However, Coordinated Program Director of Nutrition Jessica Todd and Director of Communications Angela Go from the Lewis School of Nursing and Health Professions said they haven’t heard of any plans of this.
Photo by Jade Johnson | The Signa
Jeffrey Asher said he expected local colleges to be reluctant in arranging the EMT course to be worth credits to students.
“I know that with colleges, when you have a track record of success it is easier to accomplish the goals you have.
If we run this course this coming summer and have a number of students from the universities around us talk about it, that offers firsthand experience that will make it easier to get to where this can be taken on as a credited course,” he said.
Grady started offering CPR, First Aid and EMT training classes to the metro-Atlanta community in their recently renovated building on Marietta Boulevard last December, according to Asher.
“We conduct classes for our own people but also branching out and offering classes for the public,” he said.
“If students are involved in a nursing or health related program, they already have specified clinical objectives. But the program helps students with the competitiveness of medical school or physician assistant programs or other types of graduate level medical education. Students, when applying, are always looking for something that looks good on their resume and application that is direct tier experience,” he said.
He also said college student communities in Atlanta are specifically looking for this type of opportunity.
“We get contacted on a fairly frequent basis from college students who are interested in going into medicine as a physician or physician assistant and are looking to do something over the summer rather than working your typical college job or sitting around waiting for classes,” he said.
Resume building, obtaining licenses and gaining experience are the most important things to receive in the medical field, according to Asher.
“A part of the training includes actually going into Grady and getting hands on and direct patient care. In a nursing program you will get that, but if you are a college student getting a degree in biology and you want to go on to medical school, you need direct patient care experience which is hard to get without some sort of license or certification already,” he said.
Asher also said the courses offered by Grady are all kept to a minimum number of students to ensure that the quality of education remains.
“We let them into both the hospital at Grady and also the ambulance. You see two different sides of medicine. You see the traditional patient kind of experience at the hospital, but you also get to go out and actually see what it is like to perform medicine applied in the pre-hospital environment,” he said.
Georgia State nursing student Catherine Dahlin said the opportunity for EMT training would be a great reinforcement for students in the nursing program.
“Georgia State’s nursing program is all about hands on experience so to offer EMT training through Grady would be an amazing addition. Lots of nurses are licensed paramedics as well and I’ve always wanted to pursue that,” she said.
Dahlin also said the training would be great additional experience for students outside the Lewis school as well.
“Students under different majors could still benefit from EMT training, as it offers another option for employment.
Also it would train people to know how to respond to emergency situations better than the simple first aid and CPR single day courses,” she said.
