Campus Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) have a huge responsibility to keep the students of Loyola safe. Not only that, but they’re students as well! Juggling school and this job cannot be easy, therefore I reached out to a new campus EMT and found out what this job is really like.
Meet Ashley Prabakar (second- year, health systems management/pre-medicine).
Why did you decide to become a campus EMT? I didn’t know EMTs existed until freshman year of college. I was in one of my clubs, and they had the campus Emergency Medical Services (EMS) come in and do a mock emergency scenario. They had a “practice call.” It was so cool how they worked as a team. It was really interesting and I was like “Oh, I want to do that.”
What was your first shift like? I can’t give specifics of it because of confidentiality, but a big part of EMS is that we’re students and we treat other students. Confidentiality is a big part of it. My first call was an overnight call, Saturday to Sunday. It’s nice to know that while students are going out, there’s people in a base looking out for other people. We get to be first responders. It was long, but it was cool to have that anticipation for my first call. I was sleepy, but I woke up when my first call came in at 4am.
Why are you passionate about medicine? So, for me at least, it was interesting to learn the body systems. We’re made so everything works together, but so many things can go wrong. I want to learn about those. It’s just interesting to me.
Ashley will be teaching CPR classes in the fall, any Loyola student can attend to become CPR certified. More information will be available when the fall semester begins.
For information about LUCEMS, visit https://www.luc.edu/ems/index.shtml.