GBAC: Providing 60-plus years of service

BALDWINSVILLE – The Greater Baldwinsville Ambulance Corps (GBAC), which celebrated its 60th anniversary last year, is very fortunate to have four of its 16 volunteers who are over 55 years old providing patient care, three of the four each doing so for four decades.
The agency was started in 1962 by a group of local volunteers who wanted to help those in their community who were sick or injured.  It was neighbor-centered and the Baldwinsville community was thrilled to have this remarkable health care benefit right in their own town.  GBAC was just the second volunteer ambulance in the state of New York.  When the agency started, the first ambulance was a converted 1959 hearse and it had over 120 volunteers signing up to ride their town’s “new” ambulance.
Vin Maresco, the newest over-55 member to GBAC, began his emergency patient care career in the 1980s, serving on his college’s emergency squad. He then became a member of the national ski patrol, working on the slopes of Song Mountain and Greek Peak. Maresco continued advancing his emergency care skills, becoming a certified New York state EMT in 2019. In 2020 Maresco joined the Baldwinsville Ambulance team and is now providing advanced EMT care for the community.
“GBAC has been a very welcoming environment to learn and grow as an EMS provider,” Maresco said. “The agency provides exceptional prehospital care for the sick and injured members of the district.  I have grown as a provider under the mentoring of the GBAC professionals.”
Maresco also serves on GBAC’s Quality Improvement Board, further utilizing his talents for the organization.
Bob Sweet, the organization’s vice president, has served with GBAC for 39 years.
“This field of work is one that people either love or hate.  For me it’s a passion, I love everything about this business,” Sweet said.
He started his EMS volunteering at GBAC back in the early 1980s.  He became a paramedic and practiced at that care level for nearly 30 years. Today Sweet serves as an EMT on the ambulance.
Sweet said that today most EMS organizations are staffed with paid, career oriented people who do this for a living.
“When I first joined the organization there were only volunteers at GBAC and in most other EMS operations,” he said. “Now volunteers have nearly disappeared.  GBAC is fortunate to have a good mix of both career and volunteer EMS providers.”
Sweet shares his duty shifts with his long time EMS partner Patty Moses, who is a paramedic.  Moses has been volunteering with GBAC for 44 years and is also an emergency room nurse at one of the Syracuse hospitals.  She is GBAC’s historian and keeps track of the important organizational events and changes over the years.  She has seen significant innovations in back-of-the-ambulance patient care over the years.
Moses said she has seen innovations such as “digital stethoscopes, 12 lead diagnostic ECG machines, BiPap machines and video tracheal scopes, all of which help us to provide industry leading care in the back of an ambulance”
She said another area of EMS that has evolved over time is safety.
“Needles and intravenous catheters used to be open and exposed after use, increasing the probability of paramedics being stuck with a dirty needle,” she said. “Today there are safer needles that automatically retract after being used, drastically decreasing the chances of exposure to blood.  In addition, our stretchers no longer need to be manually lifted into the back of the ambulance.  Instead, they are pneumatically raised by a push of a button, thus saving countless back injuries.”
The fourth person of the over-55-volunteers, Anne-Marie Howell, has been involved in EMS for the past 47 years.  She is a practicing paramedic as well as a paramedic instructor.
“When volunteering began at GBAC in the early 1960s, the training required to provide patient care on the ambulance was a first-aid class,” Howell said. “Things have changed significantly since then.   Today, all EMS providers must pass a rigorous course consisting of 200 hours of classroom education and many hours working in an ambulance with a preceptor before receiving the ‘Basic’ Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) certification.  EMTs are able to assess patients, administer six different medications, and treat several medical & traumatic conditions.  EMTs provide what’s called Basic Life Support (BLS) care to patients.”
She added that “the greater Baldwinsville community is fortunate to be served not only by BLS providers but Advanced Life Support (ALS) care-givers as well.”
Howell said, to provide care at this level, you must be certified by the state as a paramedic.
“In order to begin the paramedic training program you must first be an active EMT.  Then you begin a nearly two year, 1000 hour college level course which also requires 100 hours of hospital time in several different specialties,” she said. “Paramedics also have to prove their skills ‘in the field’ with a preceptor over dozens of patient care episodes. Paramedics can administer approximately thirty different medications, capture and interpret diagnostic 12-lead Electro Cardiograms, start IVs and mechanically breathe for patients who can’t breathe on their own.  Paramedics in ALS ambulances perform nearly all the same treatments for a critically ill patient that the Emergency Room staff would do in the first 10 minutes after arrival at the hospital.”
Sweet said, “in this business you are often interacting with people that are experiencing one of their worst day. We are especially saddened when there is loss of life.  Even though we have state of the art techniques, medicines and machines, sometimes the damage to the human body is just too great.”
He said he himself lost my father due to a traumatic injury.
“Although I was emotionally devastated I was comforted knowing that he had the best chance of survival because it was GBAC, ‘my ambulance’ that responded and did everything possible to help him,” he said.
There are times when responders experience stress themselves because of seeing first hand many “worst days” or having a particularly distressing patient encounter.
“This is when we, the helpers, need to reach out for some emotional support,” said Moses. “There are EMS providers who are specially trained in what’s called Critical Incident Stress Debriefing.  We can always reach out to them when we feel the need.”
Sweet said that, on occasion, the GBAC is “there to help when patients are having one of their best days,” such as when they get to help deliver a baby.
“Of course ‘mom’ does all the work; we just assist and are there for any complications,” he said. “It’s these calls where we get to experience the joy of new life and the happiness of the family.”
Today, GBAC has five fully-equipped Advanced Life Support ambulances and answers nearly 5,000 calls for help each year.
“It’s very exciting and gratifying work providing care for your neighbors,” Sweet said.
GBAC has a ‘movie’ they created for their 60th anniversary that shows what it’s like to work in the EMS field.  You can view this film on the GBAC website by going to gbacems.org/60years.  Sweet also invites anyone that is interested in learning more about the EMS field or wants a tour of the Greater Baldwinsville Ambulance Corps to give GBAC a call at 315-638-4328.