“Dispatch calls and you grab your Toughbook, take that last bite of food, lace up your boots and hop in the front seat,” Paul Wasserman, SM ’14, said, describing his work as a volunteer Emergency Medical Technician (EMT). “It’s exciting,” explained Wasserman. “You’re driving fast, lights and sirens going, but you’re focused on what the situation might be.”
But that thrill Wasserman describes comes only after hours spent toiling in a classroom. “I haven’t learned this much about the human body since ninth-grade biology,” Bianca Rey, BK ’15, said. After nearly completing Yale’s EMT course, it is no wonder that Rey is well-versed in the human body, with her knowledge of veins, muscles, and sicknesses alike making her fit for a cameo on Grey’s Anatomy.
Instead, Rey, a Global Affairs major, along with 26 other students (myself included), spends her Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday evenings at Yale Health, a participant of a program that began nearly a decade ago. In 2004, Shaun Heffernan, a professional firefighter and paramedic, founded Yale’s EMT course. The program is open to both Yale students and community members unaffiliated with the University. The class meets at Yale Health three times a week for three hours. Graduates of the semester-long course have the opportunity to take the Connecticut state exam and become certified EMTs. After passing, students can work as paid EMTs at Yale athletic events, volunteer in neighboring towns, or become employees of Yale’s Emergency Medical Services (YEMS).
A serious time commitment, the EMT course demands much from its already busy students. Although it does not count for course credits, it is not unlike academic classes at Yale. There are weekly tests and quizzes; attendance is mandatory; and each student is graded on his or her work. But while a history major might just try to make it through a mandatory science class or doze off in an introductory economics lecture, for EMT students there is more at stake in what is essentially a nine-hour weekly seminar, and a vocational one at that. “This class has become an academic commitment of its own,” said Rey. “I don’t want to half-ass basic life support in the field, so I can’t half-ass the class.”
Sonya Prasad, TD ’15, also struggles with the time commitment. “It’s not a class that you have to take or a class you’re receiving a grade from,” she said. Prasad is a singer with the a cappella group Mixed Company, an engineering major, an employee of the Yale Undergraduate Admissions Office and a member of her residential college’s council. I asked her how she fit the EMT class in with her academic and extra-curricular commitments. “It doesn’t fit,” she said, “but I make it work.”
While the course is certainly demanding, 25 Yale students trek to Yale Health three nights a week, each coming to class for different reasons. For Prasad, her mother’s experience as an anesthesiologist sparked an interest in emergency medicine: “Growing up with exciting, but usually gruesome, daily stories from her work eased me into the idea of taking the class.” Jackson Blum, TC ’15, admitted that the EMT program stood out as a unique way to spend his time. “In most areas of life, I am not drawn to activities that are enjoyable,” Blum said, “but ones that are strange, interesting and memorable.” Like Prasad, his parents provided inspiration, as each is a firefighter and EMT. He remembers the stories his mom brought home after working for FEMA in Texas after Hurricane Katrina. For others, the program offers a way to serve the community in an immediate and meaningful way. (I know I felt similarly. I was frustrated by my experience with local politics and community service, often finding it hard to tell whether the efforts I made had any real impact.)
Some find the EMT training course to be a test-trial of sorts, a way of finding out if a career in medicine is the right fit: “I told myself I couldn’t join the cohort of ‘crazy pre-meds’ without knowing what I was getting myself into,” Prasad said. The same was true for James Underwood, CC ’14, who took the class his freshman year. He’d wanted to do EMT training in high school, but did not have the opportunity. “When I got to Yale,” Underwood said, “I decided that taking the class would be a good way to determine if I was truly interested in a career in medicine.”
