Thoughts to ponder

[brentoli]

Its a long story, I bolded the parts I am referencing.

If you were in charge, how would you handle it if the crews story is right? The supervisors?

Is two seconds enough to justify EMS firings?

An administrative law judge rules the firings of two EMS employees who criticized their superiors were wrong. But the fight isn't over.

By SETH SLABAUGH

seths@muncie.gannett.com

MUNCIE -- Gary Gardner and Larry Swhier are seeking to expose what they call the real reason they got fired from their jobs with the Delaware County Emergency Medical Services.

"You're supposed to keep your mouth shut and not question anything that goes on," says Gardner, an advanced emergency medical technician. "The new phrase over there is, 'Open your mouth and you'll get Gary'd and Larry'd.'"

Gardner and Swhier, a paramedic, were fired on Jan. 31 after being accused of leaving a psychiatric patient alone in the back of their ambulance.

The men say, however, that they were let go because they openly complained about marijuana use, the viewing of adult movies on company time, unqualified employees, sexual harassment and other touchy subjects.

EMS director Tim Hutson calls the accusations "ridiculous," "crazy" and "conspiracy stuff," and Delaware County Commissioner John Brooke says there's "no credence whatsoever" to the fired employees' contentions.

"Gary's a disgruntled employee who got fired," Brooke says. "He's doing whatever he can to get his job back or besmirch the department. He doesn't care who he takes down along with himself."

Hutson fired Gardner and Swhier after they allegedly left a psychiatric patient alone -- and later lied about it -- in the rear of the ambulance while they transported her from an apartment building to Ball Memorial Hospital. Swhier was behind the wheel and Gardner allegedly rode up front in the passenger's seat, a charge he denies.

In March, Brooke and fellow County Commissioners Larry Bledsoe and Tom Bennington upheld the firings after conducting a closed-door grievance hearing at which Hutson, Gardner, Swhier and union representatives testified.

But in June, an administrative law judge for the Indiana Department of Workforce Development conducted a hearing that determined Gardner was not fired for just cause. The ruling entitled him to receive unemployment insurance benefits.

Swhier, who is now a paramedic for the Indianapolis Fire Department, did not seek unemployment compensation. However, both he and Gardner are fighting to get their jobs back. Their next step is an arbitration hearing scheduled for next month.

The emergency call

Gardner and Swhier were dispatched to a Muncie apartment building shortly before 6 a.m. on Jan. 25. Gardner recognized the woman who greeted him at the front door as a psychiatric patient who was once his former neighbor. The woman was feeling lonely because her mother, with whom she had lived for decades, had been taken to a nursing home.

The ride to the hospital for a mental evaluation lasted 10 minutes, during which the woman sat in a captain's chair in the back, having declined an offer to lie down. During the trip, Gardner says he checked the patient's vital signs (blood pressure, pulse, breathing rate), asked questions and engaged in small talk.

Gardner says he then moved toward the front of the ambulance, which is a common occurrence even during a life-or-death situation, to talk to his partner, and to retrieve some equipment and forms for the patient to sign.

"She's talking, laughing, and my foot is touching her foot," Gardner says.

At one point, she even reached out and grabbed his arm to steady him when the ambulance hit a bump.

"I told Larry she was not suicidal," Gardner said. "If we call the hospital with a suicide threat, they have security guards waiting. She went back home that day. If she had been suicidal, they would have done a 72-hour psychological evaluation on her."

As the ambulance approached the hospital, paramedics Steve Werking and Larry Crouse say they saw Gardner sitting in the front passenger seat of the ambulance. Interviewed later by a supervisor and Hutson, the patient said Gardner left her alone in the rear of the ambulance.

The woman signed a statement, "but it's not even her statement," Gardner says. "Tim typed it up on Delaware County letterhead, took it to her house and had her sign it. It's not in her words."

The woman did not initiate any complaint.

"Gary was not all the way in the front compartment at all," Swhier says. "He was not sitting. He was just crouched down in the middle compartment, kind of a little passageway."

Hutson fired Gardner and Swhier for neglect in performance of duties, giving false information, exposing a patient to a hazardous situation and dishonesty.

"What weighed heavily on my mind is, two guys came forward who said here's what we saw," Hutson says. "They have no reason to get those guys in trouble. You go ask the patient, and the patient says they were up in front. What's the chances of that happening?"

Gardner claims Werking and Crouse, who observed him only briefly from an ambulance headed in the opposite direction, filed the complaint to get a grievance pending against them dropped by Hutson, an accusation Hutson calls absurd.

"At EMS, if you get in trouble, get it on somebody else to get it off you," Gardner alleges.

Brian Maguire, a clinical associate professor in the department of emergency health services at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, who was consulted by The Star Press, says EMS could have disciplined or counseled Gardner and Swhier instead of firing them.

"People who work on ambulances have undergone significant training, and they put their lives and their health on the line every day," Maguire says. "They should be treated as respected professionals. Can you imagine an agency terminating a nurse or physician under the same circumstances? A physician might be questioned, and maybe even counseled, but certainly not terminated."

Hutson says he fired the men because Gardner "lied" about the situation "and is still lying about it, and he (Swhier) is covering up his story and lying about it also."

"What if she had a gun or knife in her purse and they're sitting with their back to her? What if she wants to end it all and takes a step out the door going down McGalliard Road? How about the scalpels, how about the drugs, how about the needles? How about the state law that says you need somebody in the back end? How about, you just never do that? We owe it to our patients to provide quality care."

