were those free sessions that they supplied? Absolutely. Absolutely, free all the way. Nurses and doctors spent a lot of time, with us and the rescue squad. Seems by the end of it you had quite the clinical knowledge base. Oh we did, we got it. We were, and we had to pass tests and everything else. This was even before we took that state test. Okay. What do you think defined or drove a good EMT? What defines a good EMT? The ability to listen. To actually hear what the patient saying. Observation, and observe the scene, as well as the patient, and other things around. And then of course your clinical training which tells you what to do, when you see these things. But I just think it s just so vital, for of course this is what defines a good doctor too. Is to actually listen to what the patient says. Not assume that once they start doing something, they start assuming, this and this and this. They need to hear what the patient has and then react to it. So many doctors don t do that now. They just don t. But that s my definition of a good doctor. And a good any kind of good clinician. Don t care. Any kind. You need to hear what your patient says and be able to understand by what they re saying exactly what they mean. Because they don t know your terminology. They can t talk to you the way you talk to another doctor or to another nurse. So they can only talk in their terms and you just need to be able to listen to them. I hear so much from friends and family and any, whoever. By I told the doctor this but he didn t pay any attention to it. Or she didn t pay any attention to it. Not good. Not good. And I know that doctors are very busy and that has a lot to do with it because there s so many patient s waiting and things like that. And I understand the reason that they can t just let people ramble on like I m rambling because they have to get down to the business of doing what they re supposed to do since they only have 15

15 minutes with each patient or whatever it is. I know the rules are not set by the doctors but that s the just the biggest thing in the whole field of medicine; is you don t hear what the patient says. Does not listen. You re not getting the picture. Did you find that this was a skill you had from early on or some of that you really developed over your experience? No. I think early on as far as we were concerned, we had their undivided attention. They listened to us. But when we were out in the field we had paramedics and EMT s and everything else who did that same problem. The patient would start talking and they were already assumed exactly what they re going to do. So it s not just doctors and nurses, it s any kind of caregiver. You don t pay attention to what you re being told. You don t hear what s being said. You may hear the words but you don t hear what s being said. So of course we all experience that. We thought we knew better than they did. They d start talking; you re going to do this. I went through everybody went through that same experience. But once you realize that they really are telling you something; pay attention. It s much easier to treat the patient like that. So that s my biggest complaint with the whole medical field. Well besides the cost, all the governmental rules and regulations that you all are tied to. It s just tough all the way around. Do you remember any EMT s that really displayed those qualities or really stand out people in the organization over the years that displayed the qualities that you were describing? Oh lot s of them. Do I remember any names? Not particularly. Jane Bryce was very good at it. Barb Obary was excellent. I can guess you know I ve known Jane and Barb for years. Was there anybody that kind of mentored you or? Either doctors or nurses or people that? Tom Griggs, Jack McLauren, Lucy Fort. Lucy was just such a good person. Just a basic good person. She was an excellent nurse. She was respiratory. Respiratory nurse? She was respiratory.

16 And did she ride with you guys or was she training? Oh see was a volunteer. She was a volunteer. So she both. She was one of our trainers but she also rode. But so did Jane. I mean, Jane rode when she was an EMT, before she even went to medical school and Barb did too. But Barb was already a nurse, I believe when she first rode. I think she d been through nursing school. We had lots of nurses, who are excellent on the ambulances. Very good. But there s another there s other areas besides just patient care. There s all the extrication stuff things that goes on in the field with the rescue squad and EMS. That of course the doctors don t get involved with extrication, generally. But that s another area of EMS. I m trying to think. I just think Lucy, Tom and Pat Griggs, Barb and Jane. And Tom and Pat Griggs were two physicians? Tom no. Tom was a physician. Pat was a nurse. Pat s his wife. She was a nurse. There was a doctor. He was a medical student when he started with us. Ward Akin. A fabulous person to work with. Just as hard as all the rest of us. He had so much more knowledge because he was already in medical school. But great with patients. Great with patients. Well, there s lots of others but I m just sort of drawing a blank right know. Really, really good people. But good at what they do too, in addition to being good. Probably if I saw a list of names, it would come back to me, but I m too old for that kind of stuff. That s plenty, that s plenty of names. That s very good. So I don t know if there s anybody else or not. Yeah. Then on the flip side, was there any you don t have to state names but any folks that had difficulties with the developing the skills you mentioned? They would walk into the patient house, and the patient would become angry, just two words. Oh! Yes, we had those too. We didn t keep him around too long. Yeah. I was going to say, what did you do with him? We had ways of getting rid of them. I mean we re volunteering