For Isaac Wasserman, TD ’14, a career in medicine is already in the cards, as he’s been accepted to Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine. Having taken the class in his first semester at Yale, Wasserman has since become a professional EMT, working 40 hour weeks in in the nearby towns of Trumbull and Bridgeport. The hours spent in the back of an ambulance transport Wasserman to communities and neighborhoods far beyond Yale’s gates, putting him in close contact with individuals and households outside of the Yale bubble. “When you walk into someone’s house you have to relate to them in order to save their life,” Wasserman said. “I’ve got to get to know people so quickly… I’m talking about their sex life within two minutes of meeting them.” An afternoon on the job for Wasserman could mean an afternoon spent speaking Russian in the Russian part of Bridgeport or in the housing projects of Trumbull. For Rey, too, there is something immensely appealing about taking a break from the both the physical confines of Yale’s campus and the monotony of Yale’s classes. “The course provides a welcome relief from the theoretical nature of my course load this semester,” Rey said. “It’s really refreshing to learn how to provide basic life support at the end of a long day at Yale.”
As the EMT world has taken Wasserman out of Yale, he has found a way to bring it back to campus—by teaching the course at Yale Health.
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“You know you’re an EMT when you wash your hands before and after you go to the bathroom,” Wasserman told our class on the first day.
His anecdotes from experience on the job have become inextricably linked with the lessons for our class. “When you’ve got a guy lying down, pouring out blood from a [gun shot wound] and pointing to his bleeding gut, you need to take off his clothes because he probably didn’t realize that he was shot multiple times,” Wasserman told us during a lecture about shock-management treatments. When a Yale professor lectures on the Cold War or the Civil Rights movement or Chaucer, their expertise isn’t the product of real-life experience. But running through the bland, often boring, state-required EMT PowerPoint slides, Wasserman adds his own in real-world applications, commentary, and, sometimes, corrections. “They’re telling you here to pinch the patients earlobe to assess his responsiveness. I’ll tell you right now, that’s not going to do [anything],” he told us. “I’d try a firm punch to the sternum, but make sure no one is looking.”
While the EMT course may get many students thinking about their future, sitting in front of a laptop in Yale Health practicing CPR on a mannequin or studying the thick EMT textbook is nothing like actual patient care. “It’s the experiences that you learn from, not the book. It’s about interacting with people, not about how you do on a test,” Wasserman said. “It’s tough to imagine yourself dealing with a trauma patient and blood everywhere. At first, you’re like, ‘This guy is bleeding. What do I do.’ Then you eventually learn how to run a call.”
While the class itself requires plenty of effort on the part of EMT students, working in an ambulance provides a different kind of stress. Wasserman told me that it isn’t the gory, jarring trauma calls that make work difficult. Rather, it’s seeing the quality of life of people living within miles of Yale’s campus. Paul Wasserman—Issac’s twin—agrees. He told me about the time he was dispatched to the home of a 60-year-old obese male with terminal cancer. His wife also had cancer and was placed in a hospital nearby. The man had tried to kill himself, but, as Paul said, “did a pretty bad job.” Paul wondered why the man’s attempt had gone so badly, and the man admitted that this was the only way he could be taken to the hospital and near his wife. “He was crying in the back of the ambulance,” Paul said, “saying he just wanted to be near his wife and walk her around.” This, not the blood and guts, is what affects Paul: “I lie awake at night, sometimes crying. It’s just so sad.”
Paul, who works from 9am to 11pm on Thursdays, told me about coming back to school from work. “It’s weird,” he said. “You come back to school and have no one to talk to… When people ask how work was, I say ‘fine,’ because they don’t understand and I don’t really want to talk about it.” Isaac said the same, and while that certainly is a burden, it’s also what makes him proud to be an EMT: “I never wanted to become callous and let things not affect me,” he said. “I love that the job comes home with me.”
Back in class, this type of stress is one of the first and most important topics covered. EMTs, it is (unsurprisingly) reported, often struggle to balance the stress of emergency medicine with their personal lives.
The course ends on Apr. 21, after which the class will take our final written and practical exams. The Connecticut state exam is on April 27, and the class will head to Shelton to be tested on our practical skills. A passing grade means an individual can start working almost immediately. If you fail, which many do, you must retake the test and possibly the entire course. After the test, this year’s class of EMTs will return to campus and begin reading week—studying for a distinctly different type of exams.