Nunavik first responders on the front line for Arctic emergencies

This first response sled on skis has been adapted to rescue services on the tundra. (PHOTO BY CHARLES TIMMONS)

Vehicle accidents are one of the most common calls for prehospital services in Nunavik. (PHOTO BY CHARLES TIMMONS)

Nunavik’s first responders work alongside community nurses and medivac crews. (PHOTO BY CHARLES TIMMONS)

In less than three years since the program launched, Nunavik has become one of the few Arctic regions to have organized pre-hospital services available in each of its communities.

Since 2007, teams of first responders in each of the region’s 14 villages have been trained to respond to medical emergencies, taking the pressure off local nursing stations and helping create safer, healthier communities, thanks to money from Nunavik’s regional health and social services.

“It’s a lot safer here than before,” says Peter Samisack, the public security officer in Inukjuak.

Samisack and another 13 Inukjuamiut are trained first responders. They answer about 25 calls a month, Samisack said – mostly for all-terrain vehicle accidents and people with breathing difficulties.

With a fleet of ambulances, four-wheelers, snowmobiles and snow-adapted patient sleds in each village, local first responders are the first on the scene. They also assess medical needs, provide preliminary care and coordinate with local nurses and medivac crews when victims are in need of advanced treatment.

“We’ve got a good team,” Samisack said of Inukjuak’s crew. “We’re useful, we do a good service and the on-call nurses are in less of a hurry.”

Samisack’s colleagues at the southern tip of the province think so too.

For the past three years, Sherbrooke-based first responder Charles Timmons has travelled throughout Nunavik to provide the 60 hours of training Nunavimmiut require to become first responders in their home community.

Inukjuak, he said, has one of the most stable and motivated teams, meaning many of those he trained three years ago still hold their posts.

That’s no small feat, Timmons said, when you consider that no organized system even existed until recently.

“We really started from zero,” said Timmons. “Now, these guys are stimulated, interested and motivated.”

Timmons and three of his colleagues – all paramedics from Quebec’s Eastern Townships – have given training throughout the region since 2007 and see the program taking root.

“Unlike other jobs, (first responders) have a visibility. There’s a pride that goes along with that,” Timmons said. “So we feel like we leave something. They see that the system works well.”

In Nunavut, Iqaluit is the only municipality with full-time, paid first responders, said fire chief Walter Oliver. A few larger communities in the territory offer pre-hospital services, but many still rely on their local nursing stations or fire departments.

In Nunavik, the work is still occasional, but it’s paid.

Those who take the training are generally Inuit, male (although there are female first responders) and of all different ages.

Training is based on in-class learning combined with staged scenarios – many of them outdoor – to give trainees a visual sense of a rescue.

Timmons’ co-trainer Carl Bourget – another paramedic from Sherbrooke – says training works best when it is as hands-on and as realistic as possible.

At a Quaqtaq training session, Timmons and Bourget set up a scenario where a car had hit an ATV and its driver was pinned between the two vehicles.

It took four attempts to carefully remove the victim – the first three would have killed him in real life, Bourget said – but it helped illustrate the precise way to treat a victim in that situation.

The -30 C temperature added to the reality of the rescue, Bourget said.

Other “realistic” scenarios include on-ice accidents during a hockey game, and practice responses out on the land.

Now that first response teams are set up across the region, Timmons and Bourget plan to visit the communities a few times a year to follow-up and ensure teams have what they need.

Currently, there are no regulations maintaining the minimum number of trained first responders in a given village, Timmons said, which can be aggravated by a high turnover of staff in many villages.

He names the teams in Kuujjuaraapik, Salluit and Quaqtaq as among the most stable in the region.

Timmons would also like to see the addition of defibrillators to first responders’ list of equipment. The portable device applies electrical therapy to the heart during cardiac arrest.