Emergency medicine helps communities and students

Jay Mckenzie has seen people at their most vulnerable, and that’s by design. The University of Pittsburgh at Bradford junior from Bronx, N.Y., has his eyes set on law school with hopes of practicing criminal law.

As a history-political science major, he has taken an unusual route to get experience with clients in crisis. He’s a Pitt-Bradford-trained emergency medical technician who spent last summer working with the ambulance crew for the Bradford City Fire Department.

Mckenzie is one of about a dozen Pitt-Bradford students who have or are helping fill the ranks of emergency medicine providers in Pennsylvania and New York.

Jerry Cummins is the chief operating officer of Allegany (N.Y.) Rescue and Emergency Medical Service, where three Pitt-Bradford students are EMTs alongside students from other local universities.

“Without college students, we can’t survive,” Cummins said of his all-volunteer organization. He was excited to hear about a new major in emergency medicine Pitt-Bradford is launching this fall.

“There is a tremendous shortage of paramedics,” he said. “I am the only paramedic that we have at our station.”

Emergency medicine is a four-year degree that will allow graduates to pursue a career as a paramedic or other health care provider.

The new program is being offered in partnership with the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Health and Rehabilitation Science, which will oversee the second two years of the program on the Bradford campus. At Pitt, about a quarter of emergency medicine graduates go on to work in emergency medicine; another quarter attend medical school. A third quarter go on to earn advanced degrees in occupational or physical therapy, and the remainder can go on to study or work as physician assistants, chiropractors, athletic trainers and nurses.

Emergency medicine students will spend their first two years of college taking general education courses. Additionally, they will take a four-credit course to become an emergency medical technician. Then they may apply to the emergency medicine program, which will require a grade point average of 2.5 for admission, EMT certification and 54 completed credits, including prerequisites.

If accepted into the emergency medicine program, students will spend their junior year completing and obtaining their paramedic certification and gaining experience outside of the lab and classroom alongside emergency medical professionals. Senior year will be spent taking courses in critical care medicine and other program-related courses as well as completing graduation requirements.

“This degree will offer students hands-on experience in the classroom and real-world settings as an EMT and paramedic to better prepare them for graduate school or provide them with a certification to begin working even before graduation,” said Doug Graham, instructor of emergency medical services and health sciences at Pitt-Bradford.

The emergency medicine junior and senior years of training will begin fall of 2027. Prospective students can begin working on their general college courses in the fall of 2025 while pursuing the pre-emergency medicine program. 

Emergency medicine students will graduate ready to become certified paramedics, who have more training than emergency medical technicians and are able to provide advanced life support and perform procedures such as providing oral and intravenous medication, monitoring electrocardiograms, and performing advanced airway procedures, including intubation and tracheotomies.

At the Bradford City Fire Department, Chief Brett Butler, himself a 2013 Pitt-Bradford graduate, is also eager to welcome more paramedics to the area. Butler said he is facing replacing four or five firefighters in the next five years and noted that he sees paramedics working in urgent care centers and other settings outside of an ambulance.

Bradford City Fire Department Lt. Paramedic Cathy Mealy oversees the department’s emergency medical services and teaches in Pitt-Bradford’s current EMT classes, where she also tests students to become certified EMTs. She will help emergency medicine students in the new four-year program gain hands-on experience.

“The elements cross over,” she said of an emergency medicine degree. “It is practical, applicable knowledge.”

Butler said that while a four-year degree is not necessary for working as a firefighter or paramedic, it can give emergency workers a leg up.

“You have a lot of options for additional training,” he said, adding that additional skills learned while earning a bachelor’s degree such as writing, business management, accounting and psychology can all be directly used in emergency medicine. 

Mealy agreed. “There is no element of this job where documentation isn’t critical,” she said. Butler added, “Taking English Composition I and II can go a long way.”