campus EMS ran by college students

[Deranged Medic]

I was wondering what everyone has to say about EMS clubs running either first response teams or transporting EMS units on college campuses? I am in the process of starting an EMS club at my university, and the physician who will be our faculty advisor mentioned this idea, since he was able to do it during undergrad. The campus I attend enrolls approximately 18,000 students per year, and we are in a unique situation as our faculty advisor is also the medical director for the fire department who runs EMS calls to our campus. It sounds like they responded to campus 190 times last year, and we have been thinking a BLS response team ran by students might be a benefit to the university, as well as a great opportunity for students involved or interested in EMS.

I apologize if there is already a thread with this information. I did a search and was unable to find anything. Also, I really couldn't find much information on the idea via an internet search (I was hoping for some scholarly articles.) I did find the National Collegiate Emergency Medical Services Foundation, and I have sent them an email. If anyone has some advice or ideas, I would love to hear them!

Respectfully,
Deranged Medic

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[BB8730]

I started an EMS club at my university and I tried to start a first response team but it ended up being a dispatching nightmare. I too had the medical director and everyone else on board with the idea, but there was just no practical way to notify the response team of medical calls on campus. This is what I tried:

1. Pagers/radios - too expensive and too inconvenient for the response team. Our pager/radio would be buzzing for every medical or fire call in the city and we would have to listen to each page to determine whether it was on campus or not. Not practical for people sitting in class, or even outside of class. Also, attaining pagers/radios was a problem for financial reasons.
2. Cell phones - too much hassle for the dispatcher. We have a campus PD with its own dispatcher, so it seemed like a viable option, but they understandably didn't like the idea of calling 10 people's cell phones for every campus medical call.
3. Scanners - way too inconvenient for responders.

If you can figure out a practical dispatch/notification route for your response team, I think it would be a great benefit to the university and an awesome opportunity for the student responders. Your best bet in my opinion is to talk to the fire chief at the fire department and see if the FD is willing to give you guys some pagers or radios. Ask if there is any way that the pagers/radios could alert you to JUST medical calls on campus. Ideally, you would want your own set of tones for the university responders and have that programmed into the dispatching software at the dispatch center. That way, it's not any extra work for the dispatchers and you would be dispatched to solely medical calls on campus. If you talk to the right people that may be possible. Good luck! Let us know how it goes.

 

[pianoman511]

Text messaging.

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[Deranged Medic]

Thank you for the replies.

I have wondered about dispatching, and text messaging seems to be one of the better ideas. I know we can get text messages from the CAD where I work, and I bet this would be a decent option for us-most students feel naked without a cell phone.

It sounds like I just need to get the organization off the ground as an interest group, and then if several people join, maybe take a look at doing first response.

I am actually surprised SDN didn't have a forum already dedicated to EMS clubs. Brakk026-I would be interested in knowing what you did for your meetings? I would like to emphasize collegiate education beyond entry-level EMS certifications (not hard since all members would be university students) and leadership/professionalism in EMS. I have considered con-ed sessions and presentations from local EMS peers, but I didn't know if you might have some other suggestions?

 

[BB8730]

Brakk026-I would be interested in knowing what you did for your meetings? I would like to emphasize collegiate education beyond entry-level EMS certifications (not hard since all members would be university students) and leadership/professionalism in EMS. I have considered con-ed sessions and presentations from local EMS peers, but I didn't know if you might have some other suggestions?

It's funny that you keep mentioning ideas that were identical to the ones I had when I started the EMS club at my university. We too promoted pre-health education. Our EMS club was like a pre-med club that also performed EMS functions. We helped the younger students with homework, registering for classes, etc. On the EMS side, we volunteered for various events around campus. We provided EMS coverage for concerts, events from other clubs, and sporting events. We also helped students get EMS jobs. I've worked 3 different EMS jobs so I have quite a few connections and I tried to help out anyone who was looking for an EMS job. Some other members did the same. I also was an AHA BLS instructor so I was a resource for that. I planned on doing some free CPR training to students on campus but never had time to do it.

Our club fizzled out when two things happened: we went through about an 8 month period where we had no events to volunteer for, and nearly all of the EMS club members were hired by the FD that I work for. Now we just hang out at the FD.

