LEXINGTON, Ky. — Medical staff of all sorts have been in high demand not just here in the commonwealth but across the globe.
Now, with shortages in different areas of professionals, Madison county emergency medical staff are opening classes to train future Emergency Medical Technicians.
Assistant Director Andrew Kilgore says they are getting them equipped with the tools they need. “[They] have to think they can react and that they can manage a scene and be able to provide top-notch patient care without having to put any effort into it,” Kilgore said about being an emergency responder.
Kilgore says he’s trained individuals over the last six years to learn the ropes and understand how critical the position is. “There’s the potential that this career could cause harm to you if this is not where you’re meant to be,” he said. “So, I always ask my students to do some soul searching, make sure this is what they want, make sure this is where they want to be. It does not take long to figure it out, especially once you hit ride time.”
Mark Logan is a former firefighter and EMT and for 16 weeks, is one of the instructors for the program. Two days out of the week is teaching advanced procedures and more.
The trainings include an introduction to the workforce, safety stressors, de-stressors, and lifting and moving patients.
“Had one that I had to deal with. I didn’t know if I could continue to do the job. We have people that you need to talk to, paramedics, and first responders need to have a way to de-stress, whether it’s talking to a coworker, talking to a professional,” Logan explained. “It just gives them some resources. And that’s what chapter two touched on today, was dealing with stressors.”
Logan says that in a little over a year, they have developed their stations to include more trucks and gear and completed nearly 18,000 emergency runs alone. “We’re busy. This is a busy place. We’re probably going to hit around 19,500 runs this year,” he shared.
Logan says that with shortages among staff and sometimes equipment, wait times for certain situations increase.
“We currently run nine trucks a day now, covering that county by county. And it’s been so busy at times that we’ve been short trucks and that patients have had to wait,” Logan said.
He says the classes are already making a powerful approach to an ongoing issue.
“So we’re always at a shortage. We’re always looking to hire people we hired out of our last EMT class. we’ve already hired some EMT that will probably begin their careers in para-medicine in the next couple of years to become paramedics,” he said.