Host Katie Jensen goes behind the scenes of Ontario’s 911 and ambulance system with Marie LaRocque, a paramedic Communications Officer with 25 years of experiences, and Acting Superintendent, and Norm Robillard, a former advanced care Paramedic with 37 years of experience. Across two episodes, Marie and Norm discuss the evolution of Ontario’s emergency response system, as well as its shortcomings and strengths. They share the reality of what it’s like working in a system that is underfunded, understaffed, and with high rates of burnout, while still sharing the impact they’re proud to have made. They also make it clear that a sense of humour is necessary for a job in first response, as they share stories about some of their craziest, and most touching calls.
In part 1 of this candid conversation, host Katie Jensen sits down with Marie LaRocque, a paramedic communications officer, and Norm Robillard, a former advanced care paramedic, to go behind the scenes of Ontario’s 911 and ambulance system. They reflect on dispatching emergencies across Eastern Ontario with minimal staff, evolving technology, and the relentless multitasking required on the radios. From dark humor and tough calls to rare “saves” and delivering babies, they share what keeps them going, and what wears people down. The episode puts listeners in the shoes of the voices on the line and the paramedics on the scene.
[00:05:36] How Marie became a Communications Officer
[00:07:52] The evolution of the dispatching system
[00:11:18] How Norm became a Paramedic
[00:13:32] Bilingualism in EMS
[00:16:28] EMS in the 90s
[00:18:59] What is a good call?
[00:21:03] How many paramedics make it to retirement?
[00:21:49] The intense multitasking dispatch
[00:23:33] Healthcare gap stories
Disclaimer:
Any statistics, facts or data references mentioned in this episode have not been independently verified and may not reflect the most accurate, complete, or current data. Please consult reliable sources for up-to-date and authoritative information.
[00:00:01] Katie Jensen: Applaud is proud to showcase the dedication of those who make decisions for the greater good and strive to leave the world a better place, for all Canadians. All personal views expressed by guests and our host are their own. Applaud will continue to recognize those in public service, offer a kaleidoscope of perspectives, and operate in good faith to build trust with Applaud members and all public citizens.
[00:00:35] Katie Jensen: When you call 911, who do you picture is picking up the phone at the other end of the line? And what happens to that person when you hang up the phone?
[00:00:50] Norm Robillard: Like, you just don't take that off, you know what I mean? Like, you take the uniform off, but same with our comms officers, you know? It's not usually that one call. It's an accumulation of stuff over time. And when most people say, yeah, how do you do it? We all have our limits.
[00:01:05] Katie Jensen: I'm Katie Jensen, and this is the Path of Public Service from Applaud, celebrating people who have spent their lives working in Ontario's public sector.
[00:01:17] Marie Larocque: We used to joke that we knew somebody was going to be a good dispatcher if they could take a 911, dispatch the call at the same time, and give their coffee order, and not miss anything. Hi, my name is Marie Larocque, and I am a Communications Officer and Acting Superintendent for the Paramedic Service.
[00:01:35] Katie Jensen: Marie started working when she was 21, and on her first solo shift, they gave her something easy, something to dip her toes in.
[00:01:44] Marie Larocque: There was two of us, to dispatch all of Eastern Ontario. And back then we also-
[00:01:50] Katie Jensen: Two dispatchers for Eastern Ontario?
[00:01:53] Marie Larocque: Yeah, and we were dispatching and taking the calls.
[00:01:56] Katie Jensen: And one of the people that Marie would dispatch to was Norm.
[00:02:01] Norm Robillard: Hi, I'm Norm Robillard. I'm a former paramedic with a large municipal paramedic service, having completed about 37 years there before I left.
[00:02:11] Katie Jensen: Norm and Marie worked the same emergencies, from opposite ends of a radio, for two decades.
[00:02:18] Marie Larocque: So, I actually used to tell Norm where to go on a daily basis.
[00:02:22] Katie Jensen: Has your working relationship changed at all since when you first started working with each other?
[00:02:27] Marie Larocque: The dispatching process has definitely evolved over the years. There's a lot less one-on-one conversation with paramedics now, whereas in the early days, they used to have to call in after every call, for a call number and times, and so there was often times to chat, get to know each other, catch up. Medics used to come in to dispatch, bring us coffee, donuts.
