When saving lives is more than child's play

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FROM: The New York Times

SLIDESHOW:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2006/06/2...LIDESHOW_1.html

June 23, 2006

When Saving Lives Is More Than Child's Play

By PETER APPLEBOME

The New York Times

AS David Acker greets the class of aspiring emergency medical technicians on the first day of the summer session at Stamford Hospital in Connecticut, you're not exactly sure if he's welcoming them or trying to run them off.

"You get disrespected so much in this job," Mr. Acker said, leaning on a lectern in his blue paramedic's uniform at the hospital's Emergency Medical Services Institute. "At least now it's good we have doctors riding with us in the field, so they can see what it's like when you're lying in the puke in the snowbank at 3 a.m. trying to intubate someone, or when you're bouncing down the highway, going 65 and trying to start an IV. I've been called every name in the book."

He added: "I've had 14-year-olds spit in my face. So you're going to get slapped every now and then, but it's O.K. It's a good time out there."

Well, maybe this didn't sound like everyone's idea of a good time. But, looking at the rapt faces in the auditorium, no one seemed the least bit put off.

Not David Hammer of Darien, who is not yet 16. Not Katie Becker of Wilton, Liz Johnston of Westport, or Ben Klingher of Weston, all 16-year-olds from Connecticut's comfortable Fairfield County suburbs. Not any of the high school and college students who made up about two-thirds of the class of 30 students.

Instead, they seemed thoroughly jazzed at the thought of spending much of the summer in 29 sessions on topics like Cardiac Emergencies, Bleeding Soft Tissue Scenarios and Musculoskeletal Head/Spine Lifting and Moving. The goal is to gain E.M.T.-Basic certification, so they, too, can respond to car wrecks, heart attacks, choking infants and the rest, and perhaps end up being vomited on in snowbanks.

"It's not like being a robot in school," said Tyler Prince, an alert-looking 17-year-old from Staples High School in Westport. "You really get to do something. There's real action. I know some kids want to do it because it looks good for college, but if that's why they want to do it, I always try to talk them out of taking the class. It's a great thing to do, but it's way too much work to do unless it's something you really want to do."

In the fuzzy web of clichés and stereotypes we carry around in our heads about teenagers, being eager-beaver first responders tends not to be the first thought that comes to mind.

But the real world for an increasing number of teenagers at suburban high schools these days includes riding around in ambulances, jumping onto fire trucks and doing a lot of the volunteer work their elders are either too busy, too tired or too intimidated to do.

And many then go on to join the campus ambulance corps that are becoming popular at colleges as well. "You see so many young people getting into this field, it blows me away," said Mr. Acker, 51. "Can you imagine being 16 and wanting to be the one going to car crashes and cutting people out of cars? When I was 16, that kind of blood and guts was the furthest thing from my mind."

THE Oxford and Cambridge of the youthful emergency volunteers' universe can be found almost four exits up I-95, in Darien, in a rambling two-story building just off the southbound entrance ramp that houses what is almost certainly the most remarkable outfit of its kind in the country.

In other communities, youths help adults staff the volunteer ambulance corps. At Darien Emergency Services Post 53, they pretty much are the volunteer ambulance corps.

The 58 young members, ranging from 14-year-old candidates to 17- and 18-year-old crew chiefs certified by the state as emergency medical technicians, provide staffing for shifts 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, sleeping overnight in dormitory rooms at the post. They drive the corps' three $100,000 ambulances, operate the radio room that responds to calls, and coordinate an operation with an annual budget of $200,000 that responds to about 1,400 calls a year.

There are about 25 adult members as well. They provide the permanent memory and serve as trainers and mentors. And it is the self-described "day ladies" who make up the first crew when school is in session. During that time, two of the ambulances are parked at Darien High School, so students can dash out of class to respond to calls if the other ambulance is in use.

"I was born with a club foot; it required seven surgeries, and I knew I wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon," said Charles Hannon, the 16-year-old president of Post 53, who just finished his junior year at Darien High. "So that's what got me involved. But this evolved very quickly into something more than that. You learn responsibility. You learn trust. You learn so many things that maybe you start with a specific motivation — medicine, college, something to do — but soon you're so caught up in it that you really don't need a specific motivation. It becomes so much a part of your life that you just do it without thinking why."

It might be impossible to duplicate Post 53, which began in 1969 as a Boy Scout Explorer project using a converted telephone truck. The post, which has trained more than 600 high school students over the years, became the town's first responder in 1975 and has operated round the clock since 1985.

But high school students are increasingly volunteering at local fire departments and ambulance units.

Age requirements vary from state to state (18 to be an E.M.T. in New York; 16 with some limits on what jobs can be performed in Connecticut and New Jersey).

A high school student might start at an ambulance corps stocking the vehicles and carrying gear. If certified as a first responder, he or she might ride in an ambulance, while leaving most of the actual patient care to the others. If certified as an emergency medical technician, he or she could provide the same care as any professional E.M.T.

"These kids really go whole hog," said Charles Marfoglio, who teaches an E.M.T. course to 12th graders at Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School on Long Island. "They're very, very, very motivated to do this. After a while you can see they become little adrenaline junkies. You know, they do hospital rotations, they ride on ambulances, they start doing this and then they can't get enough of it."

OF course, some limits are necessary. Each department comes up with its own rules, but most ambulance corps and fire departments give teenagers the option of declining to go out on particularly unsettling calls. In general, teenage members of fire departments are barred from entering buildings that are on fire.

