The Daily Tar HeelThursday, March 7, 19915
1
Students overcome nervousness volunteering with county rescue squadj
By Karen Crutchfield
Staff Writer
Tt' not a fvniral SafiirHav nicrht ac
tivity, but some UNC students spend
their Saturday nights administering
mf"rliil rorf anrl htnino TVrn1f f n the
hospital.
rf Both the North and South Orange
County rescue squads have UNC student
. volunteers. South Orange's squad has
63 volunteers, several of whom are UNC
sfiirlftnts. npnff MrDonnnph. Jeff Mover
and Pam Welsh made up one of the two
crews working last Saturday night.
McDonough, a sophomore from
Toronto, Ontario majoring in philoso
phy and biology, heard about the vol
unteer program one day in December
and immediately inquired. This January,
he began training to become an emer
gency medical technician (EMT).
, Jeff Moyer, a pre-med senior from
Lilbrun, Ga. , has completed the training
and is an EMT. He has been with the
volunteer rescue squad for nearly two
years.
Pam Welsh is a volunteer paramedic
and head nurse for the respiratory in
tensive care unit at UNC Hospitals.
, The shift began Saturday at 6: 15 p.m.
with crews verifying that their ambu
lances were fully stocked. The sur
rounding station was like a small, cozy
apartment with a comfy couch and a
basket full of warm laundry. L.L. Bean
catalogues with worn pages were neatly
stacked on a kitchen table next to the
stove.
The first call came at 6:50 from the
. Carolina Meadows Retirement home.
A 92-year-old man apparently had gone
into septic shock. As the red lights
flashed and the siren blared, Moyer
, grabbed onto a hanging I. V. in the back
of the ambulance and explained that he
usually was not too nervous on the way
Thone slammer s' change customers'
long-distance service without consent
By Laura Williams
Senior Writer
Lighten Up!
But watch out. Your long-distance
service may not be safe from "phone
slammers," telemarketers who switch
your long-distance carrier without your
consent. And you may not even know
about it until the bill comes.
Sybil Rhodes, a UNC student, said
neither she nor her roommate gave
permission to switch their long-distance
carrier or even remembered receiving a
phone call from MCI to switch. But on
Nov. 30 her long-distance service with
AT&T was switched.
Rhodes said she thought there was
something wrong with her phone be
cause each time she tried to call home
she got a short busy signal.
"When I found out there wasn't
something technical wrong with the
phone that someone had simply stolen
our long-distance I was infuriated,"
she said.
Students at UNC who have been
phone slammed are not alone. Phone
slamming has become a problem all
over the country, prompted by stiff
competition between long-distance
carriers since the breakup of Ma Bell in
1984.
Craig Stevens, a consumer advocate
at the N.C. Utilities Commission, said
long-distance customers were usually
slammed by telemarketers who were
trying to earn a large commission based
on the number of customers they signed
on. The telemarketer usually switches
the customer to another carrier after a
phone call, Stevens said. Despite what
the customer may request, the
telemarketer initiates the change, he
said.
Afterward, it's difficult to prove the
customer was slammed, Stevens said,
because the telemarketer was not re
quired to get written permission to
switch the service.
. Stevens said the utilities commission
office received about 75 complaints of
phone slamming last year. The com
mission works on behalf of the slammed
customer to return the original service
and to waive the charges for the un
wanted switch, he said.
Although the charges only amount to
a few dollars, sorting out the problem is
6ften the biggest cost of the practice, he
said. "Most of the time it seems to be
more of an aggravation to the customer
Burnout from w 1
"When you're seeing a daylong con
cert like that, having a beer goes hand in
hand, Charles said. "I don't see a prob
lem with it at all."
"It's a shame to say you have to drink
to have a good time, but you do," said
fraternity member David Crist. "I think
it could be a real positive thing if it was
dry, but I don't think many people would
be that interested."
Charles said having the party at He's
Not Here, which can accommodate
about 1 ,000 people, was the fraternity's
last option. "We didn't want to exclude
any non-Greek people from campus,
but there is a limit to the number of
people we can have," he said.
Money raised from Burnout has been
donated to the N.C. Jaycee Burn Center
since 1 978. Pi KappaPhi president Mike
Reynolds said the fraternity had donated
more than $30,000 since then.
Charles said fraternity members hope
to raise $10,000-$ 15,000 for the Burn
Center this year by selling T-shirts.
to calls. He justified his calmness by
explaining that the call-in often sounded
much more serious than it actually was.
McDonough, on the other hand, ad
mitted that he still became nervous on
his way to some of the calls. "My heart
was beating out to the wall," he said
about his first serious call. Since then,
his nervousness has subsided.
The crew members are familiar faces
to those working in the emergency room.
Welsh explained that the relationship
between the rescue squad and the UNC
hospital is one of the main reasons the
program is successful.