[00:02:47] Katie Jensen: Oh, that's so nice.
[00:02:48] Marie Larocque: Just come in and chat.
[00:02:50] Norm Robillard: Well, it wasn't without a purpose. I mean, I would bring them coffee and stuff to try to bribe them, you know, to make sure I got off duty on time, you know?
[00:02:58] Katie Jensen: Get the good calls.
[00:03:00] Norm Robillard: Yeah, the good calls.
[00:03:01] Katie Jensen: So, what constituted a good call?
[00:03:04] Norm Robillard: I was an advanced care paramedic for the second-half of my career. And if a primary care paramedic crew was on scene with a really sick person or a really injured person, and dispatch would send the advanced life support backup. And if she picked me, because I was closest to that, that was a lot of fun to be able to go in there and be two crews to help a really sick person. Or maybe it was a car crash where there was, you know, more than one person. Those were the ones that were very fulfilling for me to back up a crew, and we could all work on the same direction, right, to get this person to the hospital.
[00:03:37] Katie Jensen: Every year in Ontario, there are nearly 2 million calls made to 911. We have 22 Central Ambulance Communication Centers. They're sometimes called CACCs. That's where the dispatchers work. A thousand dispatchers for a population of 16 million people. And yet, with 8,000 paramedics on land and in the skies, Ontario still has the largest ambulance system in the country. They have a lot of ground to cover, a million kilometers, an area the size of France and Spain combined!
[00:04:12] Marie Larocque: When crews spoke on the radio, they didn't tell us which vehicle was calling us, so you really had to pay attention. It's a very task-heavy job, and you're constantly engaged. The only time you get a mental break is when you go on a break.
[00:04:28] Katie Jensen: Between offloading delays, increased call volume, and the growing severity of emergencies coming through the line, burnout rates are high.
[00:04:38] Norm Robillard: How many paramedics do you think make it to retirement in Canada? Percentage.
[00:04:45] Katie Jensen: 25 percent? Is it less?
[00:04:49] Norm Robillard: Four to seven. And dispatchers, I would say it's around one.
[00:04:54] Katie Jensen: Underfunded:
[00:04:55] Marie Larocque: There's so many other things that they just see, well, you're making it work, okay.
[00:04:59] Katie Jensen: Understaffed:
[00:04:59] Marie Larocque: Do you realize that the hospital being at 120% capacity all of the time means patients are sitting out in the hallways, like, you know?
[00:05:09] Katie Jensen: Today, we're going to try and make them feel a little more understood.
[00:05:13] Norm Robillard: I always say, if you've been a medic for five years or so, God chose you for this job, because no one in their right mind would want to do this.
[00:05:22] Katie Jensen: Because like Norm says:
[00:05:23] Norm Robillard: EMS, paramedics, is a band-aid for society, as I call it. When you've got nowhere else to turn, they call 911.
[00:05:32] Katie Jensen: Here's my conversation with Marie and Norm.
[00:05:36] Marie Larocque: So, I was actually born in Sudbury, Northern Ontario, and we moved to the Ottawa area when I was five. That year, there was massive layoffs all over. The economy was kind of crashing, and there was just no jobs in Sudbury. My dad lost his job and my mom had a newborn, so she couldn't work. So we moved to Ottawa. I grew up speaking English and French 50-50. My mom was English, my dad was French. I had...friends that were both. So I kind of had that advantage growing up. My family was always really big in giving back to the community and helping people, helping the less fortunate. So, I was involved in Girl Guides, did a lot of volunteering through Girl Guides. And then as a teenager, I started helping out with the help centre in Rockland. And the help centre was the early iteration of a food bank. So, they provided food baskets, they had clothing and toys and stuff like that. So, I always had a heart for helping. I then went to college for a year. I did the early childhood education, decided it wasn't for me. And then I became a pharmacy technician. So I did that, and I was at my sister's place and her best friend and her roommate was actually a paramedic student at the time. And she was working at dispatch. And she said to me, “Why don't you come work at dispatch? We're hiring people just as like a contingency call taker for the summer. You know, it could be something different to do.” And I was like, why not? So, I left the pharmacy with the intention of returning, and then I just never left dispatch.
