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On the Campus: April 17, 1996
Students give aid as emergency medical technicians BY LIZ VEDERMAN '96 The Princeton Rescue Squad primarily serves residents of the Princeton borough and the township. It is occasionally called onto campus, however, when a situation is too serious for the university's proctors to handle. The squad is made up almost entirely of volunteers from the community. All rescue volunteers, the students included, take an intensive, 110-hour training course, which is followed by a state certification exam. Princeton Rescue Squad has at its disposal three ambulances and a heavy-duty rescue truck that EMT Greg Paulson '98 says "is everything we need on wheels," including the "jaws of life" (a mechanism often used to extract accident victims from mangled cars) and an inflatable boat. Students have recently assisted in rescue operations as various as resuscitating an elderly man who collapsed in front of them and taking a student who was dangerously drunk to Princeton Medical Center. Some of the student EMTs are premeds who want to get some hands-on experience before they head off to medical school. But many, like Paulson, have a different reason for volunteering. "Surprising as it may seem, I don't want to be a doctor," he says. "I got involved because I didn't want to limit my college experience within Princeton's 'walls'. I wanted to have an impact on the lives of the people in town as well. Students take a lot from the town, so it's good to give something back. . . . The students are treated just like anyone else on the squad. There's a real sense of community." Lori Pellegrino '96, who rode on the squad for a year, agrees. "It's a whole culture-volunteers play pool and just hang out at the squad house even when they're not on duty. As a student, it becomes another aspect of your life-you really get to know these grown people with full-time jobs." Pellegrino says that what matters is the level of expertise one achieves. New volunteers, called "level zeroes," carry out routine tasks such as transporting equipment, checking the ambulance and inventory, and assisting in rescues. But as a volunteer gains experience and progresses into higher levels, he or she takes on increasingly greater responsibility. Despite the extensive time commitment, Paulson says, "Being an EMT hasn't negatively affected my academics too much. But it has had an effect on my social life-there have been times when the beeper goes off just as my friends and I are sitting down to dinner, or when it wakes up my roommate at four in the morning." When student EMTs are on call, they must be prepared for just about anything to happen, at any hour. Ryan Olsen '97, a newcomer to the squad this spring, says, "There are nights when you don't sleep because there are so many calls, and there are nights when there are no calls at all." But undergraduate EMTs try to take the job's unpredictability-and their periodic heroism-in stride. "Although it seems like some big, noble purpose," Paulson says, "it really is much more day-to-day-the satisfaction of helping people in trouble. The wonderful thing about it is that I don't have to know who they are and they don't have to know me. They just call and we come." He feels the greatest sense of satisfaction when he "gets someone who's really scared to cheer up"-like the time he calmed down a frightened child on the way to the hospital by talking about how much fun it was to ride in the back of an ambulance. The interpersonal element of an EMT's job is at least as important as their medical training. Rescue volunteers, like doctors, must have a good "bedside manner." By volunteering, all the student EMTs-whether they go on to become doctors or not-learn valuable lessons that can't be taught in the classroom. Liz Vederman, a senior majoring in English, hails from Turnersville, New Jersey.
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