On Tuesday, May 31, CVCH RN Don Dryer was awarded Volunteer EMT of the Year for 2015 at the annual Chelan-Douglas County EMS award ceremony. It was a bitter sweet event for Don, who has been with the Chelan Emergency Medical System for 35 years. This award marks his last year of service to the Chelan Emergency Medical Service.
“When I joined, I was a young kid being crazy,” said Don as he looked back over three and a half decades of service. He joined the Chelan EMS, which was based out of Lake Chelan Community Hospital, in 1981, just three years after the Ambulance Association was started in Chelan.
“I was trained by one of the founders of the association. We used an old hearse from a local Chelan mortician as our ambulance.”
Don always had a heart for helping people, but it was a traumatic event that made him focus on giving back through volunteer EMT service.
“I always had a love for medicine, physical therapy and recovery. I was an athletic trainer for three years in college and that really got me interested in medicine. I was involved in a terrible motorcycle accident where my friend was almost killed. The responders and that trauma made me want to give back to my community. So when I got out of college, I got my EMT certification and helped out with local sports teams in Chelan and Wenatchee. I chose to follow my love of medicine and eventually went to Wenatchee Valley College for nursing, while continuing to volunteer with Chelan EMS.”
Don has been a registered nurse with CVCH since 1999. He said that many EMT’s retire when they get their nursing license because it’s a difficult balance.
“As a nurse, I operate as a practitioner under my licensure. As an EMT, you are certified and operate under a doctor. That physician is a regional director and all EMT’s fall under their jurisdiction. I had to work under my certification as an EMT while taking direction from paramedics and be aware that I didn’t step out of the realm of EMT and into my nursing licensure. It’s a bit complicated but there’s a lot of cross-over training.”
Don’s commitment involved monthly meetings and ongoing training to keep up his EMS certification. He said the Lake Chelan EMS is highly trained and operates with the same level of training as Seattle King County EMT’s. As a volunteer EMT, he had to put in a certain amount of shifts per month. A shift is either 12 hours riding on the ambulance, or two 8-hour community outreach shifts teaching CPR classes to the community.
This year, Don had a knee replacement and found it extremely hard to do CPR. “I couldn’t get down on one leg because of the replacement, so I have to give it up. It’s not what I wanted to do, but what I have to because of physical limitations.”
And so Don says goodbye to the organization for whom he has given 35 years of volunteer service. When asked about his takeaway from this impressive commitment, he says it’s all about community.
“I started doing this mainly as an avenue to give back to my community. It becomes a lifestyle, part of your core values. You’re giving to other people and I believe in that. I believe in what the Ambulance Association stands for, and see they have the same core values as we have here at CVCH.”