C.O. emergency nurses to staff remote races
When runner Billy Tufts collapsed about halfway through the Dirty Half in early June, Deschutes County sheriff’s deputies ran more than four miles on foot to reach him with a portable defibrillator.
His girlfriend, an emergency room doctor and a cardiac nurse performed CPR on Tufts until the deputies arrived, but sadly, the 40-year-old could not be revived.
It was an event that prompted the Central Oregon Emergency Nurses Association to start a dialogue with St. Charles Cardiovascular Services, the St. Charles Foundation and the FootZone —which organizes the off-road half marathon as a fundraiser for the Deschutes Land Trust — about what could be done to prevent such tragedies in the future.
“There are so many races and events in Central Oregon. It’s only a matter of time before we have something else happen,” said Dr. Michael Widmer, a cardiologist with Heart Center Cardiology. “We wanted to get together and talk about how we could potentially prevent the next tragedy.”
From that meeting came the idea to staff event aid stations with volunteer nurses, and equip them with radios, first aid kits and automated external defibrillators, or AEDs. Doing so could reduce the amount of time it takes for a distressed athlete to get basic life support.
Thanks to COENA and a donation from the St. Charles Foundation, some of the region’s more remote races will get the support they need.
The Foundation has provided the funds to purchase three new AEDs. And Darin Durham, St. Charles’ director of emergency services and chapter president of the COENA, said at least 10 nurses have already said, “absolutely, I want to be a part of this,” and are ready and willing to volunteer.
Durham said by September, the COENA hopes to start providing support at events based on availability of volunteers. And word is getting out fast.
“We’re almost overwhelmed by the response,” he said. “We thought there might be a couple of races where we might be needed. The next thing we know, we’ve got 15 races coming up, and people asking us, ‘can you cover all of them?'”
Jeremy Buller, a nurse in St. Charles’ ED and a member of COENA, said the volunteer group — which will be overseen by Dr. Helenka Marcinek— will first focus on races that are not easily accessible to EMS, “and then we can grow as the need and desire are there.”
Though medical emergencies like the one Tuft’s experienced are not commonplace, they can and do happen, said FootZone owner Teague Hatfield.
“I think everyone wants to do everything they reasonably can to sleep better at night,” he said. “It’s just impressive that they’re willing to pull this together. I don’t know if anyone would have even realized it’s a possibility.”
