“Hey, it’s Josh.”
When City of St. Paul paramedic-firefighter Josh Garubanda responded to a recent 911 call, he recognized the person with a big physical injury as someone he grew up with. “Once they saw me,” Josh recounts, “and I [said], ‘Hey, it’s Josh,’ … they snapped out of their pain for a moment, to be like, ‘Oh, hey Josh’ … he’s like ‘I just knew at that time I’ll be tremendous’ in the long run. I’ll care for him.”
Having a community’s diversity reflected in its emergency medical services (EMS) and firefighting departments provides a critical degree of understanding, empathy and comfort during major times of crisis. Nonetheless, major barriers, cultural and otherwise, can hold women and people of color back from pursuing a profession in these fields. Fortunately, EMS academies in St. Paul and Minneapolis are helping make these opportunities more accessible at a time where there may be a large paramedic and emergency medical technician (EMT) shortage.
In today’s episode of Off the Charts, Josh and fellow paramedic Nela Kurtic speak about how they got here up through St. Paul’s Pathways Program (now EMS Academy), their on-the-job experiences and challenges, the importance of getting community members as first responders and why seeing people like them in these positions is so inspiring. Take heed to the episode or read the transcript.
The pathway to today’s St. Paul EMS Academy
Josh and Nela have multiple years of experience: Nela is in her eighth yr as a paramedic, currently a community paramedic for Regions Hospital having spent the last seven years working pre-hospital for a hospital-based system. And before Josh joined town of St. Paul just a few years ago, he was as a paramedic for a personal service.
Each began their current careers through town of St. Paul’s Pathways Program, now often known as the St. Paul Fire Department’s EMS Academy. Much like other pipeline programs nationwide (including Minneapolis), the EMS Academy is directed toward low-income communities, people of color, immigrants and women living in or near St. Paul and searching for a recent profession. Now in its fifteenth yr and twenty first class, candidates in the tuition-free program receive paid training in EMS skills. At the top of the 12-week program, graduates earn their National EMT certification.
As early graduates, each Josh and Nela have seen this system’s content evolve from a single course right into a comprehensive curriculum that features crucial work experience and connections to current profession opportunities. Today, the EMS Academy helps to fill the shortage of paramedics and EMTs with qualified and diverse graduates that higher reflect the communities they serve.
Tackling cultural and clinical obstacles
While the EMS Academy does an outstanding job of preparing diverse candidates for the sector, there are still loads of cultural obstacles that remain once they begin answering calls as paramedics. When Nela began her clinical experience and ambulance ride-alongs as a part of her training, she was the one woman despite being a part of a various academy class. And while today’s EMS departments have a more even gender split, they’re still primarily white – very like the world’s firefighting departments.
That lack of diversity, paired with having to navigate existing cultural nuances in an already extremely stressful job, provides major barriers to entry for girls and people of color. And even after they enter the sector, the twin stressors of the job itself together with the isolation of navigating a homogeneous work environment may be too exhausting for some graduates to remain.
That’s why the community, connections and mentorships created by the EMS Academy are so necessary. By staying in touch, academy graduates past and present may help navigate the conversations and situations that may come up during shifts, sharing strategies and knowledge on all the things from nurse reports to on-the-job interactions.
As Nela discusses throughout the podcast, it’s good to call someone and ask a second opinion about your working diagnosis or should you selected the fitting medications, or to text someone in your community to get and give advice. By having open lines of communication through a network of resources, everyone that’s connected has what they should turn out to be higher paramedics and to receive the support they need.
The relief and inspiration of community reflection
While the EMS profession path for girls and people of color isn’t easy, it’s also tremendously fulfilling and community-critical. As Josh says throughout the podcast. “I’m very fortunate and I feel very blessed to have the ability to work in town that I grep up in … I feel prefer it’s a privilege to have the ability to assist care for those who are my friends’ members of the family … to assist be a liaison in that moment of pain and uncertainty. I’ve heard that there’s a sigh of relief because they knew [that when we] close those ambulance doors, there’s someone in the back there that’s going to look out for them.”
It is also especially necessary for immigrant community members to know that they’re being heard and respected during unfamiliar times of crisis. By having familiarity with specific customs, family structures, communication styles and decision-making approaches, community-based paramedics and firefighters can deliver a novel degree of empathy and understanding that brings efficient and compassionate care to those in need.
But representation can also be necessary for expanding the horizons of young women and people of color. As podcast co-host Dr. Jackson says often, “you’ll be able to’t be what you’ll be able to’t see.” Josh didn’t see any Black firefighters growing up, not realizing it was even an option before meeting a Black firefighting crew in Colorado. Having the ability to see and hear from people like him in these positions helped to create that access and make it a reality for himself. And now with 317 graduates and counting, the St. Paul EMS Academy can also be making that path real in neighborhoods across town and surrounding suburbs.
To listen to more from Josh and Nela, including their early experiences as paramedics, the role of mentorship in stopping awkward situations and how asking the fitting questions empowers the people they serve on calls, hearken to this episode of Off the Charts.