Still, rescue work can be dangerous, particularly after high school. Kevin A. Apuzzio trained to become a volunteer E.M.T. while in high school in New Jersey, worked as a part-time E.M.T. as a student at Livingston College at Rutgers University in 2002 and became a volunteer firefighter a year later in East Franklin Township. He was one of the first to respond to a house fire last April 11 and died when the first floor gave way. He was 21.

Daniel Blum, chairman of the Westchester Regional E.M.S. Council, said that the vast majority of calls were safe and manageable, but that departments needed to be alert to what might not be appropriate for high school students. He cited a case a decade ago of twin sisters dispatched to a call that turned out to be a triple shooting that resulted in two deaths. The girls never came back to work.

But in general, he said, young volunteers are well prepared, in terms of both the skills and the maturity required for almost anything they face. And they do work that's desperately needed, Mr. Blum said.

"We have serious manpower issues in E.M.S.," he said. "A lot of E.M.S. volunteers are aging, so they fulfill a real need. They're young. They're strong. They're dedicated. You can't just let them loose without rules and structures, but over all, this is a real success story."

There are doubtless many reasons this is going on. For some, sigh, it's another form of résumé polishing. For others, like some of Mr. Marfoglio's students on Long Island, it's a high-intensity detour from the humdrum realities of high school life, often stoked by popular television shows like "ER," "House" and "Saved." Some, like Charles Hannon in Darien, are interested in a career in medicine.

Many, either as their primary motivation or part of the equation, see it as a way to do good and help their community. Maybe, for some, there's also a bit of post-9/11 respect for first responders. And some colleges offer financial incentives to students who join campus E.M.T. operations.

SO when the Bergen County Emergency Medical Service in New Jersey had its graduation ceremonies for emergency medical technicians this month, Christina Kovacs, 17, of Denville, said that a friend had gotten her involved at 16 and that she was soon working with the E.M.S. squad and the Fire Department.

"It turned out that I liked what I was doing and became hooked," she said. She is now interested in a career in law enforcement.

Josh Furer, 17, of Tenafly, saw E.M.T. training as a step toward medical school and was inspired by schoolmates who had become E.M.T.'s. "One guy delivered a baby right there in the ambulance," he said. "It'd be cool to do that, just maybe not on my first day."

Of course, volunteering for an ambulance corps or fire department in Fairfield, Bergen, Nassau or Westchester County isn't quite the nonstop rush portrayed on television. You can easily work an eight-hour shift in many suburban towns and not get a single call.

Still, almost every volunteer has his or her memorable moments. A few of them have the somewhat anachronistic feel of a 19th-century tale of youthful pluck and valor.

Jeffrey Bassett of Briarcliff Manor, in Westchester, who volunteers at the local volunteer Fire Department, was on his way to high school a year ago when he noticed a plume of smoke coming from a residential neighborhood. He followed it to what turned out to be a house fire and called 911. He ran through the house yelling for anyone there and, when he found an elderly man stuck in a garage, he put him over his shoulder and dragged him outside. Then he drove to the Fire Department and jumped on a truck heading to the fire.

Earlier this month, Jeffrey was honored with a Youth Good Samaritan award from the American Red Cross and the county.

Mr. Marfoglio, the teacher on Long Island, recalled an incident at his high school in which a student accidentally put his arm through a window, ripping the skin so badly that there was arterial bleeding. Students in his course ripped off their shirts to make a makeshift tourniquet, raised his arm and applied pressure on the wound the way they had been taught. They just may have been responsible for saving his life.

GARRETT DEUTSCH, 17, of Chappaqua, in Westchester, who volunteers with the Chappaqua Fire Department and the ambulance corps in nearby Mount Kisco, said that much of the satisfaction had to do with things not easily defined — the excitement of responding to a call; the sense that you're doing something good for your community; the ability, for a change, of high school kids to be taken seriously and appreciated as full members of the community.

"One of my most memorable calls was a few months ago when there was a brush fire at the Glazier Arboretum and nature preserve," he said. "Almost all the adults were at work, so we went out with two trucks, and there must have been six or seven high school students and maybe two adults and the chief. And I was thinking, 'We're only in high school but we're playing such a big part in this.' I don't know what they would have done without us. It was really enjoyable and really rewarding."

It's not as if the clichés of students as slackers, grade grubbers or party animals should all be replaced with ones that have them being selfless do-gooders.

Still, maybe there's a worthy counternarrative, especially at a time when we've done away with most of the household chores and tasks that kids used to do routinely at home or in their community.

Steven Mintz, a history professor at the University of Houston and the author of "Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood," said adults have always had conflicted feelings about the young — we envy their freedom, we're totally invested in their success, we sacrifice for them, we resent the sacrifices we make for them, we wish for the best but often see the worst in them.

"We're great believers in progress about everything except one thing," he said. "Children. We believe children are always going to hell."

Not all youth volunteers get as involved as another Chappaqua student, Barrett Brown, 19, who started at 15 with the ambulance corps in Mount Kisco and now has a summer job as an E.M.T. with Westchester E.M.S. and volunteers with the ambulance corps in Chappaqua, Mount Kisco, Ossining and Pleasantville, not to mention the Fire Department in Mount Kisco. Still his experience rings true for others.

"I'm only 19, so I haven't experienced most things in life," he said. "But not too many things can compare with being that person walking into someone's house during the worst part of their life and being there for someone when no one else is. It's an indescribable feeling."

[mikeinet 37]

just read this in NYT and was about to post it... step ahead!

I thought it was a well written article - nice to see something like this hit the newspaper once in a while.