17 remember. How did you get rid of him? I can t tell you that. I just encourage them to maybe seek another filed. We seriously did or give them extra training. We did do a lot training and patient assessment. Patient assessment is so important. But you ve got to first; you have to get the patient s attention before you can actually assess them. Before you can adequately assess them. You have to get their attention. Well you don t get their attention, if you make them angry. By the way you walk in or even by the first words you say to them. And we had a few of those, we didn t have very many. They I guess they chose other fields, and that was good. But we did have a few, but they didn t stay around too long. They decided maybe this wasn t for them. I don t think they meant to be that way, I think it was just the way they came across. Sent a few to the ambulance, to get them out of the patient s house, would you go bring me something from the ambulance? You know how we do that. But really not a lot. Because I think if you re going to get involved in that kind of business, you just sort of automatically have that feeling for patients. You have a feeling for people and it s just a good people skill. And some people just have better ones than others but that s a really important attribute is good people skills. Absolutely, yeah. You have good people skills. No, you ve made me feel comfortable. I m sure. Tell me a little bit about the early relationship with the physicians and the nurses at the ED. I m not sure that I can. How did they with being in regards to you bringing them patients, did they trust you immediately. Absolutely. The things you were telling them, or? Absolutely. They listened to us. Which at the beginning, we gave reports over the radio so they knew what to expect when we rolled

18 through the doors. But even when you didn t do that, if you couldn t get whatever yes very much. There was a mutual respect between the ambulance personnel and the emergency department. I ve, I ve messed around in the emergency room department in the last couple of years but my husband died in 2009 and I was in and out a lot. Of course knowing the doctors in there already because some of them I already knew. And some of the nurses. It was we probably were it was probably easier for us to have that rapport with the nurses and doctors because we already knew some of them. But I think that s something you have to build up. But the doctors were very receptive. The nurse s were very receptive and even though they were just, literally snowed under and running around like it, they do listen to you. Good ones do. And you have some excellent ones there. Excellent. Now I have been involved but haven t even been in that ER since, I guess 2009. So 10 and 11 and 12, I haven t in the ER since then. But I know with Jane Bryce things are good. I m sure it is. She s very good. She actually interviewed me. When I applied to medical school. We had a great talk. Yeah. She s a fantastic person. Of course, I raised her; you see that s the reason. Why she s so good. I ll mention that to her when I see her. Tell her that to remember, I raised her. Then when she went off to medical school I fed her dog and cat for her while she was gone. Did you really? And I really have known her for forever. When we lived in Carrboro, Barb and Jane lived right at the end of our street. How about that. So they re more friends than just medical relationship. Sure. No seriously. I do. That s real interesting.

19 Great people. Great people. Great family. Because the ER is lucky to have her. Greg Wares was good too. But he came from Arkansas. Okay. I sat on the interview panel that hired him, and there many a days I regretted, and I told him so. But we were good friends. So it was okay. That was okay. So I don t know where he is now. Just don t know. And I don t know who else was in the ER because I haven t been there since 2009. I guess Sandy still there. She s great. Sandy was one of the nurses. Dr. Manning, is he still there. Sounds familiar. Jim Manning. I m not sure. Fabulous person. But I don t know who is there now, other than them. [Inaudible] faculties of UNC, but hasn t been thee in 2009. Spent a lot of time there in 2009. Because that was when Clyde was very sick. So we were there a lot. And see Clyde I mean Jane Bart that was their father, so. So they took care of him? It was fair enough. Sandy and Thomas and all the people working there. You say you met your husband through the EM through this program? I actually knew him before. But worked closely with him. Okay. Eventually married. Let me see what else make sure I didn t miss too much of this, more than this. I guess maybe try to tell me a little bit, about how your responsibilities changed since the program grew?

