Answering the Call

commended as those who work in the medical field. In places hit hard like Manhattan, the city erupts every night and applause at seven pm, showing gratitude for the work of health professionals. Well, that applause echoes throughout the rural areas of the country as well, where medical workers like e m T stay busy serving their communities and adapting

to changing times. If you call nine one one after you take a fall, or maybe you see someone having trouble breathing, the people who show up in the ambulance are Emergency medical technicians e m T s. And if you're an EMT in the city of Rutland, Vermont, you can expect those calls to start rolling in the moment your eight am shift starts. When the emergency line rings, it's a distinctive bell and a loud buzzer. It'll awake the dead, and that's why it's intended to do. It's

very loud and very obnoxious. This is Kyle Robillard. He's thirty two and he's an advanced e MT at Regional Ambulance in Rutland, Vermont. One of the busiest ambulance services in the state of Vermont, and it's not uncommon for the department in a twenty period to run over thirty calls for service. The calls can be for anything car accidents,

helping an elderly person who's fallen down, cardiac arress. Kyle says he has people call even if they have a bloody nose, So you don't know what's coming when you're working at the amblets, but you know something is coming.

Regional Ambulance is a building right next to the local hospital that's got a long garage with seven ambulances at the ready, and when the alarm goes off, a dispatcher in the office picks up and that call blares over an intercom system throughout the building telling us the who, what, where, when and why, the need of service, so you can start to get a sense of what the call is. The e m T s go out in pairs, so Kyle and his partner will hear what the call is

and judge what they need to go on see. And if they know that it isn't as serious, they'll know that they don't have to blow through traffic to get there. But if it's something like a heart attack, they move quick. So we'll get out to the ambulance, we'll get in, we'll sign on with the hospital, let them know what we're going to because it's important to let the hospital know like what to expect, especially if it's a significant incident. They want to start to prepare rooms in space and

have resources available. E T. E m T is trained to drive the ambulance, so they decide who's driving and who's in the back with the patient. Sometimes the call is severe enough, we're both in the back and we call in another crew to drive for us. If it's an easy call, like a nose bleed, if my partner is a basic empt, I'll let them take the call in and if it's something that requires a little more care,

I step in. So it's it's situational. They also do a lot of transfers, so if a patient can't get what they need at the Rutland Hospital, Kyle's team might bring them to nearby Dartmouth or Boston. He's even gone as far as Buffalo, New York, an eight hour drive, regardless of what the call is. As soon as you clock in. Being an m T keeps you on your toes three years into the job. That's why Kyle likes it.

Somebody who's been doing this for over twenty years, who's been to hundreds of thousands of calls, probably wouldn't mind a slower day, and you can't blame him either. You know, a career of service, you're going to see a lot of stuff. But right now, I love going to work. I love putting on the uniform and tackling whatever comes down the pipeline. And at the end of the day you're probably physically exhausted, but you can look back your day and say I did something today, Oh yeah, yep.

There's never a day where I left I'm like, oh man, and he didn't get much accomplished here. Being an EMT is actually Kyle's part time job. Full time, he's also a fire fighter here in Rutland, where he was born and raised, and a senior year of high school in front of his started volunteering at a fire department nearby, and it was the first time Kyle had heard that was an option at eighteen. My father was a fireman at the time and my uncle was also a fireman.

The one time at dinner, I approached my dad about the thought of joining the volunteer department. His dad totally supported it. So Kyle went into the family business, which is really not uncommon for firefighters a lot of people in Rutland. It's a generational family thing, but in every fire department across the country you'll see sons stepping in after their fathers or their mothers, and daughters doing the same thing. So he started going in once a week

in training. Soon he was answering a pager he carried everywhere and going into calls with the department. One time, jumping up from dinner at a restaurant when he was nineteen to respond to a raging fire. His dad said, was a fire you might see every thirty years. Yeah, my heart was in my throat. I didn't really know what to expect. I remember seeing the huge glow and the sky and just being like, holy, holy, holy ship. Just before you know it, twelve hours has gone past.

You're tired, you're soaking wet, you're hungry, But in a blink of an eye, the twelve hours is gone and you've been at that fire the whole time. After high school, he went to college and got his degree in sports medicine while he was still working as a firefighter part time. In college, he was learning a lot about injury mitigation and physical rehab and he saw how much that could

apply to his work as an emergency responder. And then there was e m T class being offered in Rutland in the evenings and it worked with my schedule really well. He thought, this will be great training to have. It ties into firefighting, it ties into his work as an athletic trainer. This seems like too much work, But are you doing any of that as well on the side. Yeah. The last three winters, I was traveling with the United States Junior loose team. Wow. Yeah, that was an unbelievable experience.

I was able to travel Europe with a loose team and practice sports medicine. It was unbelievable. That's all you're working a lot. Are you a workaholic? Yeah, to a fault. It's partially by nature. I think the fire department job because our schedule is we worked twenty four hours, then we have forty eight hours off. We tend to fill that void productively. There was a time where I was mismanaging my time very poorly. I've had to make some changes in like a just my work schedule, so I'm

not working all the time. Kyle's dad was the same way, always had another job. So three years ago it wasn't all out of the question that Kyle would pick up a second line of work, especially how complimentary the skill sets are. We very much run a lot of calls with the e M S Department and vice versa, so it was a very natural transition to slide into doing that job as well. Over the last fifteen years wearing all these hats, Kyle's got a pretty impressive skill set.