[00:07:07] Katie Jensen: What was it about it that really sunk its teeth into you.
[00:07:13] Marie Larocque: The people, the medics, I became very close friends with a lot of the medics and my dispatch coworkers. Back then, we were a very small group. There were some days we came in, we were only two or three dispatchers. We were always chronically understaffed. I came in, there was a shift, I had just been signed off as an an ACO, as a Communications Officer, and there was two of us to dispatch all of Eastern Ontario. And back then we also-
[00:07:41] Katie Jensen: Two dispatchers for Eastern Ontario.
[00:07:45] Marie Larocque: Yeah, and we were dispatching and taking the calls.
[00:07:47] Katie Jensen: Were there like, multiple calls coming in at the same time?
[00:07:50] Marie Larocque: Yeah.
[00:07:50] Katie Jensen: Oh my goodness.
[00:07:52] Marie Larocque: Yeah, it wasn't uncommon. Our call volume was a lot less then than it is now. And back then, all of the counties, they didn't have 911. So people would call in on like a 7-digit number. So when a phone rang, we didn't even know if it was an emergency, if it wasn't an emergency, what was going on, we didn't have a location. Because when you call 911, when the call gets downstream to ambulance, we get what's called an ANI/ALI. It gives us your address or general location and then the phone number. Back then with the counties, we didn't get any of that. So we had no clue where they were calling from. So if they didn't know where they were, then it was a lot of research on our end to try and find them. Back then, when I was hired, the hiring process was quite extensive. So we had to do a geography test to make sure that we knew all of Eastern Ontario. So they would give us all these like little random, tiny little towns where, it's like 15 people that live there, and you had to place it on a map.
[00:08:47] Katie Jensen: I think about that a lot when I think about, okay, if I ever have to call 911 and I'm in a situation where I can't vocalize where I am, at least they'll be able to trace the call. But it's actually really scary to hear that wasn't an option.
[00:08:59] Marie Larocque: Back then it wasn't an option. Now it is. And now with cell phones becoming a lot more popular, almost 25 years ago when I started, were just starting to really make an emergence on the scene. So everybody called from a landline, which is a lot easier to trace, but cell phones make it a lot trickier because it just gives us a ping. So we can call and get a ping, which takes time, and the ping will give us a general location. So it bounces off the closest cell phone tower up to the satellite back down. So say if you're downtown Ottawa and we get a ping and it's within, you know 500 meters, well that's a lot of area to cover. So it does make it more of a challenge. So then we have to go even further. We have to see who is the cell phone registered to, what is their...you know, mailing address, see if there's an alternate contact that we can locate.
[00:09:54] Katie Jensen: And all of this was happening when the internet was not very fast.
[00:09:58] Marie Larocque: Yeah. When I started, we didn't even have a computer that was connected to the internet at our workstations. Our system that we used was a DOS-based system. So we used like all of our F1, F2, F3, all your function keys to do all of our commands. It was black screens. Like very, very basic. We didn't have integrated mapping. We didn't have, like, when crews spoke on the radio, it didn't tell us which vehicle was calling us. So you really had to pay attention. Now all of that stuff is right in front of us. Now we have integrated mapping. We even have GPS, so I can see exactly where Norm is. And I can tell when he's lying to me about his location.
[00:10:41] Katie Jensen: Any thoughts, Norm? This whole time you've just been shaking your head in awe at the situation when Marie just first started. Two dispatchers seems low.
[00:10:50] Norm Robillard: Well, it's negligent, you know? Wow. I'm telling you, most medics could not have survived. We're cut for different jobs, you know what I mean? And I couldn't have done that. I would have lost my marbles, you know what I mean? So, because a paramedic does one call at a time. The ambulance that they're in with their partner, is one call at a time. We're not juggling balls in the air with everything that Marie and her colleagues had to do. I have utmost respect for those folks. I really do.
