ABCs of becoming an EMT

By Tara Kelly

Jacquie Rice, chief of service of the Salisbury Volunteer Ambulance Squad, teaches math at Housatonic Valley Regional High School. That’s her day job.

This year when school starts on Aug. 29, she will have already started teaching: On Thursday, Aug. 25, her class will be filled with adult volunteers taking their first session of the EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) course that Rice has been teaching for nearly two decades.

It is a seven-month course that prepares prospective EMTs to take the certification tests to get licensed.

If they pass, they will have the lifesaving skills they need to serve on their local ambulance squad — and to help their neighbors in what can be life-or-death situations.

One of the most often heard phrases of thanks from patients to squad members is, “I felt so much better seeing a familiar face.”

The six towns of the Northwest Corner (Salisbury, Sharon, Falls Village, North Canaan, Cornwall and Kent) all have volunteer ambulance services,  and most of them offer their services free of charge. But that’s beginning to change.

North Canaan pays EMTs for their day shifts and charges for their calls. And last year Kent and Falls Village started charging for their services.

But whether the ambulance service is a volunteer squad or one with paid members, the important part is that the EMT is a trained professional — and it’s Rice’s job to help get them trained.

The course covers a wide variety of skills, from CPR to general pharmacology, from diabetic and behavioral emergencies to bleeding, shock and soft-tissue injuries.

EMTs do not diagnose patients, and the only drug they administer is oxygen. But they learn how to “package” a patient and get them safely and quickly from the scene to the hospital.

Each ambulance squad in the Tri-state area is a little different from the others. Many of the squads are an extension of the fire department (though the Salisbury Volunteer Ambulance Squad is a stand-alone entity).

One thing all the squads have in common: They always need, want and welcome new members.

‘It’s been very meaningful’

Paula Russo teaches at The Hotchkiss School (Middle Eastern history, constitutional law and humanities). The 48-year-old  first heard about the ambulance squad from Hotchkiss physical trainer Pat Kelly, an EMT-I and former SVAS member, while she was doing her CPR certification, which is required of all faculty at the school.

“Then I got the SVAS fundraising material in the mail. I asked Pat about being an EMT and I wanted to do it, because I wanted to do something good and direct for the community,” Russo said.

“I had no idea what the course was going to be like. I was worried that I wouldn’t know what I was doing at the end of the course, but by the end, after studying for the practical and studying for the horrible national exam, I felt much better.

“Obviously you have to learn from experience, but I felt like the course really prepared me. Jacquie was really good about weaving in life stories from her years of experience and letting us know what really happens on the ground.”

Russo took the course in August 2010 and has been a certified EMT since March.

“I don’t exactly know how to describe it, but it’s been very meaningful,” Russo said.

Clare Rashkoff, a 49-year-old mother of four and Lakeville resident, took the EMT course in 2004.

“It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon in May, about a year before I took the course,” she said to explain why she decided to become an EMT. “And I heard a car going really fast down our road, and then I heard a big boom. I told my son to call 911 and I went running down to the scene. I was terrified to approach the car because it was so terrible I thought whoever was in the car must be dead. It was frighteningly quiet, except for the key in the ignition beeping, and I remember, the EMTs getting there really fast. But I felt so helpless.

“I had seen the ambulance squad marching in the Memorial Day parade for years and I always wondered, ‘How do you get to do that?’ I was always so shy, and never felt like I could ask anyone how to do it.

“But then I took a CPR course, because my license had expired, and someone on the squad suggested to me that maybe I should consider being an EMT.”

Now Rashkoff is starting her sixth year as a certified EMT. A few weeks ago, the emergency radio went off on a Saturday afternoon. It was for a patient in distress on her street.

Rashkoff said, “I told my husband, Evan, ‘I have to go to this,’ and I started for the garage, and realized that my son had taken my car to go to work. And I didn’t have my gear, because it was in the car, but it was my neighbor, and she was less than a half mile down the road.

“So I grabbed a stethoscope and gloves and jumped on the bike and went to the scene as a first responder.”

While Rashkoff’s mode of transportation may not be the usual one or the fastest, she was the first on the scene and she was already there to help the patient as other squad members arrived in the ambulance. Her story personifies the attitude of most squad members: They are neighbors helping neighbors.

Register for the EMT course, currently being offered at Salisbury Volunteer Ambulance headquarters, 8 Undermountain Road (across from The White Hart). The first night of class is Thursday, Aug. 25.

Classes meet Thursday nights. The course runs from Aug. 25 to March 22. Call 860-435-9866 for more information.

The cost of the course is $300, but several of the area squads will reimburse students when they join the squad. The course is also open to residents of New York state and Massachusetts.