Peter Shokeir | [email protected]
Long-time Jasper paramedic Rob Prinz recently received the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Medal in recognition of his service to the province.
Prinz was nominated for this medal by the Alberta Paramedic Association. He has been a first responder in Jasper National Park since 1992.
In 2015, he was awarded the Exemplary Service Medal by the Surgeon General of Canada.
Prinz noted how he had responded to a variety of emergencies over his 30-year career, such as traffic collisions, medical calls and trauma calls from the backcountry.
“Certainly one of the big challenges of working EMS in rural Alberta is that we are on call 24 hours a day … for four days straight,” he said.
He had worked one year as an operations manager only to realize that he missed the patient contact, which can be extensive.
“Not only do we take care of them during the initial emergency call back to the hospital in Jasper, but the serious patients also need transferring out, either to the Hinton hospital or to Edmonton,” he said.
“Sometimes we drive them all the way by ground to Edmonton or hopefully we can get a flight out of Hinton.”
Working in Jasper National Park as a paramedic presents many unique challenges, including all the visitors coming to Jasper, transferring serious patients out of the region, and search and rescue operations.
Nonetheless, Prinz is counting his blessings for being able to work in this part of the world.
“I’m really lucky to have done this job in Jasper my entire career,” he said. “It’s likely one of the reasons I managed to do it for 30 years as opposed to working in the city.”
He expressed pride in the local paramedics’ working relationship with other agencies, whether it’s the hospital staff, the fire department, the local RCMP or Parks Canada, both public safety and Parks Canada Dispatch.
“We are quite isolated in Jasper. A lot of people don’t sort of realize how isolated we are, but there’s not a lot of help from the outside and we’re a long way from the city, so it definitely takes a team to take care of patients and get them all the way there.”
Alberta’s Platinum Jubilee Medal commemorates the 70th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s accession to the throne as Queen of Canada.
The medal is being awarded to 7,000 Albertans in recognition of significant contributions to the province.
