Playground Poker unveils on-site infirmary

Since February, Playground Poker has turned what was once the entryway to the staff room into a functional infirmary, to be able to help their customers without necessarily having to go through Kahnawake’s emergency services if the need is not there.

Mackenzie Kirby, co-licensee for Playground Poker, said that they are not trying to replace or compete with the community’s emergency services, but rather mitigate their need to rely on it and keep it available elsewhere.

“There’s a whole entire community that those services need to reach, and we don’t want to be the ones to draw it away from the community. So, I hope people see it as that,” said Kirby.

Currently, the vast majority of Playground’s security supervisors have received CPR and first responder training, with the immediate goal of having the remaining untrained supervisors as well as the gaming floor managers up to speed in how to use the infirmary and act as first responders.

But, Kirby said, having another staff member who can be in the infirmary as their primary job is still needed – and as a 24-hour facility, they’ll need more than one person for the job.

“Having the security supervisors be trained is great. All the other staff being trained is great. But, they also have their primary duties, which is to be security, attend to guests, and so on. So, it’s imperative that we have someone just there, just focusing on that. Hopefully we never need it. But you have to plan for the worst,” said Kirby.

Interested candidates will need medic, EMT, paramedic, or first responder certification, be bilingual, and be able to maintain and operate the equipment in the infirmary, among other things.

According to Kirby, the need to have an in-house place to treat minor injuries or other incidents that may not require a major medical intervention has steadily increased as Playground has grown and gotten busier over the years, cumulating in the decision to furnish an infirmary.

“We weren’t in a position to make that call to say, ‘You know what? You guys are fine, you can return to playing,’ or, ‘you’re safe to go home,’ that would be kind of irresponsible of us,” said Kirby, who added that the clientele sometimes had falls, scrapes, or other incidents that needed to be treated, but might not have necessitated an ambulance with the proper facilities. Without them, though, an ambulance was needed.

“Doing that was not going to serve ourselves and our community well long-term,” said Kirby.

“It was our conscious realization that we need to do and dedicate as many resources as possible to mitigate the number of calls that we would make to local emergency response, because at the end of the day, we don’t want to be in a situation as a community where we’re stretched so thin that we can’t get to that next call.”

The infirmary was furnished and stocked up with the help of a contractor who once served on the Kahnawake Fire Brigade, and while Kirby estimates the cost was around $150,000, the money is well spent on prevention.

“We’re talking about people’s safety, and that’s something we pride ourselves on here. We want people to return and have a good time,” said Kirby.

“We have to expect that those situations happen, and god forbid, when they do, at least we’ll be able to treat them now as fast as possible.”

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