Squad members feel as though an
other part of it s success can be attributed
to the Chapel Hill police officers. Un
like most officers who are required to
answer 911 calls only when an assault is
involved, those in Chapel Hill are
summoned to every call because they
are medically trained. They can resus
citate victims if there is an extreme
emergency and they arrive before the
rescue squad. "That can make a differ
ence," Welsh said.
Another successful characteristic of
this county's rescue squad is its refusal
to charge patients for the calls. Many
counties charge $ 1 1 0 to $ 1 20 for a visit,
Welsh said.
This policy impressed McDonough.
He said he was used to seeing people of
the community get medical help easily
and with no charge because in Canada
there is no medical expense.
McDonough said it was important for
citizens to be able to get help when they
needed it without concern for costs.
"It should not matter who they are,
where they live, how much money they
have ... They should all have easy access
to the medical attention they need," he
said.
South Orange rescue squad has fought
the county several times to assure that
than anything else."
Bob Page, a Chapel Hill attorney
who represented a long-distance tele
phone company that lost out in a switch,
said although slamming cost individual
customers only a few dollars in service
charges, the company that lost the busi
ness lost a lot of money.
Page represented Phone America, a
long-distance carrier in western North
Carolina that provided long-distance
service to pay telephones in Charlotte
Douglas International Airport and to
hospitals in Hickory and Asheville. A
Maryland communications company
secretly switched the pay phones in the
airport without the consent of airport
managers, Page said.
Phone America did not know the
phones had been switched until it tried
to collect revenue from the pay phones.
The company's profits dropped thou
sands of dollars within a month, he said.
Phone America filed a complaint with
the N.C. Utilities Commission and the
case was settled out of court about a
year ago, Page said.
The motivation for the scam was
money, he said. "It is sometimes un
scrupulous sales agents working on
commission." Agents make a commis
sion on the number of switches they
make and the money customers spend
on long-distance once they have
switched.
Karen Long, N.C. assistant attorney
general, said the best way to stop phone
Thursday,
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the service remains free for its citizens.
Welsh said they were worried a charge
would cause people who badly need
help to hesitate to call.
One of the calls the crew received
Saturday night may have been one of
those calls. An elderly woman who
claimed she had never been in the hos
pital before, except to have children,
called the rescue squad nervously
complaining about blood in her urine.
Although her circumstance was not
immediately serious, she had no way to
get to the hospital other than the am
bulance that the squad carried her in.
"I would rather have a million cases
like this that was not too urgent and not
really that necessary, than miss one
who needed us immediately but was too
scared to call because of the fee," Welsh
said.
All three confessed that some of the
cases go home with them. "I have had
nightmares about some happenings,"
Welsh said.
It is easy to wonder how these student
volunteers find time to work, especially
without pay. They explained that the
program can be a great time commitment
when in training, but the system overall
is flexible.
Spending time with these volunteers
suggests they would be there regardless
of the time involved because of the
satisfaction they get from helping
people. To McDonough, this program
is "a perfect example of human spirit ...
there is not a more graphic way of
helping your community."
The program gives people a chance
to realize how reality is since they actu
ally go into people's homes and see the
way they live, he said.
"You recognize just how bad things
really are socio-economically. There
are no more disillusions."
There are usually four to eight calls
slamming was to require the phone
companies to get written permission
from customers to switch their service.
Ron Laughlin, state public relations
manager for AT&T, said MCI and
AT&T were trying to cool their fierce
competition and reduce the risk of phone
slamming between the two companies.
In December, MCI and AT&T agreed
to take steps to stop phone slamming by
requiring an independent company to
confirm customer approval of the switch.
Nationwide, more than 100,000 long
distance customers have been slammed,
Laughlin said.
"We believe these safeguards will
put the long-distance decision in the
hands of the consumer," he said.
Both Laughlin and Steve Fox, re
gional public relations manager for MCI,
said they did not know whether long
distance telemarketers worked on
commission. MCI instructs its
telemarketers not to switch long-distance
carriers without permission, Fox
said.
Phone slamming sometimes occurs
because of a computer error, he said.
The agreement between AT&T and MCI
has greatly reduced the number of
complaints of slamming that MCI re
ceives, he said.
Phone slamming causes ill will to
ward the company and costs everyone
involved money, he said. "It's not in
anyone's best interest for a customer to
be switched without their permission."
March 7th
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For information, contact:
UNC-CH Study Abroad Office
12 Caldwell Hall, CB 3130
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3130
919-962-7001
III ;w .:T,ul(
$ Jin. IV-
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Geoff McDonough and Pam Welsh demonstrate rescue techniques for trauma victims
per night. Although not many of the
calls are from UNC, the majority of
those that are are alcohol-related.
Chapel Hill gets approximately 3,000
0
Please rock
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calls each year, whereas a larger city
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Durham 's large number can be attributed
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on a fellow paramedic in an ambulance
dition to its major drug problem.
If interested in volunteering, call the
North or South Orange County rescue
squads or stop by.
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Just remember,
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