The petite Kristen Bert is enthusiastic when she talks about her work as an EMT, casually tossing out funny stories of drunken patients and odd 911 calls.
Bert and three of her friends - Molly Ronan, Rob Sickeler and Todd Spock - are all sophomores here at Hopkins, as well as volunteer EMTs at nearby fire stations.
A firehouse crew is like a second family to each of these Hopkins students. They eat and do chores with the firehouse crew as well as depend on each other to finish the job safely. It is a reprieve from Hopkins life for these four; no one at the firehouse is worried about their grades or classes. Instead people of all different ages, education and experiences work together to save lives.
Bert was the first to get involve in the Emergency Medicine scene, and soon got her friends involved as well. "It's really contagious and basically like an addiction. So I got them addicted," Bert said.
Being an EMT requires dealing with high stress situations, as well as a strong stomach. These four students thrive in this unique environment.
"I personally like calls that have a lot of blood and gore. Calls that are traumatic but no one is going to die. Like a car accident where someone has broken their arm or leg; its not like they are going to die from it, but you have to do something fun like a traction splint," Molly Ronan said.
"Cardiac arrests are fun though," Bert said. "You can't mess them up because they are already dead."
Of the four of them, only Todd Spock has seen someone come back from a cardiac arrest. "I had one guy where we got pulse back, but we worked him for 30 minutes before we got it. He was actually walking around in the ICU about two weeks later with a bunch of broken ribs," he said.
The four of them laugh as they trade stories about weird calls, completely at ease with the thought of blood and death. Bert says that her first experience with a death on the job was not traumatizing, since it was a woman in an elderly home who suffered from progressed dementia.
"At least for her it was almost better," Bert said.
"There was one where I was up on 695, and there was a guy who ran in front of an SUV going 70 miles an hour. I was brand new and picking up body parts. It makes you have tougher skin," Bert said.
"We are all morbid now," Ronan joked.
All four agree that this exposure to emergency situations is a good entry point for becoming a doctor.
"The four of us are all premeds. When you become a doctor, people freak out. It's like 'There is blood and gore and oh my god I lost a patient.' Being an EMT and losing patients gives us an advantage. It's not going to be as traumatic for us when we start," Ronan said.
Spock agreed, saying, "It is quite good preparation for med school because you actually get experience with having patients."
There are downsides though.
"Paperwork has got to be the biggest downside," Spock said.
The EMTs must do detailed paperwork for patients to prevent legal trouble. It is possible to spend half an hour getting a patient to the hospital, only to devote another half an hour or more to filling out the needed paper work.
Bert disagrees with Spock. She cites her least favorite part of the job as "the people who abuse the system. You get a call from people who just need a place to go from the hospital."
Emergency calls can range from true life and death situations to homeless people who are hoping to get a sandwich at the hospital. Many calls come from elderly people who are ill or have fallen.
There can also be extremely rewarding calls. Bert experienced the recovery of an eightyear-old girl from anaphylactic shock.
"We were able to bring her from completely not breathing blue to complete health by the time we got to the hospital," she said.
All four students became involved in different ways. Bert first trained as an EMT in high school and joined a fire station in September of 2006.
Rob Sickeler started his involvement with Outdoor Pursuits through which he took a Wilderness First Responder course.
"I really liked it, so I wanted to go to the next level.? I joined a firehouse because that way they paid for my training and it'd give me a chance to practice what I'd learned and use my skills to help people who needed it.? I want to be a doctor eventually, but this way I get to help people now as opposed to waiting for years down the road," Sickeler said.
Spock began as a first responder/surf rescue lifeguard in Florida before getting his EMT certification about a year ago.
Ronan just started working at a firehouse in March after getting her EMT certification last August. "I am interested in medicine and I wanted to get first hand experience. I wanted to go on all different types of calls and so I joined a fire department instead of HERO," she said.