He's got plenty of room for upward mobility, and more importantly, he really cares about his job. He's a guy you want showing up when you call nine month one. But the calls that Kyle gets as an e MT shed light on some of the harsh realities of rural America and when you work in the place you grow up. A lot of those calls hit home. Talking to some of my bosses who were paramedics back in the eighties, you know they were doing a lot of the normal

stuff you would think cardiac arressen, motor vehicle accidents. The job description has definitely shifted. More on Kyle's story after the break. A strong work ethic takes pride in a job well done, sweats over the details. This is you. But to get an honest day's work, you need a response, You need a call back, You need a job. Express Employment professionals can help because we understand what it takes to get a job. It takes more than just online

searches to land the job. It takes someone who will identify your talents, a person invested in your success. At Express, we can even complete your application with you over the phone, will prepare you for interviews, and will connect you to the right company. Plus, we'll never charge a fee to find you a job. At Express, we could put you to work with companies of all sizes and industries, from

the production floor to the front office. Express nose jobs get to no Express find your location at Express pros dot com or on the Express Jobs app. An article ran in the New York Times. It was titled a Call to Arms on a Vermont heroin Epidemic. The article focused on Rutland, where Kyle's from and where is now an e MT. In the last few decades, heroin found its way to rural areas all over the country. In

Rutland got hit hard. When I was a kid, I always saw heroin and drugs of the similar nature were big city drugs. That's not up here. I felt insulated to it. Just it's everywhere. I've never seen anything like it. There's a lot of prescription pill abuse to something that really wasn't as prominent even thirty years ago. And the thing with people who tend to abuse drugs like that, they do it over and over again, So you have a lot of repeat calls. Yeah, a lot of people

we know on a first name basis. In places like this, where people live a little farther apart than they do in cities, it's less densely populated, the problem can be hard to see. When that New York Times article came out, a lot of people here were shocked. They didn't know that an epidemic was happening right where they lived. It's far more widespread than you think. I'm sure you know somebody. One of my close friends, he and I shared the same birthday. He was born two minutes ahead of me.

He passed away this winter from an overdose. You know it's that's it's awful. Kyle's right, I do know someone, one of my best friends growing up. The great thing about living in a small town is everyone knows everyone. There's a real sense of community. But when something happens to someone in that community, they can make it that much harder. Because Kyle's lived in Rutland all his life, he knows that when a call comes in, there's a good chance that he'll know who he's going to help.

Remember when I talked about I was bad at time management and I wear a lot of hats. Well, I was doing perpetry. Also sure one of our coworkers was a heroin addict. I would have to bring him to the methodon clinic before going to the job site in the morning. Then one day, while he was working at the firehouse, he got a call to respond to an overdose. The address sounded really familiar and I would. I was like, please don't be this person's house. Please don't be this

person's house. We drove by his apartment. I was like, thank God. But then we pull up to this other apartment. I see this individual's dogs outside the door, and I'm like, oh, he was inside unconscious. They did chest compressions on him, and they gave him Narcan, which is a nasal spray that can help reverse an opioid overdose. After that, he woke up. He was alive, incoherent, but it was my co worker. Um. But two days later he was back at the job site like nothing happened. We didn't speak

of it, you know. Yep, that's one of the things I fear is going to an overdose or somebody I know. I asked Kyle. It calls like that way on him if the things he sees on the job as an empt overshadowed the reasons he got into it. Trying not to think that way. I don't want to become jaded. I just my goals when I go to work are two, make my partner's life easier, try and help as many people as I'm called upon to help, and then try and make the station a little bit cleaner, a little

bit nicer than when I found it. If I can do those three things, I've had a good shift. Do you like your job? Yeah, I like it a lot. To shifts fly by, I look at the quack, I'm like, oh man, I've only got like an hour left. Is very rewarding work. And never leave feeling deflated like I didn't do anything. What would you say to someone who's interested in becoming an EMT, I'd say, if you like a challenge, if you like continually learning, and if you

like being busy. It's a great career opportunity. Starting from this career. You can become a physician assistant. You can become a flight medic. You know, you can take this education wherever you want to, which is awesome. When I asked how what his favorite part of the job is, he says he loves working with the elderly population. He

says that they show a lot of gratitude. He especially likes those longer transfers they'll do with something times from hospital to hospital, for going to Burlington which is in an hour and forty five two hours away, and dart Myths, which is over the hour. You can either spend a time with your nose in the computer right in your report, you can get to know the person you know in the back seat with you, and sometimes they have pretty incredible stories. In a lot of cases he helps out

those same elderly people multiple times. They get to know each other by name. And that's the other side of this work and doing it in a small town. You get to be the person that someone trust, they'll see when they ask for help. You're doing your job, but you're not just a uniform. I think sometimes in this profession and others similar to it, you forget you're dealing

with people not too dissimilar from yourself. So anytime I'm in the back seat, I like to talk to them, get a little bit of their backstory and and get to know them by name, you know, talk to them like I'd be talking to my brother like I'm talking to you right now. You can have a great conversation with somebody, and I think that goes I think that goes a long way with people. For On the Job, I'm Otis Gray. Thanks for listening to On the Job,

brought to you by Express Employment Professionals. This season of On the Job is produced by Audiation and Red Seat Ventures. The episodes are written and produced by me Otus Gray. Our executive producer is Sandy Smallens. The show is mixed by Matt Noble for Audiation Studios at The Loft in Bronxville, New York. Music by Blue Dost Sessions. Find us on I Heart Radio and Apple Podcasts. If you liked what you heard, please consider rating and reviewing the show on

Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. We'll see you next time. For more inspiring stories about making yourself essential as you discover your life's work, Ariation