[00:11:18] Norm Robillard: For me, it all happened like I started in ‘86. I went to college in ‘85 here in Ottawa. I moved from Hamilton to Ottawa so I could do the course in French. I was born in Timmins. We moved to Hamilto when I was just a baby type thing. And mom and dad, all my sisters and I, we grew up in a French home in Hamilton, Ontario. But I figured I'd stand a better chance to get a job at the end of the day if I did my ambulance emergency care program in French. So that's what I did. I got a job right off the hop and started working. I was 20 years old when I was working on the ambulance. That's crazy. Now I look at my two sons. I'm going, one’s 25 and I go, okay, maybe he'd be ready to do this kind of job, at age 20?! And it's almost like a blessing because you don't know nothing, as they say. You really don't, right? So you're not scared of stuff because like, oh, that's new, an amputation. I've never seen that, okay. And I'm not saying that just to exaggerate or whatever, but, you know, it's true. And if it bothered you to see that kind of stuff or smell that kind of stuff, then you're just not cut out for it. It's not your fault.
[00:12:22] Katie Jensen: I like that you said smell that kind of stuff because it reminded me of the... the smell of like C. difficile. There are just certain smells that people know that once you smell it-
[00:12:34] Norm Robillard: It's a ****** smell. Yeah.
[00:12:35] Katie Jensen: You'll never not smell it. And I know that some people like will wear a mask and then put toothpaste and then another mask or like they'll stick some camphor in there. Do you have any hacks for smells on the job?
[00:12:48] Norm Robillard: Send in the rookie. (Laughing). What I don't understand is we'll do a call for a deceased person, who's been deceased for a while, and the smell coming out of that apartment where Mr. Smith died a week ago. I don't understand how the other residents didn't pick up on it. You know what I mean? Because the police and I, we would open the door, and the flies would be flying out and stuff. So, man, how did people not know something was wrong? (Laughing).
[00:13:13] Marie Larocque: Especially in the summer when there's no AC.
[00:13:16] Norm Robillard: Sorry, that's the dark humor we all have.
[00:13:19] Katie Jensen: Well, I agree. And this is why I'm so afraid for people to come into my house. I'm like, what if it smells like something that I'm nose blind to? Except, you know, I'm not dead.
[00:13:29] Marie Larocque: Well, if you are, you look real great. (Laughing).
[00:13:32] Katie Jensen: Something I've been dying to ask you both about is bilinguality, and what the experience is like flipping between languages. Because I am assuming that you might have like one call in English, one call in French back-to-back and have to code switch, culturally, and also language switch.
[00:13:52] Marie Larocque: So, for us, it was mandatory. You have to be fully bilingual. We're one of the only, I think we're actually the only centre in Ontario that's regulated and mandated to be fully bilingual. And for me, it was really easy because I grew up speaking both languages equally. I can hold a conversation in French and everything that went into the call, everything that we put into the system all had to be written in English. So, you'd be hearing information in French, you'd be asking questions in French and writing everything in English and relaying everything on the radio in English.
[00:14:24] Katie Jensen: That's wild.
[00:14:24] Marie Larocque: But it was really simple for me, like... in my mind, I don't think necessarily in one language. I interchange between the two very fluently. And I always thought that was normal. It wasn't until a couple of years ago when I was talking to a buddy of mine who's French and he was telling me like, it's not normal how easily you switch between the two languages.
[00:14:45] Katie Jensen: Yeah, the process of like, receiving and then dictating in a different language is like UN translator stuff.
[00:14:51] Marie Larocque: Yeah. But to me, it just seems normal because that's all I've ever known, right?
[00:14:57] Katie Jensen: Norm for you, bilinguality comes naturally?
[00:15:02] Norm Robillard: Twenty-five years ago, there was probably more bilingualism, French-English. than there is now with immigration families coming in and speaking like a third and a fourth language. So, and Marie could tell you stories where they have to call, is it AT&T?
[00:15:19] Marie Larocque: It used to be AT&T, now it's just a language line.
[00:15:22] Norm Robillard: Literally, you wouldn't know what the problem was with the patient.
[00:15:25] Katie Jensen: Right.
[00:15:25] Norm Robillard: They would have to get another translator to actually help them get the call. Actually, I've done that just a couple times in my career, get to the scene. And dispatch would tell us there's a language barrier at scene. I go, okay, well, I don't know. And that was like they're speaking Hindu or something, I don't know. So we'd get AT&T and dispatch would patch us in and figure it out just a couple times. But interesting, like the job, you never know what's around the corner. That's what made it very interesting.
