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Obese Patients Injuring Ambulance Workers’ Backs

EMS workers Ethan Webber and Bailey Thornton wheel an obese patient to an ambulance in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Oct. 4, 2021. (Jackson Elliott/  Pezou)

Americans keep getting heavier, but the backs of ambulance workers aren’t getting stronger.

Over the past five decades, the percentage of American obese people rose from about 14 percent to 40 percent. American Obesity Association estimates that by 2030, 60 percent of Americans will be obese.

This change means the average American weighs 30 pounds more than the average American in 1960. According to a study by Dr. Audrey Reichard, about half of emergency medical services (EMS) personnel injured while lifting patients, between 2010 and 2014, were lifting someone obese.

“It’s definitely a pain in the back,” said David Williams, an emergency medical technician (EMT) with Care Med Ambulance in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

At Care Med Ambulance, nearly 90 percent of ambulance riders are obese, said Williams. Care Med transports people who can’t drive to medical checkups. It doesn’t respond to emergencies.

A normal stretcher (L) compared to a stretcher for the obese in front of a Care Med ambulance in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Oct. 4, 2021. (Jackson Elliott/ Pezou)

“We’ve been having to do a lot more lift assists,” Williams said. “That takes our time in office, or another truck’s time when they could be having a break, or picking up another patient.”

Before working at Care Med, EMT Candace Laymon worked at the fire department in Mowbray, Tennessee. Most calls the department received came from people who needed help lifting someone obese off the floor, she said.

“It doesn’t matter what service you’re in. It’s still dealing with obesity problems,” Laymon said.

obesity epidemic impacts ambulance and emergency services across the country, said Iowa’s Dysart Ambulance Service director Jules Scaddan.

“This is something that everybody deals with, as long as there’s EMS,” she said. “It would be great if everybody weighed 180 pounds, but even 180 pounds can be wear and tear on the body.”

Breaking Backs

EMS workers tend to be strong. Most people at Care Med have sturdy builds from lifting people all day. But bodies have their limits, said Williams.

“For most people, about the time you hit the 300-pound mark is where you’re calling another ambulance,” he said. “It takes a toll on our crews.”

Back pain from lifting obese patients inflicts a persistent problem on Care Med’s EMS workers.

Candace Laymon holds the strap of a bariatric stretcher for a Care Med ambulance in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Oct. 4, 2021. (Jackson Elliott/ Pezou)

“By the end of the day, to end of the week, we’re hurting to the point where we can barely move,” said Williams. “Now our backs hurt constantly, no matter what we’re doing.”

EMS workers know their job has heavy lifting and they can’t do it forever, Williams said. Despite low pay and the physical toll, many EMS workers work because they want to help others.

“Care Med is in a pandemic, and they need so much help,” said emergency medical responder (EMR) Chloe Gourley. “I’m already helping as much as I can everywhere else, and here I can help out with driving.”

To carry obese patients, EMS workers use good lifting techniques, said Gourley.

“But even with that, if you have 10 obese patients back-to-back-to-back, even with 15-minute breaks, it’s still a workout.”

When she gets home from work, Gourley stretches, takes a warm bath or shower, and applies pain relievers to her back.

“I just go straight to that,” she said.

Emergency medical responder Chloe Gourley exits a Care Med ambulance in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Oct. 4, 2021. (Jackson Elliott/ Pezou)

Bearing Weight

Even as stretcher technology has advanced, EMS back injuries have increased. At some point, emergency workers must lift the stretcher and the patient on top of it.

“Everybody talks big about power structures being helpful. y are, to a certain extent,” said Laymon. “But you’re still having to pick up the entire stretcher and the patient to load it in the back of the truck.”

Care Med EMS workers Ethan Webber and Bailey Thornton typically lift 10 to 12 patients a day. people weigh between 90 and 420 pounds, Webber said. stretcher weighs about 60 pounds.

After lifting the patient to a stretcher, Webber and Thornton maneuver the stretcher to the ambulance. If they’re lucky, the stretcher can wheel on smooth pavement and wide hallways. If not, they wrestle the stretcher across grass, stairs, or narrow doorways.

Next, Webber or Thornton lifts one end of the stretcher while the other end slides on a rail inside the ambulance.
At their destination, they repeat the procedure in reverse.

Out of eight people on Webber and Thornton’s Oct. 6 ambulance route, six were obese or overweight.

Mental Pain

For the people Webber and Thornton pick up, obesity is often one of many struggles.

Most of the obese people in the ambulance seem in despair. y can’t walk, but they also hardly move their hands. y barely speak, and their expressions seem dead.

y seem ashamed, but, in the narrow ambulance, there’s nowhere to hide.

While their bodies often spill off the stretcher, their limbs look thin and weak. y seem consumed by fat.

Obese people are usually depressed, said Webber.

“I feel like they don’t necessarily have the mentality to stay healthy,” said Webber. “It might be like the chicken or the egg. obesity caused the depression, or the depression caused the obesity, but it’s normally both there.”

