By Jarrod Wardwell
New Haven Register
EASTON, Conn. 鈥� The return of a 12-year-old program has revitalized the town鈥檚 emergency medical services, with volunteer emergency medical tech numbers nearly doubling due to an influx of Sacred Heart University students to the EMS ranks.
Easton EMS Chief Jon Arnold said the town rebooted the program for Sacred Heart students to join Easton鈥檚 volunteer EMS agency as EMTs earlier this year. The program had been dormant in 2023.
But with the influx of SHU students, EMS staffing has jumped from 30 to 58 over the past four months, its highest level in two decades.
鈥淭o have these folks plugged into the system fills a lot of gaps, and it just works both ways,鈥� Arnold said. 鈥淚t helps this community, and it helps their careers. And it鈥檚 just a handshake deal where we all help each other.鈥�
Arnold said the staffing surge would help speed response times and spread shifts across a larger pool of volunteers, who aside from the students are mostly residents with families and jobs.
Arnold said Easton EMS was able to respond to 95 percent of its calls in 2022, but that number dropped to 80 percent in 2023 when more volunteers either returned to school out of town or pivoted from remote jobs after the pandemic. However two rising seniors who started an EMS club at Sacred Heart last fall helped revive the partnership after reaching out to the agency for clinical hours students needed for an EMT program that recently debuted on campus.
鈥淚 love it,鈥� said Mackenzie Rothschild, the club鈥檚 chief who started living at the station last week. 鈥淚t鈥檚 amazing. Honestly, my favorite thing is if I have a night call, when I wake up, the people on call are waiting to hear about my call the last night. And it鈥檚 just such a loving community. Everyone鈥檚 so interested and ready to help you learn.鈥�
Arnold said with more students eager to gain experience like Rothschild willing to stay at the station for overnight shifts, the service can respond to calls more quickly. He said response times could stretch up to 30 minutes if volunteers are on call from home, in which case they鈥檇 need to drive to the station before hopping in the ambulance there.
Compare that to a crew that is on call at the station, which can respond in less than five minutes, he said.
Easton鈥檚 newly enlivened EMS operation will face a major reshuffle in the coming months as the service prepares to move into the old school building at the Easton Congregational Church for 12 to 18 months while construction crews rebuild the station鈥檚 98-year-old building on Sport Hill Road. The $3.6 million renovation project, which Arnold said will use American Rescue Plan Act funding, will double the number of garage doors and create more room for office space, sleeping quarters and training on the renovated second floor. He said the move into the former school should happen before December.
The college-driven wave of volunteers comes at a time when Arnold said EMT shortages have intensified after the pandemic. He said local EMS services have faced a much greater need for mutual aid from neighboring municipalities since COVID, sending Easton EMTs across town lines roughly 100 times per year, about 20 times more than before the pandemic. He said the surge in volunteers can allow Easton to provide that aid more often.
鈥淛obs like EMS are suffering a lot because people don鈥檛 really necessarily want to get out of bed and go to a job and have someone throw up on you at 2 o鈥檆lock in the morning,鈥� Arnold said. 鈥淣obody wants to do that anymore. So we were kind of missing that link, and it was hurting us post-COVID.鈥�
Some Sacred Heart students said EMT jobs were hard to find around Connecticut, and services in other towns would often require more experience than they鈥檇 attained at the college level. They said Easton鈥檚 program was more accessible, and open to join after they received EMT certification, which the state awards following a mandatory training program they completed through a university class, a national written exam and a state-approved practical exam.
鈥淓specially aspiring (physician assistants) and medical students and people that want to become paramedics, Easton鈥檚 giving us an opportunity to do that,鈥� said Sacred Heart senior Gianni Walsh, a member of the EMS club who鈥檚 preparing to train at Easton EMS. 鈥淎 lot of places that you try to apply, you need two to three years of experience, or they want you to have this huge resume, and it鈥檚 like, we just need an opportunity to get our foot in the door. Easton鈥檚 providing that.鈥�
The Sacred Heart students are cleared to drive the ambulance and work as a volunteer in Easton after completing three to four months of training with the town, where they take inventory on the ambulance and shadow established EMTs responding to calls before taking the lead themselves.
The partnership has filled an experience gap the students say exists without a campus EMS service for students to join, like those at the University of New Haven and Quinnipiac University.
But despite the lack of a campus EMS, interest the work at Sacred Heart blossomed during the last academic year under the newly established club attracting at least 40 members since September, according to an Easton news release. Rothschild said members have taken CPR classes, raised money for more automated external defibrillators, which can send an electric shock to the heart, and consulted with the National Collegiate Emergency Medical Services Foundation, which supports campus EMS clubs across the country.
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