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Spacious digs for thriving Emergency Response program
By Tim Stoddard
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Ray Levy, coordinator of the Emergency Response program, helps students practice CPR on mannequins in a Fitness and Recreation Center classroom devoted to a growing number of first aid, CPR, and other emergency response courses. Photo by Vernon Doucette |
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If you twist an ankle or otherwise injure yourself in the new Fitness and Recreation Center, don’t panic: certified emergency medical technicians (EMTs) are on the premises, ready to render aid and whisk you to one of the building’s two first-aid treatment rooms. The undergraduate and graduate student EMTs can bandage cuts and scrapes, ice sprained joints, splint fractures, and even perform automated external defibrillation using a machine that can restart a stalled heart. “They’re equipped to handle just about any conceivable medical emergency,” says Ray Levy, coordinator of the Emergency Response program in the department of physical education, recreation, and dance.
Safety is a prominent feature of the facility, says Levy, who had a hand in designing the two state-of-the-art first-aid treatment rooms, along with an adjacent classroom and offices that serve as the Emergency Response program’s new base of operations and educational programming. In its new location, the program is continuing to offer a wide range of courses to the BU community, including first aid, CPR, and other aspects of emergency response. It is also expanding its nonacademic wing: Emergency Medical Services, which employs about 55 student EMTs who provide coverage for the University’s athletic facilities and also for Commencement, Homecoming, and concerts at the Agganis Arena. “Some colleges have their own student-run emergency medical services,” Levy says, “but I haven’t heard of other schools where the EMTs actually work in their athletic and recreational facilities.”
Since Levy became coordinator of the Emergency Response program in 1998, a growing number of students, faculty, and staff have signed up for its courses. They remain popular among premed students seeking practical experience, but there are also students from SMG, CFA, and COM who “are simply in it to help people,” Levy says. About 750 students now take Emergency Response courses every year, up from about 100 students annually in 1993, when Levy (SAR’98, SPH’01) was a freshman and a student EMT.
In the new classroom at the Fitness and Recreation Center, Levy and other staff teach a wide array of credit and noncredit courses in topics ranging from basic CPR to advanced water rescue. Most classes are held in the evenings and on weekends. The program includes continuing education courses for practicing EMTs and paramedics. The seasoned rescuers can brush up on skills or learn new ones in courses such as Automobile Extrication and Mass Casualty Experience.
In response to soaring enrollment in Emergency Response courses, Levy is introducing a variety of new classes that will take advantage of the larger space the program has at the center. In addition to standard classes in CPR and first aid, students may now enroll in Sports Safety, a course for athletes and coaches seeking to prevent injuries, and intermediate level courses in first aid, where students learn to deliver babies, Levy says, but don’t have to “go the full nine yards and work on an ambulance.”
Levy is also teaching a nontraditional course this spring entitled Pet CPR, where students learn how to resuscitate a dog or cat according to American Red Cross guidelines (there is actually a book on it). Using a dummy dog that Levy has dubbed Rescue Rover, students practice chest compressions and “mouth-to-snout” breathing on an incapacitated animal. About 20 students have signed up for the course so far, but Levy expects a stronger turnout over time. “Some people may think we’re a little wacky to offer this course,” he says, “but there are some people who love their pets so much that they want to be able to do this.”
If saving pets seems unusual, consider the initial reception Levy got a few years ago when he introduced BU’s first Wilderness First Aid. “It might seem strange to be taking a class in the city where you’re talking about snake bites and scorpion stings,” he admits, but the class has consistently drawn a crowd. He’s banking on similar interest in other new courses, among them Bloodborne Pathogens, Pediatric CPR, and Spinal Immobilization.
The Emergency Response program may soon take on its most ambitious project yet: creating a paramedic training program. The 1,400-hour class would include field internships aboard ambulances and at Boston Medical Center’s emergency department. “It’s the highest level of certification that you can get in prehospital work,” Levy says. “Paramedics are the eyes and hands of the emergency room physician, starting intravenous lines in the field, intubating patients, and giving them medications.” The paramedic program is pending state accreditation this spring, and may get the green light to begin in the fall. “Our long-term goal is to offer a degree program in paramedicine,” Levy says. “That will open a whole new door for us.”
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April 2005
Boston University
Office of University Relations