Weekly Interview, Cynthia Walker-Butler - by Amanda Estes
By Amanda Estes
Staff Writer
When Cynthia Walker-Butler learned she had been nominated a second time for the Star of Life Award, the highest honor an EMS worker can receive, she said she was happy, but also upset with her station manager Joe Conley.
“I work hard, but I think all of us do,” she said. “It’s my job and I love doing my job. I expect more out of myself than they do.” She added that she
During an interview at the American Medical Response (AMR) office in Scarborough, where Walker-Butler is an EMTI Supervisor, she joked about being a repeat offender. When the Hollis resident received her first Star of Life award in 2000, Walker-Butler was the first EMS worker from Maine to get such an honor.
On Monday, Walker-Butler was back at work after a trip to Washington, D.C. where she received her second award, chatted with three state representatives, attended several banquets, and squeezed in some sightseeing. The Star of Life award is a national award, started by the American Ambulance Association, given to an EMS worker for length of service, a special call, or going above and beyond. Walker-Butler’s two nominations were for her willingness to go above and beyond.
Walker-Butler said she expected to speak with Senators Olympia Snow, Susan Collins, and Congressman Tom Allen for 10 minutes, but in the end she spent 45 minutes with each of them. She said they are co-sponsoring a bill to raise Medicare reimbursement rates.
As a station supervisor and the first female supervisor at that, Walker-Butler wears many hats and she joked that the station had yet to come up with a title for her new business cards. For the last three years, Walker-Butler has been in charge of patient assessment for repetitive patients, which include patients requiring chemotherapy, dialysis, and physical therapy. Every 60 days, Walker-Butler assesses their transportation needs and determines what transportation programs they may qualify for.
AMR is the largest, private ambulance company in the world. Walker-Butler said the station responds to 9-1-1 calls, but a lot of their trips are repetitive, non-emergency transports that local rescues can’t do, she said. When the town rescue brings a patient to the hospital and they come out in a halo or in traction, AMR will transport that patient from their home to physical therapy.
“Way back when, hospitals never let cancer patients go home,” she said of AMR’s support of repetitive cancer patients. “You stayed in the hospital until you were done (with) radiation. Now there are so many programs done on out-patient services, a lot of patients don’t have a way to get there for their treatments.”
She said AMR also works very closely with dialysis and wound care centers at local hospitals. She is often a contact between the patients and their primary care providers as she said many patients see so many specialists that they never see their regular doctor.
Walker-Butler said AMR also makes psych runs and detox runs from the ERs to rehabilitation facilities.
“There’s not much I haven’t run into,” she said. In addition to transporting a variety of patients, Walker-Butler said AMR is able to travel long-distances. Where state programs like Cumberland County’s Regional Transportation Program (RTP) or the York County Community Action Corporation (YCCAC) can’t cross county lines, AMR ambulances might transport a patient from Maine Medical Center to Boston or from a local hospital to Van Buren, Maine, the latter being a trip that was scheduled for Tuesday.
Walker-Butler said AMR also takes on non-medical roles such as covering concerts at the Cumberland County Civic Center and Motocross events in Lyman or taking nursing home residents on field trips.
All of the station’s transports are run through an onsite facilitator program at Mercy Hospital, which Walker-Butler started two years ago. When a patient needs transportation, Mercy pages the station and Walker-Butler sets it up. Nursing homes also follow a similar procedure. With each case, she looks at the patients’ insurance to see what modes of transportation they qualify for so the patient is not surprised with a hefty bill.
“It gets very frustrating cause you pay and you pay and you pay,” she said of her dealings with various insurance companies. “It’s like any other company, they’re tightening their belt (and) when a patient does need transportation and we can’t give them that transportation without a co-pay coming out of their pocket…I get very frustrated for the family and my employees.”
She said many seniors don’t want to be a burden on their families and they don’t want to run up huge medical bills so they go without their medications or without treatment programs.
Walker-Butler has been an EMS worker for 27 years, a rarity in a profession where so many people become “burnt out.” Quite the opposite, she supplements her work with AMR by volunteering for hometown rescue and fire departments. She is also a volunteer CPR instructor.
At 15, she was the youngest person in the state to get her EMT license.
When she was nine years old, Walker-Butler said her grandmother died from a heart attack. She said no one had known how to perform CPR. She said she always knew she wanted to work in the medical field.
Getting to where she is today, however, hasn’t been easy. At the time she was first starting out on the Scarborough Student Rescue, women EMTs could volunteer, but they were not paid employees.
“When I graduated, I remember going to one of the local towns and applying and the chief just looked at me and he pet my hand and said, ‘Dear, you can volunteer all you want, but this is a man’s job,’ ” she said.
Walker-Butler said there is more equality in the profession today, but every now and again she will come up against that old attitude.
“ Sometimes you’ll go in and it will be an older male patient and they’ll look at you and (say), ‘Oh, we’ve got a girl driver,’ “ she said. “It hasn’t been long enough I guess.”
She said her young granddaughter turned her on to something she had never thought of before.
“She looked at me when I was putting my uniform in my suitcase and said, ‘Grammy, why are you taking your man clothes?’” Walker-Butler said she laughed and explained that it was her uniform.
She said there are a lot more women in the field today and she said it is always good to have a mixed crew on ambulance transports. She said it protects AMR, but in some situations a female patient may feel more comfortable with another female present or a male patient may feel more comfortable with another male present.
Walker-Butler said it is the support she gets from her husband, family and crew that enables her to continue to go above and beyond in her profession.
