MONROE — Brandi Wirth, an EMT and ambulance driver for 17 years, has been named the 2020 Green County EMS Member of the Year.
The Monroe native and 1999 Monroe High School graduate joined Green County EMS in March 2003. Now 39 and with a family of her own, she said she’s continued all these years with the department because the work is meaningful.
“It’s nice to be able to help my community. I like doing it. It’s fun for me,” Wirth said.
The honor of Member of the Year is “based on her dedication,” said Green County EMS Chief Dan Nufer. “She works here in town and thanks to her employer she’s able to leave work during the day and help us.”
Wirth’s commitment has been “tremendous,” Nufer said. Call volume at Green County EMS has consistently gone up for several years, due in part to an aging population, he said, so having an EMT right in town and available at a moment’s notice has been helpful.
From January to July this year the department responded to 1,320 calls. The coverage area extends from Juda to South Wayne and from Monticello to Monroe. It has a primary ambulance that is staffed 24/7 and three more ambulances that are used as needed.
“There’s days you could put six ambulances on the road,” Nufer said.
Flexibility at Wirth’s job doing data entry at Land Sales Bulletin in downtown Monroe has allowed her to take calls even during the day. Because she’s so close, she can respond quickly to the EMS station at 1800 12th St.
The target response time to get an ambulance out the door on a run is four minutes.
She estimates she responds to one to two calls every day and puts in close to 200 hours in a quarter. Green County EMS members are paid for time spent on calls, from the minute a page goes out to the minute they finish reports and cleanup.
On Sept. 1, Wirth started a program at Madison College to become a paramedic, the highest level of Emergency Medical Technician training. She anticipates graduating in December 2021.
“I’ve been in it so long, it’s just a natural progression for me. I respond a lot to calls in the middle of the day when we are in need of paramedics to respond,” she said. Green County EMS is covering her tuition, which she said she’s grateful for because she wouldn’t be able to afford it otherwise.
She laughed when asked about a social life.
“What social life? Yeah, I go to work and I take EMS calls and go to school and keep up with three kids,” she said.
Wirth’s children are 15, 5 and 3. She said she’s thought about advancing her medical knowledge even further and becoming a registered nurse when they’re older. She has her eye on an accelerated nursing degree that’s designed specifically for certified paramedics.
The biggest change Wirth has seen over the years at Green County EMS is in technology.
When she first started, EMTs wrote their run reports on triplicate carbonless copy paper. Now they enter information on a computer tablet.
Back in the day, EMTs didn’t have a reliable way to communicate when the page for calls went out, so they would “stand outside (the station) and wait for four minutes and hope someone’s coming.”
Now, EMTs and drivers use the “IamResponding” app to communicate and can see who is on their way.
More recently, they’ve had the added responsibility of wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) and taking other safety precautions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Staying healthy and protecting vulnerable people is the priority, Wirth said: “We can’t get sick because if we get sick, we can’t get the ambulance out the door. ... It’s stressful but it’s part of our job now. So we just do what we need to do.”
Appreciation on the job can be rare, especially in hectic emergency situations.
“The families aren’t thinking about thanking us, they’re thinking about their loved ones,” Wirth said.
But the work is its own reward. The satisfaction of helping people in need is “awesome.”