[00:15:50] Marie Larocque: No 2 days are ever the same.
[00:15:52] Norm Robillard: Yeah. Ask any medic what they love about it. We're geared to being okay with being uncomfortable, I guess, or not knowing what's around the corner. Like you don't switch from being paramedic to a job that's really routine. And if you have to, because you're injured mentally or physically, it's probably not that fulfilling, but you got to earn an income. I always say, if you've been, and I can't speak for dispatch, I'm just speaking for myself, if you've been a medic for five years or so, you know, God chose you for this job because no one in their right mind would want to do this. And you begin to love it, maybe, even.
[00:16:28] Katie Jensen: So tell me about the job in the ‘90s. So, you're a couple years in. How is it technologically? How is it culturally? Like, walk me through some of the pain points like Marie did with dispatching.
[00:16:39] Norm Robillard: Well, you know, we didn't have a lot, but we weren't in need of a lot. Like, we're masters of improvisation. So, if they give you this amount of equipment to set a fractured limb or something like this, right? Not the best stuff, but you made it work. I mean, when we were able to start about 1995, when our advanced care paramedics were able to start analgesia or morphine and stuff, for fractured limbs and other things. That was much more humane because the ride to the hospital on the roads around Ottawa are brutal, and they didn't give us Mercedes suspension, on our ambulances. We didn't even have a defibrillator. A defibrillator wasn't even thought of when I started. Now they have them in swimming pools and airports and all over the place, because if somebody's having a massive heart attack, by the time you get there, do CPR, load them in the ambulance, take them to the hospital, well, you know, and no defibrillation along the way, which was what they needed from the get-go, you know. I didn't know what I was getting into. I really didn’t. It's not like a lot of people that become a first responder, their dad was, their brother, their uncle Bob, or they're a volunteer firefighter, all these things. There was none of that in my lineage, but I don't know, “it picked me” sort of thing. But it's a rough job too, right? The night shifts, I know people hearing this will be going, “you pick your job,” you do, you do. But missing birthdays and missing the dates, when the kids are young in school and you go to work, you can't just take the day off, and they're doing their Christmas festival and you miss a lot of that stuff. And that's not good.
[00:18:09] Marie Larocque: The holidays.
[00:18:10] Norm Robillard: Yeah, someone has to work.
[00:18:11] Marie Larocque: You miss everything.
[00:18:12] Norm Robillard: I tell you, my sisters were angry at me over the years because I would never get down to Hamilton at Christmas time. And I was in the early part of my career. So, the senior guys got the choice shifts off, right? You know, like you “You never come here.” I'm like, 911 doesn't stop on Christmas, you know?
[00:18:31] Katie Jensen: Is it actually busier?
[00:18:33] Marie Larocque: Yes.
[00:18:33] Katie Jensen: Because I assume it's like more people getting up to shenanigans.
[00:18:36] Marie Larocque: Christmas and Thanksgiving are two of our biggest nights for heart attacks because of the turkey.
[00:18:42] Katie Jensen: Oh, the turkey got thrown under the bus. Makes sense though.
[00:18:46] Marie Larocque: There's actually like a link. Norm can probably speak to this more, but the turkey can cause heart attacks in people with weak hearts. (Laughing). Something about like the tryptophan or something. I don't know.
[00:18:57] Norm Robillard: You're telling some wives tale. (Laughing).
[00:18:59] Katie Jensen: You learn something every day. (Laughing). Can I ask both of you what a good day looks like? What's a day where you're like, I actually love this job. What does that look like to you?
[00:19:10] Marie Larocque: When I get to deliver a baby.
[00:19:11] Katie Jensen: Okay, tell me more!