This is what I would recommend for you to do once you start the club:

1. Get in contact with the people who manage the sporting events on your campus. In all likelihood they already hire out EMS coverage for the major events, but you should be able to get involved with the smaller events. Sporting events are the best thing for an EMS club because they provide regular activity for members.
2. Inform all other event managers on campus of your club. Tell them that you'll provide free EMS coverage to any event (or any event that you want to). Once you get your name out there, the emails should start rolling in.
3. Get some EMS supplies. I made a bag with basic stuff like trauma dressings, ace wraps, SAM splint, Coban, bandaids, BVM, NSAIDs, etc.

Once you get your club's name out there it gets a lot easier. The mistake I made was not keeping up with my contacts and not making new ones, so our events slowly dwindled down. As long as you have some kind of regular activity for your members, you'll be golden.

 

[Deranged Medic]

Hey-thanks for your help. Sounds like my ideas are similiar, and I hope it takes off!

 

[BB8730]

Good luck! Keep us updated with your progress.

 

[frankcfromny]

The first response team on my campus is a county recognized EMS provider servicing only the college campus. I wasn't around for it, but it apparently was a nightmare trying to sort it out. Some members never even got to reap the benefits of their hard work (4+years to establish).

In a nutshell, all emergency calls are routed through the campus PD dispatcher to the county fire dispatcher. From there, BOTH the first response team and the volunteer fire department are dispatched using traditional pagers. ALS, of course, is dispatched as well depending on the priority of the call.

We go in service and out of service depending on the college schedule...if we aren't in service (summer months) then only the volunteer fire department is dispatched.

We are considered a non-transport BLS provider with at least one EMT-B responding to every call.

Also, one of the benefits of being county recognized is that the state will pay for EMT training for all of our members. This really made us a legitimate organization. The "founders" all had to pay out of their pocket for training.

 

[Deranged Medic]

The first response team on my campus is a county recognized EMS provider servicing only the college campus. I wasn't around for it, but it apparently was a nightmare trying to sort it out. Some members never even got to reap the benefits of their hard work (4+years to establish).

In a nutshell, all emergency calls are routed through the campus PD dispatcher to the county fire dispatcher. From there, BOTH the first response team and the volunteer fire department are dispatched using traditional pagers. ALS, of course, is dispatched as well depending on the priority of the call.

We go in service and out of service depending on the college schedule...if we aren't in service (summer months) then only the volunteer fire department is dispatched.

We are considered a non-transport BLS provider with at least one EMT-B responding to every call.

Also, one of the benefits of being county recognized is that the state will pay for EMT training for all of our members. This really made us a legitimate organization. The "founders" all had to pay out of their pocket for training.

This is incredible! The ability to acquire state funds would be a huge help.

As for the progress-we have finally been approved as a student group and have a whopping three members so far!

 

[Deranged Medic]

Good luck! Keep us updated with your progress.

Update:
We have had a couple of meetings, but it seems pretty hard to get people to attend. Plus, the school seems 100% against us ever doing EMS calls on campus. This club may just fizzle out like yours did, because the people who are interested are already in a Wilderness Medicine club with me. I hate to accept failure, but it was worth a try.

 

[BB8730]

Update:
We have had a couple of meetings, but it seems pretty hard to get people to attend. Plus, the school seems 100% against us ever doing EMS calls on campus. This club may just fizzle out like yours did, because the people who are interested are already in a Wilderness Medicine club with me. I hate to accept failure, but it was worth a try.

Sorry to hear that. Have you tried getting involved with events by student organizations or official school events? From my experience, if you contact the people who coordinate those events and say that you're a group of student EMTs who will provide free medical coverage, they are usually pretty open to that.

 

[Deranged Medic]

Sorry to hear that. Have you tried getting involved with events by student organizations or official school events? From my experience, if you contact the people who coordinate those events and say that you're a group of student EMTs who will provide free medical coverage, they are usually pretty open to that.

The problem we are facing is obtaining a "group of student EMTs." Plenty of people are interested until it comes time to actually do something. I am going to try posting some recruitment flyers and see if that helps, but it is starting to look like the interest might not be there.