Job-Related Injuries Sideline Paramedics;Surge in D.C. Emergency Calls Strains Staff
D.C. ambulance worker Frank Fishburne says he's lost count of how many times he's been injured on the job.</br></br>An emergency medical technician for 15 years, Fishburne's first injury came in 1975, when he suffered a herniated disk as he and another ambulance crew member brought a patient down a flight of stairs. Fishburne was in traction for a month.</br></br>Since then, Fishburne, 39, has experienced a raft of injuries while on routine calls. He has injured the nerves in his right hand, forcing him to wear a leather-and-metal brace. Once, he said, a stretcher he was carrying snapped, hurting his back and neck and causing permanent damage to his facial nerves. And last year, his worst back injury yet laid him up for six months.</br></br>As the number of ambulance calls has surged in recent years, so have reports of serious on-the-job injuries suffered by paramedics and emergency medical technicians. The injuries, in turn, have pushed the workers' frustrations up yet another notch and increased the staffing problems of a service that, even when fully staffed, is stretched to its limit.</br></br>Moreover, ambulance employees and officials are concerned that an increasing number of paramedics and technicians are quitting after only a few years of service because they are too physically debilitated to continue.