EMS worker Bailey Thornton loads an obese patient in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Oct. 4, 2021. (Jackson Elliott/ Pezou)

science backs him up. Depression and obesity tend to be correlated.

Webber said that family background and individual responsibility are part of why people are obese, but that culture plays a huge role. When people get injured in ways that leave them bedridden, they also have little to do but eat.

“It’s probably more of a culture thing than anything. Americans eat fast food every day. I know a lot of people who will order pizza, or takeout, in hospital, or eat and ask for a sack lunch. I don’t know if I’ll be any different at 70.”

Between jobs, Webber and Thornton keep up their spirits with a lively sense of humor. y don’t usually talk about the patients they transport.

“We played the Bee Gees’ “Staying Alive” downtown with the windows down once,” said Webber. “People looked at us funny.”

Trying to Recover

Outside the ambulance, the morbidly obese often live lonely lives. y can’t walk to see other people. y often don’t want to, said Anita Bevins, a 49-year-old obese woman in recovery.

Unlike most other obese people Care Med carries, Bevins works to get healthier. Not long ago, she weighed 500 pounds, she said. Today she’s down to 250.

EMS worker Ethan Webber readies an ambulance in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Oct. 4, 2021. (Jackson Elliott/ Pezou)

“When I was 500 pounds, my self-esteem was so low I didn’t want to leave my house,” she said. “My husband said I quit caring about me. I was just sitting there drinking drinks and eating food.”

Bevins’s obesity led to disastrous health issues. Her kidney stopped working, and she almost died in the hospital. Health workers successfully resuscitated her.

“When they brought me back, I couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk, I couldn’t do anything,” she said.

But her troubles got worse when she went home. With two EMTs supporting her as she walked up the stairs, Bevins fell, she said.

“My legs came out from under me. I broke my legs. I got fake knees, crushed legs, all that. My bones were crushed so bad the doctor had to figure out a different route for pins and screws. I couldn’t go home for nine months.”

Bevins chose to lose weight for her daughter Ariyha, her son Antonio, her husband Carlos, and her mother Charlotte. She has their names tattooed on her arms.

EMS worker Dalton Purdue prepares for an early shift on a Care Med ambulance in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Oct. 4, 2021. (Jackson Elliott/ Pezou)

“It is God that brought me out,” she said. “It is God that’s helping me. I am in so much pain with them screws.”

Right now, Bevins said she just wants to be home. But to get there, she has to become strong enough to do activities that most people take for granted.

“My steps is to get to that bathroom, to lift my body, then to wipe myself and come back,” she said. “As long as I can do that, I’m good, and to be able to walk. My goal is home. My steps is what I need to do, but my goal is to be home.”

Stretching the Limits

Despite obesity’s devastating effects, most insurance providers don’t cover weight-loss drugs, said James Zervios, the vice president of marketing and communications for activism group Obesity Action.

“That definitely should be a strong signal that there’s something wrong with our health care system, that we are not able to help people with obesity,” he said.

To help obese people and EMS personnel today, Zervios said ambulance services, hospitals, and medical equipment companies should adapt with technology, additional ambulance workers, or other methods.

“y’ve got to figure out how to serve everybody that’s out there.”

Many ambulance companies already buy specially designed stretchers for the morbidly obese.

A “bariatric stretcher” is nearly twice as wide as a normal one. It weighs 150 pounds compared to a normal stretcher’s 70 pounds, said Williams.

“If you’ve got the wider stretcher and a wide patient, it makes things very tight,” said Laymon.

A Care Med ambulance waits in the parking lot in Chattanooga, Tenn,, on Oct, 4, 2021. (Jackson Elliott/ Pezou)

Bariatric stretchers struggle to maneuver through doorways or narrow halls. In a loaded ambulance, there’s barely a foot of space beside a normal stretcher. With a bariatric stretcher, there’s even less.

“I’ve picked up a patient on the bariatric stretcher where she was overflowing it,” Williams said. “We could not get straps around her. She was 800 pounds.”

When EMS workers lift an 800-pound person, it takes four people and everyone still struggles, he said.

Even with powered self-lifting stretchers, EMS workers must put the patient on the stretcher and then put the stretcher in the ambulance. Powered stretchers are heavy and most only have enough battery power to lift one obese patient.

For small volunteer ambulance services like Iowa’s Dysart Ambulance Service, buying these devices can be challenging, said Jules Scaddan, the service’s director.

Scaddan has already bought $7,000 “stair chairs” and a $32,000 stretcher to carry the obese. To avoid raising ambulance prices, she held a fundraiser.

To lift obese people, ambulances sometimes have to call another ambulance for extra manpower. But this strategy means fewer ambulances, said Scaddan.

“If we have to call other volunteers that are available to come help lift, then if we get a call, we don’t have the additional ability, or resources, to respond to that call,” she said.

backs of EMS workers can’t last forever. To help them, Americans must wait for someone to invent a doorway-sized stretcher, with an eight-hour battery, that is able to gently pick up 800 pounds, 10 times in a row.

Or they could find ways to get lighter.

Pezou : Obese Patients Injuring Ambulance Workers’ Backs