(DanSun Photo)

By Nigel Maxwell

Milestone anniversaries

Parkland Ambulance turns 50

Nov 21, 2024 | 5:24 PM

Noting changes in technology, diversity of service, and overall growth of the team, Lyle Karasiuk acknowledges the past five decades have been very exciting for Parkland Ambulance.

On Thursday, the province’s third busiest ambulance service celebrated its 50th anniversary. Karasiuk, who acts as the Director of Public Affairs, told paNOW it’s a time to think about where they’ve been and where they are going.

“And I think the future is really bright and contains lots of opportunity and a lot more new challenges and partnerships that we haven’t even begun to explore,” he said.

From the humble beginnings of working out of a garage, just across the street from where their 24th Street West/2nd Ave. West location is now, Barry and Wayne Dutchak started the service back on Nov. 21, 1974.

Reflecting back to a time when they had a couple of staff working the full-time shift and a few staff on call, Karasiuk said at the end of the day you’d have another shift just come on.

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“And wow we’ve got like over 25 staff that work in any given 12-hour period, at multiple times of the day, based on peak efficiency,” he noted.

(DanSun Photo)

(DanSun Photo)

Karasiuk also recalled a time when a busy day would consist of 5 to 8 calls in 12 hours. Nowadays, that’s typically the call volume before 9 a.m.

Another big change has been the length of training and expansion o service. When Karasiuk was trained in the 1980s, the EMT school could be done on the weekends over eight to 10 weeks.

“And now a primary care paramedic goes to school for 50 weeks and then after they come back to work, and they go to be an advanced care paramedic, it’s another year and a half of training,” he said.

Karasiuk is also proud of the overall diversity of the service they can now offer. With the exception of administering stitches, x-rays, or blood work, paramedics can provide a number of acute care services.

And in addition to emergency calls, community paramedics work directly in peoples’ homes, and other paramedics offer support to police tactical teams.

“We’ve got different scopes of practice for our teams and I think that’s only going to change and get bigger and better,” Karasiuk said.

(DanSun Photo)

Covering an area that includes Weyakwin, Canwood, Candle Lake, and Duck Lake, paramedic teams travelled nearly one million kilometres last year.

Another key part of the team is the communications center which handles 33,000 calls per year, and over 18,000 are supported by Parkland Ambulance.

“So it’s a far cry from what we did 50 years ago, so busy times but fun times and we are looking forward to celebrating this week and we look forward to the next 50 years,” Karasiuk said.

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nigel.maxwell@pattisonmedia.com

On X: @nigelmaxwell