Talk:Christmas Valley, Oregon

Oregon Stub‑class Low‑importance

	Oregon portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Oregon, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the U.S. state of Oregon on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.OregonWikipedia:WikiProject OregonTemplate:WikiProject OregonOregon
Stub	This article has been rated as Stub-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
The current collaborations of the month are Women's History Month: Create or improve articles for women listed at Oregon Women of Achievement (modern) or Women of the West, Oregon chapter (historical).

EMT info moved here from mainspace

Christmas Valley is considered "frontier" (there is urban, suburban, rural and frontier) as far as EMS is concerned. Serious and life threatening trauma and medical patients are flown by helicopter since ground transport can take two hours in good weather and 4 in bad weather. The cost of the air ambulance is about $8,000 is not often covered by medical insurance. In many frontier area there is a yearly subscription service that will pay for air ambulance service throughout the country. Most of Christmas Valley and Lake County covered by AirLife out of St. Charles Medical Center in Bend.

The North Lake County Ambulance Service is staffed by volunteers who have other jobs. There are no full time EMT's. Because of this response times to the scene can be long. If there are no volunteers available then Silver Lake Ambulance is asked to respond. They are also volunteers.

The level of certification of the volunteers is mostly EMT-B's with some EMT-I's and recently (2007) one Paramedic which is rare since the training level of a Paramedic is tough to keep up in the rural areas.

Expectations of tourists is often the same as that of a small city. It is assumed incorrectly that if they have a medical emergency an ambulance will be there in a matter of minutes. This is a common misconception. In frontier areas EMS is hindered by great distances. Even calling 911 in frontier areas is hit and miss as cell phone service is almost non existent.

This is very interesting, but first of all, it appears to be original research, in other words, it is based on personal observation rather than on citations from reliable sources. Also, I believe it is giving undue weight to a topic that may not be encyclopedic. You have to think in terms of "If I were to look up 'Christmas Valley' in Encyclopedia Britannica, what kind of information would I find?" Some of this information might be able to be included, but ideas about where else this info could be published are welcome. Perhaps Wikitravel? Katr67 (talk) 20:02, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]