A local ambulance is getting a new life as a teaching tool to train the next generation of EMTs.
Rices Landing Volunteer Fire Department donated an ambulance to the EMT program at the Greene County Career & Technology Center to help build an EMT training program in Greene County.
“We want to continue to have the opportunity to grow for a job that’s in high need and high demand, not just in GREENE County, but basically nationwide,” Dan Halliday, an instructor of emergency protective services at Greene County CTC, said.
For Bill Kozich, chief at Rices Landing VFD, it is a way to give back to the community.
“We knew that the center was going to start an EMT program at the same time, we were actually waiting for the arrival of our new ambulance,” Kozich said. “A bunch of us got together and thought it would be good to take the ambulance, which we probably not going to get a whole lot of money on if we traded it in, and it would probably be more beneficial for the community to get the program off the ground.”
There are 34 students in the current EMT program at Greene County CTC, and Halliday said that there will be even more next year.
“I don’t know what the cutoff is, but I do know we are we have a full roster for next year,” Halliday said.
The ambulance will help train students to provide emergency care in a small, moving, enclosed space.
“Having a mobile ambulance, we can actually be on the move while they practice taking things like vitals or performing CPR on the CPR dummy in the back of an ambulance,” Halliday said. “Having an ambulance available means we can offer to our seniors that are 18 and that have a driver’s license an emergency vehicle operations class. So they can actually get certified in the ability to drive an ambulance also. That’s a little bit of an additional thing from our regular curriculum, but that’s in the works to establish hopefully by next year.”
Kozich hopes that the donation of the ambulance can help boost community interest in emergency services in Greene County.
“We have got some people interested in it now and they can train here in Greene County, get their training and everything done here, so they don’t have to go out of the county,” Kozich said.
Volunteering and donating time is important to Kozich.
“Whether it’s fire, whether its EMS, whether it’s the church, the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, if everybody would hopefully give back a little bit, you know, and maybe by us giving or inspire somebody else to give up some of their time to help,” Kozich said.
A strength that the program at Greene County CTC carries is the local nature. Halliday said that people who leave the county to get certified tend to get hired where they get taught.
“This will be the big change because we have nine students graduating for the national registry this year. So once they have an EMT license and they graduate, we’ll see if they do stay. Hopefully, they stay,” Halladay said.