“This is what I’ve always done from 15 on,” she said. “I get paid to play.”
Staff Writer
When Cynthia Walker-Butler learned she had been nominated a second time for the Star of Life Award, the highest honor an EMS worker can receive, she said she was happy, but also upset with her station manager Joe Conley.
“I work hard, but I think all of us do,” she said. “It’s my job and I love doing my job. I expect more out of myself than they do.” She added that she
During an interview at the American Medical Response (AMR) office in Scarborough, where Walker-Butler is an EMTI Supervisor, she joked about being a repeat offender. When the Hollis resident received her first Star of Life award in 2000, Walker-Butler was the first EMS worker from Maine to get such an honor.
On Monday, Walker-Butler was back at work after a trip to Washington, D.C. where she received her second award, chatted with three state representatives, attended several banquets, and squeezed in some sightseeing. The Star of Life award is a national award, started by the American Ambulance Association, given to an EMS worker for length of service, a special call, or going above and beyond. Walker-Butler’s two nominations were for her willingness to go above and beyond.
Walker-Butler said she expected to speak with Senators Olympia Snow, Susan Collins, and Congressman Tom Allen for 10 minutes, but in the end she spent 45 minutes with each of them. She said they are co-sponsoring a bill to raise Medicare reimbursement rates.
As a station supervisor and the first female supervisor at that, Walker-Butler wears many hats and she joked that the station had yet to come up with a title for her new business cards. For the last three years, Walker-Butler has been in charge of patient assessment for repetitive patients, which include patients requiring chemotherapy, dialysis, and physical therapy. Every 60 days, Walker-Butler assesses their transportation needs and determines what transportation programs they may qualify for.
AMR is the largest, private ambulance company in the world. Walker-Butler said the station responds to 9-1-1 calls, but a lot of their trips are repetitive, non-emergency transports that local rescues can’t do, she said. When the town rescue brings a patient to the hospital and they come out in a halo or in traction, AMR will transport that patient from their home to physical therapy.
“Way back when, hospitals never let cancer patients go home,” she said of AMR’s support of repetitive cancer patients. “You stayed in the hospital until you were done (with) radiation. Now there are so many programs done on out-patient services, a lot of patients don’t have a way to get there for their treatments.”
She said AMR also works very closely with dialysis and wound care centers at local hospitals. She is often a contact between the patients and their primary care providers as she said many patients see so many specialists that they never see their regular doctor.
Walker-Butler said AMR also makes psych runs and detox runs from the ERs to rehabilitation facilities.
“There’s not much I haven’t run into,” she said. In addition to transporting a variety of patients, Walker-Butler said AMR is able to travel long-distances. Where state programs like Cumberland County’s Regional Transportation Program (RTP) or the York County Community Action Corporation (YCCAC) can’t cross county lines, AMR ambulances might transport a patient from Maine Medical Center to Boston or from a local hospital to Van Buren, Maine, the latter being a trip that was scheduled for Tuesday.
Walker-Butler said AMR also takes on non-medical roles such as covering concerts at the Cumberland County Civic Center and Motocross events in Lyman or taking nursing home residents on field trips.
All of the station’s transports are run through an onsite facilitator program at Mercy Hospital, which Walker-Butler started two years ago. When a patient needs transportation, Mercy pages the station and Walker-Butler sets it up. Nursing homes also follow a similar procedure. With each case, she looks at the patients’ insurance to see what modes of transportation they qualify for so the patient is not surprised with a hefty bill.
“It gets very frustrating cause you pay and you pay and you pay,” she said of her dealings with various insurance companies. “It’s like any other company, they’re tightening their belt (and) when a patient does need transportation and we can’t give them that transportation without a co-pay coming out of their pocket…I get very frustrated for the family and my employees.”
She said many seniors don’t want to be a burden on their families and they don’t want to run up huge medical bills so they go without their medications or without treatment programs.
Walker-Butler has been an EMS worker for 27 years, a rarity in a profession where so many people become “burnt out.” Quite the opposite, she supplements her work with AMR by volunteering for hometown rescue and fire departments. She is also a volunteer CPR instructor.
At 15, she was the youngest person in the state to get her EMT license.
When she was nine years old, Walker-Butler said her grandmother died from a heart attack. She said no one had known how to perform CPR. She said she always knew she wanted to work in the medical field.
Getting to where she is today, however, hasn’t been easy. At the time she was first starting out on the Scarborough Student Rescue, women EMTs could volunteer, but they were not paid employees.
“When I graduated, I remember going to one of the local towns and applying and the chief just looked at me and he pet my hand and said, ‘Dear, you can volunteer all you want, but this is a man’s job,’ ” she said.
Walker-Butler said there is more equality in the profession today, but every now and again she will come up against that old attitude.
“ Sometimes you’ll go in and it will be an older male patient and they’ll look at you and (say), ‘Oh, we’ve got a girl driver,’ “ she said. “It hasn’t been long enough I guess.”
She said her young granddaughter turned her on to something she had never thought of before.
“She looked at me when I was putting my uniform in my suitcase and said, ‘Grammy, why are you taking your man clothes?’” Walker-Butler said she laughed and explained that it was her uniform.
She said there are a lot more women in the field today and she said it is always good to have a mixed crew on ambulance transports. She said it protects AMR, but in some situations a female patient may feel more comfortable with another female present or a male patient may feel more comfortable with another male present.
Walker-Butler said it is the support she gets from her husband, family and crew that enables her to continue to go above and beyond in her profession.
“This is what I’ve always done from 15 on,” she said. “I get paid to play.”
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