In a little less than a month Shane Muir will be taking over as the Chief for Superior North E-M-S, he is stepping into this new role at a critical time for healthcare delivery in the province and Thunder Bay. A big topic of concern has been ‘code blacks’, where there are no ambulances available for calls in the city.
Those situations are sometimes the result of offloading delays at the regional hospital. Muir says they have some new and innovative ideas to addressing that problem.
“We’re going to follow some recommendations by the Ontario Association of Paramedic Chiefs, looking at potentially batching some patients, so we can have one paramedic looking after multiple patients while they’re in a hospital setting, and that’ll clear up other ambulances to get out on the road and into the community where they need to be.”
At the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic Muir tasked as the lead for the Superior North E-M-S Covid Task Force, a role he says helped him better understand the inter-connectivity of all the players within the healthcare system.
“It was a great experience, it really gave me a good insight into how we can better improve our services to support the community, and just the needs of what we need in our district here.”
Muir has been with Superior North EMS since 2007 and will assume full command on December 19th. He takes over from retiring Chief Wayne Gates who announced his retirement earlier this year.
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