 "Photo: Charles Mitchell")
Jesse Marsh is an emergency medical technician in Wilmington, a volunteer firefighter in Middletown and a volunteer at the university's Emergency Care Unit in Newark. Add in his school work, family life and girlfriend and he is a one-man juggling act.
Marsh and three fellow volunteers from the ECU won first place at a competition at the National Collegiate Emergency Medical Services Foundation Conference on Feb. 27.
Juniors Jeff Sands, Mary Fannon and Paige Sacher competed alongside Marsh in the Physio-Control EMS Skills Competition at the conference, which tested teams of four from 35 other universities in different scenarios: handling a trauma situation, treating a meningitis patient and completing a teamwork exercise.
Marsh said his team's win is symbolic of the effective teaching methods at the ECU.
"It speaks volumes for the people in our organization, not just us," Marsh said. "I'm confident if you put any four people in there, we would win."
Sands said the ECU, comprised of approximately 50 undergraduate students, is part of the Department of Public Safety and is considered a registered student organization.
Sands said volunteers range from nursing and biology majors to history and accounting majors.
"We do have a lot of pre-med students, but there's certainly a splattering of all different majors and all walks of the university, which is cool," Sands said.
He said members sacrifice weekend nights as they are required to volunteer 12 hours per month during the hours of 6 p.m. and 6 a.m., and are expected to respond to calls throughout the day when they are available.
Marsh said volunteering at the ECU, among his other responsibilities, can be taxing.
"It's a really gentle balance of multi-tasking with doing as much as you can, wherever you can, whenever you can," he said. "It's definitely tough."
Sands said the ECU provides primary service to the university campus and acts as a secondary service for the Newark community. He said members are dispatched to calls including alcohol overdoses, sports injuries and students passing out in class.
Fannon was recently called to help an assault victim. She and three other EMTs rushed onto the ambulance and rode to the scene, curbing her nerves and finding focus. Fannon approached the victim, who she saw was bleeding from the head.
"For me the most nerve-racking part is walking up to someone who you know is having a problem and who called 911 themselves," she said. "It's interesting to me the trust they put into you when they don't know you at all."
Fannon said she applied pressure to the victim's head wound to stop the bleeding, and splinted his fractured ankle.
She said once on the ambulance, she began a rapid trauma assessment, a head-to-toe evaluation, walking the patient through each step.
"It comforts the patient to go through what I'm doing," Fannon said. "For me it's a trust thing, making sure the patient knows I'm doing everything I can to take care of them."
Fannon said she had no EMT experience before hearing about and joining the ECU. She said the process for new members includes a one-semester probationary period, during which they learn about the organization and the ambulance. Members are then required to take a 140-hour EMT class, and then take the National Registry Exam to obtain their EMT card.
Sands said after members become EMTs they must continue field training and have performance evaluations and then can be promoted.
Sands, a history and anthropology major, said his original career plans were focused on archaeology, but working in the ECU motivated him to pursue emergency care in the future. He said he now has plans to go to paramedic school after graduation.
Sacher said working at the ECU also changed her post-graduation plans. She originally saw herself in the business world, but after tasting the satisfaction from her ECU work, she now wants to stay in the medical field and attend physician's assistant school.
"Before college, I would have never thought I would have been an EMT, but when I got involved it changed my whole view on what I wanted to do after college," Sacher said.
Sacher said helping people in times of distress makes her volunteer work worth it.
"When you have to call the ambulance, that's the worst day of your life for most people," she said. "We have the opportunity to impact someone and make their day better."
Fannon said the ECU prides itself in seeing each patient as an individual and strives to get to know and relate to each one during the 10-minute ride to the hospital.
"When you get to the hospital and you transfer them to a room and they turn to you and say, 'I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't come,' you know you made a difference," she said.
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