Patient care a nightly practice for many pre-meds

By Matthew Meyerhofer

Emergency Medical Technicians Kaylan Graham and Nick Figone took a break from writing an incident report last Wednesday night to describe what goes through their heads when they get a call.

"The stressful thing for me is not the call itself, but the anticipation before arriving on scene," Figone said. "You get cold from the air and your adrenaline is pumping and you're waiting to see what is going to be there waiting for you."

Figone and Graham are Santa Clara juniors who are a part of the Santa Clara University Emergency Medical Service (SCU EMS). Both joined the program last year, though for very different reasons.

Like many EMTs, Graham is a pre-med student who hopes her experience in the EMS program will pay off in the future.

"I want to go to medical school, and I felt it would be a good experience to get hands-on patient care" Graham said. "We get as much experience in the medical field as we can get at this time in our lives."

Figone's reasons for joining the program are considerably different.

"I have no interest in going into medicine, but I've always had an interest in first aid. I've been doing first aid since I was a cub scout at 9 or 10," Figone said. "I have this weird luck where I keep running into people with accidents, so I've always been interested in getting the knowledge and being able to deal with situations like that. It gives me a great deal of self-confidence."

As part of SCU EMS, students like Graham and Figone are responsible for providing medical assistance whenever the Cowell Student Health center is closed.

"We come in here at 5 p.m., and we go over to Cowell and do a gear check," Figone said. "We make sure we have full supplies of everything. Then we wait for Campus Safety to notify us of a problem."

According to senior Nick Johnson, president of SCU EMS, only about one-third of the calls EMS gets are alcohol or drug related. About one-third of the calls are related to other medical issues such as illnesses, while the rest are for minor injuries.

"We do a lot of sports medicine such as sprained ankles," Graham said. Figone said, "We also get burn calls and people who cut themselves when they're cooking in Sobrato."

EMTs are required to work at least two shifts every month to remain active members of SCU EMS, though some do more. When on duty, EMTs are not required to stay in any particular place, but they must be close enough to campus to respond to any call within two minutes.

How eventful the shift will be is a matter of chance.

"It depends on the night. If it's a wild Friday or Saturday night you can get three, four, or five calls and be up until four in the morning," Graham said. "Or you could have no calls and get called at 7 in the morning. That happened to me on Monday."

"Last year, I had four calls in one night, and I don't think I laid down for more than half an hour. I didn't get any sleep that night," Figone said. "But some nights you get nothing," he added.

"Sometimes at four in the morning you get a little burned out, but you forget it the next day," Graham said.

The calls range from fairly benign to very serious. Figone recalled a time when a patient had an allergic reaction and started going into anaphylactic shock. Anaphylactic shock is a condition in which an allergic reaction causes shortness of breath and can cause the victim to stop breathing, Figone said.

Not all calls are quite so serious. Figone said some can be downright weird.

"You'd be surprised how many people hurt themselves dancing' in their rooms," Figone said. "I had a patient that said they were doing a balancing contest, and he fell over and thought he'd dislocated his shoulder."

The EMS program at Santa Clara was started in 1997 by students Matt Donnelly ('98) and Sam Suleman ('99), who were both certified EMTs.

"Everyone was a little skeptical at the beginning," Johnson said, "but Campus Safety and the Santa Clara Fire Department has come to put a lot of trust in us."

The program is entirely student-run and ultimately gets its funding through the Office of Student Life. Michelle Helms, Santa Clara's nurse practitioner, is the program's advisor.

According to Johnson, students interested in becoming EMTs go through a rigorous preparation process that includes 150 hours of classes, one ride-along in an ambulance, and one 12-hour shift in a hospital emergency room.

"The ride-along was with an ambulance company â€" most of us did it here in San Jose," Figone said, "You literally hang around on an ambulance for a full shift. You go along on all the 911 shifts, help them out, and observe."

The class can be taken either at Santa Clara or at another college. Graham said she took the course at a local community college and paid about $100. Taking the class at Santa Clara, which runs through parts of both winter and spring quarters costs about $800.

Johnson said SCU EMS is developing a program to handle on campus disasters.

"If there is a citywide disaster, like an earthquake, we should try to be as self-sufficient as possible," he said.

Despite all the time and commitment that goes into their work, the EMTs say they enjoy what they do.

"It's a lot of work, but it's worth it," Graham said. "I really like to interact with the patients."

"It's a really good learning environment because it's not too high stress" Graham continued, "You get a lot of confidence, not only to handle medical situations but also stressful situations in general."

Figone agreed, noting the benefits he'll receive from his experiences as an EMT.

"For the rest of my life I'll have skill that I can use to help people," Figone said. "Maybe somebody very close to me, somebody I love, I'll be able to save their life or help them out, or at least protect them."

The wages EMTs receive may not be a selling point, Figone said, but that shouldn't matter anyway.

"We get double pay on alcohol calls and triple pay when they puke on you," Figone said jokingly. EMTs positions are entirely volunteer-based.

Being an EMT doesn't come without its frustrations, Johnson said. This is especially the case when students don't seem to understand just how seriously EMTs take their jobs. The SCU EMS cart was vandalized last week.

"It is very frustrating when we volunteer a ton of our free time to help those on the SCU campus and someone goes out and intentionally damages our equipment," he said.

Figone said SCU EMS isn't concerned with busting anyone for alcohol use.

"We're not here to get you in trouble," Figone said. "That's the number one concern of most of the calls we go to, is that students worry about getting in trouble. We work with Campus Safety, and they're not here to get you in trouble either."

û Contact Matthew Meyerhofer at (408) 554-4546 or mmeyerhofer@scu.edu.