It may seem like a given that when Americans call for an ambulance , a trainedparamedicwill be on board the hand truck to begin deal emergency care . But as latterly as 50 years ago , this was not the type — ambulances were more like taxis to the near hospital . That all change thanks to an ambulance crew enroll from a poverty - stricken black neighborhood in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania , that work between 1967 and 1975 . They became the very first ambulance worker in the U.S. train in advanced lifetime support , setting the bar for generation of emergency medical technicians ( EMTs ) .
If you had a heart attack in 1960s - epoch Pittsburgh , you had two choices : call the police or a private ambulance society . The police would arrive in a Mick wagon — the same one used to transport criminals , equipped with a canvas stretcher and maybe an oxygen feeding bottle — sky you in the back and roll out you to the hospital . Private ambulances were oversized Cadillacs mostly possess by funeral homes ( not a good omen ) , and drivers had no medical training .
For the residents of Pittsburgh ’s Hill District , an historically ignominious biotic community waste by drugs , crime and economic disuse , an emergency call to either the constabulary or a individual ambulance company might go unanswered , or else the fomite would go far only in time to transport the dead body to the morgue .
That change in 1967 when Freedom House Enterprises unfold its door in the Hill District as a community empowerment agency focalize on utilization and voting rights . At the very same time , a social reformer mention Phil Hallen , churn up that the Hill District had no reliable ambulance servicing , dreamed up the musical theme of training local men — many of whom were label as " unemployable " — to provide hand brake aesculapian answer in the community of interests .
Hallen notice the consummate partner in Freedom House , but the projection would never have succeeded withoutDr . Peter Safarat Pittsburgh ’s Presbyterian - University Hospital . Dr. Safar , an Austrian - bear anesthetist , had single - handedly open up the practice session ofCPRand was a vocal advocate for bring life - carry through medical technique like CPR out of the infirmary and into the streets .
With Safar ’s expertise , and initial financing provided by the city , nonprofit foundations and President Lyndon Johnson ’s " War on Poverty , " the Freedom House Ambulance Service was stomach on April 15 , 1967 .
Bringing the ICU to the Patient
Gene Starzenski is a Pittsburgh aboriginal , former paramedical and director of a2010 documentarycalled " Freedom House : Street Saviors . " He say that some of the former Freedom House recruit were literally " dragged in off the streets " to sate training socio-economic class . The group including Vietnam vets with some medic grooming , but also struggling drug addicts and even a pimp .
In 1968 , George McCary III was 20 years honest-to-god and living with his grandma in a housing project when she fall in him an ultimatum : get a job , go to shoal or get out . A phone call to a friend tipped him off to a job - grooming class that might get his grandma off his back . He had no idea that it had anything to do with ambulance or medical care , only that he had to be there at 8 a.m.
What he found that first day at Freedom House was " a rowdy crew , a bunch of knuckleheads , " read McCary , but in a short clock time they realized they were there to learn how to save people ’s life . " Anatomy , physiology , CPR , how to take vital signs . We went down to the morgue to watch autopsies . I ’d never even been in a funeral home before . "
Safar play the enlistee through a year - long breeding political platform requiring 160 hours of schoolroom and hands - on instruction , include six week of infirmary - based training in the hand brake department , operating room and the intensive care unit . Safar ’s imaginativeness for modern exigency response was n’t to bring the patient to the ICU , but to bring the ICU to the patient .
John Moon was a untested man bounce around from business to occupation when he noticed the flashing brightness level and siren of the Freedom House ambulance cruising up and down the streets of the Hill District . ( The state - of - the art ambulances were personally contrive by Safar , also the first in the commonwealth to include defibrillator , IVs and even drugs like Narcan to revive overdoses . )
" I had to find out how I could become part of this , " say Moon . " I was turn on by the glamour of it , for lack of a better term . "
Moon remember one particular call when he had to intubate a patient — place a tube into the oral cavity and down the trachea to wait on with breathing — before bringing him to the hospital . The emergency room doctor was floored .
" At that clip , it was unheard - of for laypeople to be trained to perform those variety of procedures outside of a hospital , " remember Moon .
A Victim of Its Own Success
Freedom House did n’t always get a welcome reception from the medical administration who see the ambulance workers as just inexpert drivers . But their own community knew easily . The Freedom House EMTs be given to the injure in the backwash of the riots that break out after the blackwash of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 . ( This was during their training period . ) The religious service take its first official call on July 15 , 1968 — a seizure on a urban center motorcoach ( she survived ) — and made more than 5,800 tally in the first year alone .
But ironically , it was the tending these actor gave to a boy who washit by a busin a more affluent area that indirectly led to the end of the programme . The police called Freedom House to lend aid ( they splinted his leg and start an IV ) , and word got around that the EMTs had saved the son ’s life . Residents from arena outside the Hill District and business district started press for their own pinch aesculapian services ( EMS ) .
The city of Pittsburgh launched its own service in 1975 , but it used mostly whites from the surround suburban area . It cut off its contract with Freedom House — which meant the end of most of its funding — and tell Freedom House workers that they would have to be retrained before joining the city ambulance , despite having years of field experience .
" Theyquit onme , " says McCary , referring to the city ’s new EMS system . " I come from zero and end up arrive to 99 . I loved the employment , to be ready for that phone to halo , and to respond to somebody ’s job and to give them some kind of comfort . I was there the last day , the very last daylight when they came to fold it down . I went on the last trip . That ’s how sonorous it was . "
However , some of the former Freedom House EMTs did end up working for the unexampled city service . John Moon go on to serve 35 long time in Pittsburgh ’s EMS department , rising to assistant chief before retiring in 2009 . Another Freedom House alum , Mitchell Brown , became EMS commissioner in Cleveland , Ohio , and then ran the Department of Public Safety in Columbus , Ohio .
The story of Freedom House was mostly lost to history before Starzenski produce his documentary film , the result of 10 years ' enquiry . Since then , Pittsburgh has installed two plaques memorialize the pioneering Freedom House ambulance worker , one in the Hill District and one in Presbyterian - University Hospital , where the ambulances were base .
After years of lobbying , Moon was ultimately capable to convince city officials to range Freedom House medallions on the side of every ambulance in the metropolis of Pittsburgh . But he state that there ’s still a long way to go before Freedom House gets the credit it deserve for setting the measure of care now followed by every EMT in the humanity . He wonder how many of those ambulance driver even eff what that Freedom House medallion represents .