20 My responsibility? Yeah. Eventually, I became the EMS director. But that was sort of like because Bobby was the emergency services director, he had 911 and the fire marshal s office and any EMS, and so he had to let go of EMS, and so that was me, and emergency management. And Pat Griggs was also the management personnel for a while with Bobby. Let s see: There s the 911 center; the EMS system; the emergency management, which they now call and there s life safety which, we call them the fire marshal s office. There are four departments in the emergency services. What s the third one, Emergency Management? Emergency Management. What is that? That is managing emergencies like hurricanes, and those kind of things. That s a state thing. You have an emergency management person in the office, they respond, not only here, but they may go to the coast to help, or whatever. But you plan. That s teaching people what to do in those types of cases and things like that. Okay. Emergency management services, basically: the ambulances, the EMT s; the paramedic and that. The fire marshal s office has the fire marshal; and two assistance in it. They do fire inspections; and work closely with the fire departments because there are 11 volunteer fire departments in Orange County. So they work closely with the fire departments and do training and stuff for that sort of thing and then, than was the four of them. The emergency services itself is the umbrella. That s Frank Montestioco, he s the director. And then the other departments. The emergency medical department Kim Woodward, and the fire and safety is David Saks, and Emergency Management is Durshan Pertell. Okay. So what was your day-to-day like as the director? I guess it went from the ridiculous to the sublime it was a lot of people working there you see because people so new and everything was new. Meetings, oh my did we have meetings. We met all the time. Somebody s looking for me. That s my

21 grandson. Hey, I m in Carrboro that s my computer, don t. Turn it off. Okay, I turned it off. Okay. That s my computer nerd grandson. Who s in his fourth year. Eight grandchildren and I have three great-grandchildren. Very nice. Are they mostly in the area? No. No. I have one daughter here, Well, she actually works for Emergency Services, she s the Administrative Assistance there. But one lives here too, two lives in Columbia South Carolina, two of my daughters live in Columbia South Carolina. So you were saying a little bit of move from the chaotic to the sublime or. The ridiculous to the sublime. The ridiculous to the sublime. A lot of paperwork and meetings. I mean its you have because this was the first time we ever had an emergency services counsel, I guess, if you will, in Orange county. We set that up. But all the representatives meet together, work and talk because everybody has their territory stuff and you get to sort of you become territorial about your own stuff and you don t want everybody to try and tell you how to do it. But in order to really work together we all need to talk to each other. So we went through law enforcement, fire departments and EMS. All working together. I did pretty good. I think they kind of did go on back a little bit, but I feel like they are coming back together now. Okay. Nick Waters was a director after Bobby Baker and he was the director s director. That man was amazing. Absolutely amazing. All experience basically, not education. But he was people person. And he had this innate ability to walk up on a scene and immediately identify the main problem. He was just it. And he died several years ago. And I m telling you this from the bottom.

22 Of course, I d already retired when Nick was when Nick became the director. Well I worked with him for over 2 years and then I retired. And he was the director of the Umbrella. He was the umbrella. He built that department up to just fantastic stuff. And he also was the he was there when the IRV program was started, initial response vehicle, QRV whichever you want to call it was started. That program was we had visitors from Mondovia come over to see our program. We were written up into Lane. New Orleans did just thought that was wonderful. So it was pretty good. That s great. What was so good what were? The good thing about it was you see you had you had an immediate well number one, you got all the fire departments trained. They were all and see so that you can t have an ambulance at somebody s door in five minutes. That s impossible. So you have to build this framework, this ladder if you will, of responders. So you have your initial response vehicles, which is a paramedic and those paramedics are trained past the regular paramedics stuff to where they can do other things, depending on what their medical director allows them to do. But then you also had a fire department first responder because when a fire call comes out or an EMS comes out, they go, they re there. And so you ve got lifting. But now, you see we trained them. We taught them, the first responders. Well, now the state of North Carolina teaches them. The fire department. Yeah. The fire departments. But we did that before they ever came plus or 911 communicators you see. Not only did they get a first responder course with Barbara Overly, basically set up Barbara and Jane pretty well set that course. And taught most of the classes. But they also did the Clausen program. We all took the Clausen program training and became emergency medical dispatch trained. So that gives you these levels, so that the first person you see is not the doctor. You see a nurse then you see whatever, like in the hospital. Same thing with the field. You can t have enough ambulance in an area this big 470 square miles to get somebody there to save every

