QRS Information

What is QRS?

QRS certification is a certificate of excellence issued by the state Department of Health which assures a quick response with proper equipment to provide life-saving techniques and the personnel properly trained to use the equipment and implement the techniques.

When does the QRS unit respond?

The QRS unit responds when Southern Berks EMS wants it to. They are the region's EMS provider and are in control of what units are dispatched and where they are sent. They specifically dispatch under the following circumstances:

• The Southern Berks EMS Station 1 (Birdsboro) Ambulance is busy on another call. This means the next unit to be sent will be from Grille (Southern Berks Station 2). These ambulances carry between 12-18 minute response times. In this situation, Birdsboro's QRS is automatically dispatched.
• When the Southern Berks Station 1 Ambulance requests the unit.  This may be because they need help lifting, they need both of their personnel for patient care and require an additional hand for a driver, and this may even occur because of difficulty removing someone from their residence.

How well trained are these firefighters?

Members of the QRS unit are either First Responders, EMTs, Paramedics, Nurses, or Doctors.

• First Responders go through a 41 hour class which covers advanced first aid techniques, oxygen delivery, and airway adjuncts.
• EMTs attain a minimum of 130 hours training in classroom lecture, practical sessions, and ER clinical time. Topics of the EMT class include treating life threatening emergencies, muscular skeletal injuries, common medical emergencies,childbirth, and problems of pediatric patients, lifting and moving patients, environmental emergencies, extrication from automobiles, and over responsibilities and operations of the EMS system.
• Paramedics in Pennsylvania go through everything an EMT does PLUS a minimum of 212 didactic and 232 clinical hours of training which include classroom lecture, practical sessions, ride-along preceptorship, and clinical sessions in places such as the hospital ER, operating room, IV team, etc.
• Pre-Hospital Registered Nurses in the state of Pennsylvania are mostly equivalent to a Paramedic when it comes to what they can and cannot do in the prehosptial setting. In some instances a PHRN can run IV pumps and other equipment as well as administer other medications that a paramedic normal cannot do without additional training. The distinct difference is that a PHRN is a Registered Nurse.