The Star Press also consulted John Clark, an Indianapolis attorney and paramedic who said, "It's "very clear that the mission we have as EMS providers is to be there with that patient."

But he added: "If the EMT leaned up front, we've all been there. That is not an unusual occurrence, to grab something and step away from the patient for a second. If that's what happened, that would be drawing a very narrow line of abandonment."

Clark also said the call Gardner and Swhier responded to sounded more like a transport than one requiring medical attention.

Firings 'not just'

After a hearing in June, Noell Taylor, an administrative law judge at the Indiana Department of Workforce Development, found no proven just cause for the county to fire Gardner.

"The employer's witnesses, Mr. Crouse and Mr. Werking, saw the claimant (Gardner) for approximately two seconds," Taylor wrote. "This is not a quantifiable length of time to ascertain whether the claimant was actually in the passenger seat during the entire time the claimant transported the patient from her home to the hospital."

The judge ruled the patient's statement was inadmissible because Hutson acquired it after firing the two employees.

Besides, says Swhier of the patient, "She wasn't left alone, and she can't testify anyway, because she was on anti-psychotic medication."

During the hearing before county commissioners, Hutson quoted the patient as saying "it bothered me" to ride alone because "I needed somebody to talk to," while Gardner's supervisor quoted the patient as saying "she didn't mind" riding alone and "it wasn't that bad."

So what motive would EMS have to wrongfully terminate the men?

Gardner and Swhier say they had been warned several times by their supervisor and Hutson that they would be fired if they didn't keep their mouths shut.

"It was a typical scare tactic," Gardner says. "We expressed a lot of concerns. It was an accumulation of everything."

"We had a lot of problems with (management)," Swhier says.

For example, Gardner and Swhier supported a female co-worker's claim that she was sexually harassed by a supervisor who regularly watched adult movies at work.

"Whatever you say, I will find out," the supervisor allegedly warned Gardner and Swhier shortly before they gave statements to the human resources department.

The department did not substantiate the harassment allegations but did conduct anti-sexual harassment training for EMS employees.

Pot scandal

In 2005, there was a drug scandal at EMS station 3 after a substance believed to be marijuana was seen in a restroom. Four employees lost their jobs.

Gardner was critical of the fact that two of the paramedics who had tested positive for marijuana were later rehired. Hutson said he had no choice but to rehire the men after Brooke advised him EMS would probably lose an arbitration hearing. "We brought them back on a last-chance clause," he says.

Gardner and Swhier also complained about the hiring of an EMT in January 2007 who, they say, once worked for Hutson's eye doctor and has already failed the advanced EMT class six times.

"You only have one year from the time you're hired to become an advanced EMT," Gardner says. "He's failed the class six times entering his second year."

Gardner accuses Hutson of saying he wasn't "going to fire this kid," and to leave him alone or he would "fire your asses."

"Since then," Gardner says, the man "has wrecked an ambulance going the wrong way down the street."

The EMT did recently hit a car with an ambulance while going the wrong way on a one-day street, injuring the car's driver. The EMT, who is on family medical leave according the county human resources department, was uninjured and not disciplined.

Hutson maintains that driving down a street the wrong way is not worse than leaving a patient alone in the back of the ambulance.

"One was an accident," he says. "It wasn't intentional on his part. It's an emergency call."

On the other hand, he says, "You could ask 100 EMS people if you had what this patient complained about, would you ever get in the front of the ambulance and leave the patient by herself in the back, and every 100 would say no."

'Running out of people'

Hutson says that he if he'd been out to get Gardner and Swhier, as they allege, he could have fired them several times.

He admits, however, that the dispute is taking a toll on EMS staffing.

"I'm down Gary Gardner and Larry Swhier on that shift and there's another employee off with a back injury and another one with a knee injury," Hutson says. "So I'm running out of people. I can't replace them (Gardner and Swhier) because I don't know what's going to happen with their appeal."

Both Gardner and Swhier would be happy to return to work.

"I've put a lot of time, effort and money into this job," said Gardner, who joined the department full time on Jan. 1, 2003. "I'd like a public apology from these people. And I'd like them to do an investigation into this. That way, the citizens of Delaware County will know they are getting what they are paying for and not being cheated, and that the employees who work for them aren't being harassed and intimidated."

[JPINFV]

I think they're being railroaded or have a history that's not being talked about here. I can see how leaning forward (albeit I can probably count on one hand the amount of times I have had to seriously lean into the cab area from the back. Of course, being on a BLS ambulance, the lockable "drug box" cabinet in the Wheeled Coach type 2s worked as a good document box) could look at a glance like both providers are at the front. Similarly, I can see both sides of the "he's lying" argument. The providers have one view of the events that contradicts what the witnesses saw. The witnesses could be wrong with what they saw or misinterpreted it. Hence what the witnesses saw conflicts with the providers' statement, but neither are lying about the events.

Of course a simple solution would have been to use a clipboard case

[brentoli]

Disclaimer: This service is close for me, but I don't know anyone that works for it.

JP, how would your service handle it if he was completely up front, even for a moment?

[JPINFV]

(assuming that he rode in the front for any period of time) Probably, at most, a stern warning considering that was all that has happened to providers who were reported for text messaging in front of a patient (as a side note, sitting on the far end of the bench seat puts you in view of my rear view mirror and I tend to write incident reports on people who text message with a patient in the back).