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The students taking the EMT class at NS have the opportunity to gain hands-on learning experience by responding to calls with the local ambulance crew. It doesn’t matter if they’re hanging out with friends or driving home from practice;
the second their pagers go off, they’re up and ready to go on one of the calls.
“Going on calls is one of the best places for the students to learn,” said EMT certification teacher Cami Hathaway. “It helps them to really understand the material and see how what they’re learning in the classroom gets applied or how it gets adapted in a crisis situation.”
The students only get to be on call if they have all of their assignments done and their tests completed. Students must also pass tests with an 80 percent or better to show that they genuinely know the material and are prepared to be on duty.
Junior Kasey Curtis is one of the only students eligible to be on call. He described what it was like to respond to his first-ever call.
“I was just kinda hanging out after school when my pager went off,” Curtis said. “I rushed into Cami’s room, and she was all packed up and ready to go. That’s when it kinda hit me like, holy crap; this is actually happening…I’m really responding to a call.”
Curtis has been preparing for this moment; nevertheless, the fact of how real it all was triggered all sorts of emotions.
“It was kinda scary since it was my first time and all,” Curtis said. “I was nervous because I wasn’t sure what I was exactly going to be doing. I’ve learned what you’re supposed to do and everything, but it’s nerve-racking because you don’t want to get in the way.”
While Curtis and the other students learn all of the basics of handling certain situations in class, it can’t fully prepare them for adapting to abnormal circumstances.
“You never know what you’re dealing with until you arrive on the scene,” Hathaway said. “We have the students come and watch and take notes on stuff like what type of medicine the patient is given or what their blood pressure is. We mainly want them to take what we’ve learned in class and see how it is actually used in real life. Most situations they deal with will be different from what we might have talked about.”
Along with the students getting firsthand experience on the calls, their notes are pretty helpful because it provides the EMT crew with the information needed to fill out the reports. The more rides and different kinds of situations one can encounter will only be beneficial.
“The first couple of calls I went on, I was definitely nervous,” said senior Graciee Christiansen. “It was hard for me to remember what to do right at that moment. But the more I went on calls and the more comfortable I became with it, the easier it got for me.”
Christiansen has been on call the most out of the entire class. She uses both a pager and an app called “I Am Responding.” The app “I Am Responding” works very similar to a pager, except it gives you emergency notifications on your cell phone. Christiansen plays multiple sports at NS, and she has a hectic schedule. The shift coordinator works with Christiansen to ensure she’s not on call when she is not available.
“I took this job because I can make it work with my schedule, which is so nice,” Christiansen said. “My supervisor is so good to work with my crazy schedule. Like, say if I have softball games on Tuesday and Thursday, she’ll make sure and arrange for me to be on call Monday, Wednesday, and Friday instead. It’s nice because this way, I won’t get a page in the middle of the game.”
The EMT class has given the students at NS a fantastic opportunity to gain real hands-on learning experience on what it is truly like to be an EMT.
“I am glad that I took this class,” Christiansen said. “I’ve learned so many basic life-saving skills that I can use for the rest of my life, and I’m grateful for the chance I’ve got to go on so many calls. I like how I know that I can continue this throughout college, and I can take what I’ve learned in this class and learn even more.”
