Above & beyond: Paramedics recognized for research in field



MILWAUKEE (WITI) -- Four Milwaukee County paramedics and EMTs were recognized Wednesday morning, May 28th at the EMS Council meeting in Wauwatosa for their dedication and contribution to research in the field.

Linda Mattrisch from Milwaukee, Jeremy Blair of Wauwatosa, Kurt Zellmann of West Allis and Brian Biganski from South Milwaukee Fire Departments are the newest recipients of the Resuscitation Outcome Consortium (ROC) Service Excellence Awards. The four were selected from the more than 400 paramedics who make up the Milwaukee County Emergency Medical Services System.

“These individuals have really demonstrated exceptional performance, exceptional leadership, they have provided us with feedback that has change our practice, they have been champions of improving care for their patients and deserve this recognition,” said Tom Aufderheide a  Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Froedert Hospital.

Aufderheide presented plaques and certificates to the 3 men and one woman Wednesday. Jeremy Blair was one of those recipients.

“At my level, our job is to implement it to our organization and to utilize continued follow-up and to measure our results,” said Blair, “anything we can do on the research side to improve the outcome of somebody in cardiac arrest, obviously that`s good for the general public. That`s why we take it very seriously and we put a lot of hard work into it.”

Aufderheide said that hard work is already paying off, and patient care is improving -- both locally and worldwide.

“It takes dedication, hard work, attention to detail and high quality patient care to be able to implement this kind of research,” said Aufderheide.

MC EMS is one of just 10 research sites in the United States and Canada that is part of the ROC. The mission of the consortium is to provide support for clinical trials and other research on cardiopulmonary arrest and severe traumatic injury that will lead to improvements in clinical practice.