[00:19:12] Marie Larocque: That was the ultimate, you know, like every other call, people are calling because they're having the worst day of their life. You know, it's heart attacks, it's strokes, it's people passing away, it's car accidents, things that are not fun. But when you have somebody call and they're like in the process of giving birth and you get to hear that baby come into the world and like you hear their first cry, it brought me to tears every time. Every single time I had the honor of hearing a baby cry for the first time, I would cry. It's just something. something so beautiful, I delivered, I would say probably at least one a year, if you averaged it out over my career. Some years more than others. There was years where I didn't get to deliver any babies, but I always felt really good about my job on those days. Or the days we got what we call a save, where a patient is vital signs, absent, is dead for all intents and purposes. And then we get, you either CPR or get defibrillated, and we bring them back. Those were always really good days too.
[00:20:11] Norm Robillard: And then getting off on time.
[00:20:13] Katie Jensen: What is on time? Like 12 hours?
[00:20:15] Norm Robillard: Most medics do 12 hours. And then next thing you know, it's 14 hours into the day and you've missed putting your child to bed or whatever, and all those things, right? When you're a little older and you got a family and stuff. And then you got to wake up the next morning and do it all over again. So it's a young person's job.
[00:20:33] Katie Jensen: What does recovery look like for you at the end of a call? Whether it's a good day, bad day, just how do you reset?
[00:20:39] Norm Robillard: I rode my bike to work and after work. Not a motorcycle, a bicycle. So I got all that extra time to burn off the stress, the anger, the disappointment, or whatever happened that day, on my bicycle with a 40-minute ride home. And going into work, working up a sweat, having a shower, throwing on the uniform, I know that helped extend my career. I know it did. Can I give you a statistic?
[00:21:02] Katie Jensen: Yeah.
[00:21:03] Norm Robillard: I'll ask you in the form of a question. How many paramedics do you think make it to retirement in Canada? Percentage.
[00:21:14] Katie Jensen: 25%? Is it less?
[00:21:17] Norm Robillard: Four to seven.
[00:21:18] Katie Jensen: Oh, that's brutal.
[00:21:21] Norm Robillard: And dispatchers, I would say it's around one.
[00:21:23] Katie Jensen: Oh my God.
[00:21:26] Marie Larocque: In almost 25 years, I've seen two dispatchers retire off of the floor.
[00:21:33] Katie Jensen: I mean, I think that the real tragedy of that is like, if you're not able to leave when you want to leave, what do you do next with the rest of your career, with the rest of your so-called working years? That's really, yeah, that's really upsetting.
[00:21:49] Marie Larocque: Norm was saying that being a paramedic is a young man's job. The same can be said for dispatch. With the amount of multitasking, and the advances in technology, the older you get, the reality is just your ability to multitask diminishes, and you can't keep up. And they keep adding tasks like every day. There's always something new that they want you to do and something new they want you to consider. And it's a very task-heavy job. And you're constantly engaged. The only time you get a mental break is when you go on a break. The rest of the time you're focused on where are my ambulances? Is this crew closer to a different call now? Or, where am I going to send them to cover the city? Who's due a lunch? Who's close to their end of shift? Like, there's always a million things going on. So it's really a great job for people with ADHD. It's kind of our superpower. (Laughs). We used to joke, because I was a mentor, or a trainer for pretty much my entire career on and off, we used to joke that we knew somebody was going to b e a good dispatcher if they could take a 911, dispatch the call at the same time, and give their coffee order and not miss anything. And I would have these arguments with my dad all the time, and he would get really frustrated with me. I'd be on the phone with him and we'd be having a conversation about something and I'd be doing something else at the same time. And he'd be like, “Would you stop and just focus? You're not listening to me.” And I'm like, “I am. I'm multitasking.” Dad, he’s like, “No, you can't multitask efficiently. That's not a human trait.” And I was like; I beg to differ. I've gotten to the point in my life where I can't focus unless I'm doing two things. It's almost like I require that multitasking to be able to focus better.
[00:23:33] Katie Jensen: When you were talking about the pregnancy piece and delivering babies, it made me think of larger healthcare gaps and how you must have had some frequent flyers who were calling in because they didn't have a doctor to call. Did you have relationships with people, where you would see them fairly frequently because they had healthcare needs that weren't necessarily being met by the system?