23 life. So you ve got to build up a level of response. And ours started with first responder and the paramedics. So there were certain calls depending on what Clausen wrote as the requirement. Because we once you become trained in that you have to go by that or you don t have your legal backup. Certain things that an ambulance and a paramedic went to. Certain things that just the paramedic went and the ambulance would follow later if nec if transport was necessary. Everything, first responders went. So they were trained. So it gave a cut the response times. You had caregivers there in a lot less time than normal. But it also gave you a level of service that you didn t have to trans we didn t transport everybody. You just did not. You didn t even call an ambulance if they really didn t need it. If somebody got a hurt toe. It hurts. They fell or whatever. They didn t bump there head, they don t have any underlying medical problem. Those kinds of things. So it was very, very good. Excellent program. That makes a lot of sense. Sounds like that type of program we can use a lot more in the hospital even. That s exactly right. That s right. Absolutely. You ve got that right. It s a tiered level of care. Even if it s not a response, so. Makes a lot of sense. And you mentioned the department struggled a bit in recent years. What are they struggling with? I sorry, what? You mentioned that since that one man who was running the department passed away that it s gone down? Well, I don I don t no I don t say it s gone down. That would not my terminology. It s different and I don t I try not to judge things just because they re different as being good or bad. They cost more because an ambulance responds to everything. And they and he took but I think he s putting them back now. It s my understanding that he s putting paramedics back in quick response vehicles. I m not sure about that but I believe I ve heard that. But he took them all out and put them all in ambulances and that if you ve got two people on an ambulance and most of the time it s an EMT and a paramedic. But it could be two EMT s if you got a paramedic in a car.

24 But if you ve got a paramedic, whatever, you have room for a third person on that ambulance to get some experience and some training from these trained people that are already there. Which gives you some more experienced people sooner. So I don t know how they do that now. Because obviously I m not involved in that. Obviously I m not involved in it. Well let s see. A few more questions maybe and if any point where you need to cut me off but as you were building the EMS program and working some of those busy hours and then moving into the director how did you do the work life balance? Not very well obviously. I divorced my husband because of it. I don t want that fun in there. But see see my children were not little. Well they were at the start but they were in school and I obviously my husband was there at night, so it s just balance. It s wasn t that bad. My kids didn t suffer. They got their dance classes, and all that stuff in. One marriage down the drain. That might ve happened anyway. I don t know, you just did what you had to do. Like you have a work schedule and you have a volunteer schedule. The work schedule is Monday through Friday, daytime. And volunteer was the other time, but you didn t volunteer more than twice a month. Maybe three times a month. It wasn t like you volunteered every night. That what we had a good cadre of people. Like everybody else works. Like all working wives do. And husbands. All husbands do. They have to adjust too. That wasn t hard. Do you miss it at all? Sometimes. More than I well, when the people who are there now, were there when I was there and come up and start talking and all that when are you coming back, when are you coming back? I said, listen guys, if you re just trying to make me feel good, forget it. I kind of miss not the excitement I didn t ever miss the excitement but I guess the feeling that you re giving something to your community. I kind of miss that. But I still work. I work with the commissioner s office. What do you do? Well basically, I m in charge of boards and commissions. In charge of what?

25 Volunteer boards and commissions. There s like we have 23, I think, boards and commissions that citizens volunteer to serve on. And there s the matter of getting them appointed. They have to fit certain requirements all that stuff. Each department has the volunteer board kind of under them well that s my job. Okay. Verify if they live in Orange County. All this stuff. Sounds interesting. Fix up the abstracts and actually send to the commissioners meetings. That keeps you busy. It s interesting. It keeps me busy. And then two days a week work in finance department. Okay. Post deposits. Match checks. Check insurance. Things to make sure that the insurance companies are not overcharging and that people are paying what they re supposed to pay. Things like that. You sure do keep busy. I only work part-time five days a week. But I m not going to stop working unless I have to. No, you re not going to stop working? I think it keeps I think working keeps you young. I mean, I m 78 years old, so I do think I do pretty good. Quite well, quite well. Absolutely. I would agree. I m just going to make sure I didn t miss anything big here. No. One more set of questions here. And I know you were never directly a clinician at NC Memorial but we learned a little bit and this talks about how it was a racially segregated hospital during its early beginnings? See we didn t get involved in the we didn t even see that or experience that or nothing like that.

