If you are injured in a car accident, fall while rock climbing, or suffer a heart attack in rural areas of Utah, your chances of survival are impacted by not only the distance emergency responders must travel but also by a shortage of Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT).
Salt Lake Community College’s Russell Malone, Emergency Medical Programs Manager, became aware of this shortage in July when he heard that rural areas were requesting emergency waivers to staff their ambulances with Emergency Medical Responders (EMR) instead of the required two EMTs. Malone found that the shortage of EMTs was due to a shortage of funding and access to training for these volunteer responders.
“Access to education was the biggest barrier,” says Malone. “Most of these folks are hours away from programs that offer this certification, and most work full time.” Malone, who has been teaching emergency response courses for over 30 years at SLCC, reached out to rural communities to partner in offering a hybrid certification program to increase EMT certifications in rural areas. Currently, 25 people from rural areas in Utah are participating in SLCC’s EMT hybrid certification course this fall, which requires 160 hours of instruction, half hands on.
SLCC instructors provide all the materials and online instruction via Zoom and then the hands-on training is usually held at a local Emergency Medical Services (EMS) agency. An SLCC adjunct faculty oversees the hands-on training. Utah’s Learn and Work Program provided the funding so rural areas can afford the training. Most emergency responders in rural areas are volunteers and work fulltime.
“We need more EMTs who are home and available during the day-time hours,” says Karen Nelson, who lives in Mantua and is a town council member. “Most of our volunteers work during the day and work a distance from Mantua.”
Nelson, who is 69 years old and training to be an EMT, says her area has grown more than 70% in the last year and limited resources make it challenging to advance the area’s fire, police, and infrastructure needs. “When this opportunity came up, we jumped on it. Rural communities don’t have the monetary resources to train up.” Mantua still needs an ambulance; currently , they use a fire truck or brush truck.
Emergency Response in the Navajo Nation
In Southeast Utah, on the Navajo Reservation in Montezuma Creek and Monument Valley areas, emergency responders must cover 1,400 square miles. This expands to 1,800 square miles if the areas shared with Arizona and Colorado responders are included.
“Thirty minutes is our normal response time to get to an emergency scene; in some locations it is an hour,” says Daven Bennallie, the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) officer for the Utah Navajo Health System. The areas rely on four hospitals, each in a different state (Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado). His team is 99% Navajo.
For SLCC’s hybrid training opportunity, Bennallie focused on recruiting students in Monument Valley, where there is a greater need for EMTs to staff ambulances. “It’s a struggle retaining our students because it’s a commute for them to get to the EMS station for the hands-on training. Sometimes they also need to travel for the online training because of barriers accessing internet service.
The Navajo reservation is so spread out that adding additional EMTs could make a big difference,” adds Kylie Linford, the course coordinator for SLCC’s Hybrid Emergency Medical Technician course.
While both areas need EMTs, Bennallie says access to advanced EMT training could save even more lives. Advanced training, such as using an IV to get medication into a patient quickly, “would be a game changer,” says Bennallie.
Bennallie’s UNHS team, located in Montezuma Creek, was the first in Utah to be recognized at the annual EMS World Expo for their volunteer service this fall. They received the 2022 EMS World Volunteer EMS Service of the Year Award. They were described as offering a “true frontier” service, where only state roads are paved and many homes don’t have addresses, and some don’t have electricity. Sometimes there is a language barrier between the dispatcher and Navajo-speaking callers.
SLCC has just received additional funding to provide a hybrid EMT course for the Spring semester. This will give additional rural EMS agencies the resources to provide additional emergency care in their local areas. SLCC will continue to offer an Advanced Emergency Medical Technician course at the SLCC Miller Campus in Sandy, Utah.
SLCC’s EMT students will participate in a mass casualty incident (MCI) on November 21. An MCI is held each semester to train students in different emergency scenarios; Injuries at the scene are made to simulate real life injuries and illness.
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