[00:23:54] Marie Larocque: We definitely had our regulars. I remember there was one point in time where we had an elderly gentleman who had Parkinson's and he lived alone and he refused to go into care. He was very independent. So he used to walk around naked because he was afraid of falling. And at least once or twice a week, he would go into the kitchen and he would get himself a glass of milk. And then because of his Parkinson's, he would start to shake and then he would spill the milk. And then he was afraid of falling so he wouldn't move. And then he would call the ambulance and we'd have to call and clean up the milk.
[00:24:31] Katie Jensen: (Laughing). Don't call over spilled milk, I guess, is the rule for that.
[00:24:35] Marie Larocque: We had many frequent fliers over the years. We had one in particular, they would call and all you would hear would be, “Euhhhh,” and you'd be like, “Oh, hey, so-and-so, what's wrong today?” And “Oh, I'm hungry.”” Okay, you want me to order you a pizza? Okay, I'll get.” And this was very early days in my career, but that's what it was. They were elderly, they were lonely. Sometimes it was just they just wanted the medics to go and sit with them and have a cup of coffee, but there's not the resources to deal with these patients. They fall in the cracks. I have a million stories. We had the one gentleman who was bed bound and his wife refused to put him in care. So she would every morning call us to come and take him out of bed and put him into his chair. And then every evening, come and take him out of his chair and put him into bed.
[00:25:26] Katie Jensen: Were they paying out of pocket? Like was the ambulance getting billed to them?
[00:25:29] Marie Larocque: You only get a bill if the paramedics transport and the bill is $45.
[00:25:35] Katie Jensen: Wow. So it was kind of cost effective in her mind.
[00:25:39] Marie Larocque: She wasn't paying for a nurse or anything. They came, they took him out of bed and they put them back to bed.
[00:25:44] Katie Jensen: I wanted to know if the two of you wouldn't mind telling me some of the things you wish that the public knew about each of your jobs.
[00:25:52] Marie Larocque: The biggest thing is that an ambulance does not mean you're going to get seen faster in emergency. That is the biggest thing. We have so many people that call for, you know, stubbed toe, chip tooth, hangnail, paper cut, you don't need to go to the hospital. You need to go get a band-aid out of your medicine cabinet. Sometimes urgent care is a much more appropriate place to go. But people think that if they go to the hospital, they're going to get seen faster, they're going to get better drugs, they're going to get whatever. And it's just not the reality.
[00:26:27] Katie Jensen: What is something that you think is really accessible for knowledge?
[00:26:34] Marie Larocque: People don't know the difference between a heart attack and a stroke. And so, it often happens where people are like, “Oh, they're having a heart attack. I gave them a baby aspirin.” And then it turns out they're actually having a stroke. And so, the aspirin is not a good idea to have when they're having a brain bleed.
[00:26:45] Katie Jensen: Because the aspirin will thin their blood for those who don't know.
[00:26:48] Marie Larocque: Exactly. I think the biggest thing for us is when you call 911, give us the symptoms, don't try and give us a diagnosis. More often than not, the diagnosis that they've come up with is not accurate. So just answer the questions, answer them truthfully, and more often than not, that will get the ambulance there faster.
[00:27:11] Katie Jensen: That was part one of my conversation with Norm and Marie. In part 2, we'll hear about what it takes to survive a 12-hour shift. Including the occupational hazards nobody talks about.
[00:27:23] Marie Larocque: You've got to be able to laugh. That's #1. That's how we cope.
[00:27:27] Norm Robillard: And a small stomach because dispatch doesn't give you lunch.
[00:27:31] Katie Jensen: Marie takes us on the most unusual ride-along of her career.
[00:27:34] Marie Larocque: In the orange helicopter. That was something else.
[00:27:37] Katie Jensen: And Norm has some thoughts about the state of health care in Ontario.
[00:27:41] Norm Robillard: 1.5 million Ontarians don't have a family doctor. This is my rant now. So you guys can sit down. (Laughing).
[00:27:51] Katie Jensen: Thanks for listening. Applaud is proud to showcase the dedication of those who make decisions for the greater good and strive to leave the world a better place for all Canadians. All personal views expressed by guests and our host are their own. Applaud will continue to recognize those in public service, offer a kaleidoscope of perspectives, and operate in good faith to build trust with Applaud members and all public citizens. You can share feedback on this episode by visiting applaudpublicservice.ca.