26 I just wanted to see if there was any of that that you saw or experienced in the any EMS workers? Now as far as the rescue squad itself, the EMS and that kind of thing, there were very few I m not sure we had but one. There was a couple on the northern end of the county. There were very few blacks who got involved in that. As volunteers? As volunteers or even as paid. They were very we had very few we fight to get paid we meaning they now fight to paid any other kind anything besides white. Because it s not apparently it s not their cup of tea. Becau now the ones that we had were fantastic. There was one girl, Jackie. I can t remember Jackie s last name, I don t know if she s still working in Durham or not. She was fabulous. She was one of our volunteers. And she was also one of our paid people. I m trying to think. About John Jeffreys who is really Indian but whatever, was the chief and everything in Orange County rescue squad but he was really into it. So you didn t have many. Very many more. Have a large contingent of --. Oh, No. Non-whites. We did not. We did not. Well, a couple of a couple from India. We had Sanjay, and I can t remember the other one. And they were fabulous. But just, I m telling you it was not their cup of tea. They didn t care for that kind of thing. Because it s messy. I mean, it s messy. It s bloody and it s gory. So no, very few. But the hospital itself now, there were plenty of. When we started taking patients there, and all that. What about when the patient s you served? Did you feel like any group was calling for EMS more or less? I don t believe so. I don t we don t ever really we may have one or two people. Our regulars, but that s not a group.

27 But did you feel like you served mostly white individuals were calling versus black. No. I think we had both. I would not say one more than the other. I do not think so at all. And the other thing that it mentions here is that NC Memorial had, in its earlier beginnings had few female physicians. Did you ever run into any of that or was an even distribution here with the EMS crew? Male and female? Yes. Oh yes. We had we might have had more women than men. I don t I mean I would have to look and see but no, no, we had both that wasn t whether you were male or female never did enter into the interview process of the serving process for us. We didn t care. And there were female physicians in the UNC. Probably not as many as there are now. But I mean Judy Tentanelly was the emergency department director. Sure. And this was in the 1950 s, 60 s? 70 s. It was 1970 s when we started this. Not the 50 s. I wasn t old enough in the 50 s. Yes Ma am. We started in 1971. So in those I really never paid attention to that so I can t even address that issue. I think NC Memorial was around a little earlier. It was. Now I don t know anything about that. I had Lisa was born at UNC. My baby was born there but I told them when I left there that I m not you know this song that you re going to come back and have another baby and I m going to tell you one thing, I might have another baby but it won t be born in this hospital. And you won t deliver it. Why s that? He got the point. I was you see I came from a Presbyterian hospital in Charlotte that where my first two children were you

28 were treated like a queen. Here, anyway, I didn t have anymore because I didn t want anymore. Not because of the hospital. No. They didn t stop it but I would have gone to Durham Regional. No. I would have gone to Duke because Durham Regional is a good hospital. But anyway, we never really had we had nothing but a good working relationship with UNC hospitals all over. I mean when they allowed you to go into their OR and stand there and intubate patients, they allow you to go with the IV team and start the IV s on patients, and all the rest of the stuff. And the ER, you could do anything that you wanted as long as you didn t get in the way, while they were doing their stuff. We had a very good working relationship with that hospital. Yeah it sounds like a very good relationship. If all hospitals had that, if all emergency services had the same relationship with the hospital that we had, there wouldn t be any problems. We never had anything everybody respected each other. Because we were all working towards the same goal. We never had any trouble, no. Very good. Very good. Well I believe that s all my questions. My goodness gracious. I hope I helped you. Absolutely you have. Was there anything that I didn t ask about that you wanted to touch on? I know we covered a lot. I can t think of anything. No. But you re welcome to call me. Absolutely. It s been a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. You are quite welcome. It s been very nice. [End of Audio]

29 Duration: 65 minutes