Ambulances are often heard in the streets of Charlottesville, their sirens wailing at all hours of the night, and seen hurrying through busy intersections, lights flashing. They are staffed with crews of experienced emergency medical technicians trained to handle a wide range of emergency situations. Some of these individuals are University students, volunteering their time and energy to provide medical assistance to the local community.
The Charlottesville-Albemarle Rescue Squad is a local, nonprofit volunteer organization. Third-year College student Sarah Ferrell said CARS is comprised of 189 active members, many of whom are students. An active member, Ferrell explained, commits to a minimum of 12 on-duty hours each week, as well as a monthly 24-hour shift.
First-year Medical School student Sam Kim said he feels the experiences he gains and the relationships he has formed are well worth the extensive time commitment the squad demands.
“The main thing is you have to — obviously — take something out of it,” he said. “It goes beyond camaraderie and whatnot. It’s a matter of being able to work with these people, knowing them so well that when I do one thing, I already know that something else has happened because my partner has done it ... I trust him to do it.”
Ferrell agreed. “It seems like a lot of time, but it’s with people you grow to love in ways you never expected. It’s definitely doable with school.”
As they fulfill their weekly commitment, members are assigned to crews, which can range in size from four to 16 members.
“Your crew is the same exact people every week,” Ferrell said. “So it becomes kind of like a little family because you spend so much time together each week during your shift.”
Third-year College student Stephanie Morton said she feels the weekly shifts are manageable, although they do require a degree of prioritizing and time management.
“For my overnight shift,” Morton said, “I try to choose nights where I don’t have really early classes the next day and to do the majority of my [school] work before I come into work.”
The squad building is equipped with two rooms filled with beds to give squad members a place to rest between calls. One door is labeled “Snoring,” the other “Non-snoring.” Still, Morton noted, getting any amount of solid sleep is nearly impossible.
“The bells and lights go off [throughout the whole building] for every call, so I wake up each time a call comes in even if I’m not on the crew that’s running it,” she noted.
A busy night, Ferrell said, could mean responding to calls as frequently as every 90 minutes. Other times, a stretch of three or four hours can pass without any action. When a call does come in, though, the EMTs must be ready.
“The house tones go off,” Ferrell said, “and it’s really loud because it has to wake you up from sleeping. You’ll either hear one, two or three beeps and you’ll immediately know how to respond.”
One beep signifies a situation that is relatively less serious, she said. This could mean someone has fallen down and needs assistance, feels dizzy or is experiencing nausea and vomiting, for instance. Two beeps means a trauma or medic call. This, she said, could be a patient who may require advanced life support.
Three beeps always signifies a special rescue.
“This would be either a car accident with someone trapped inside or an airport emergency or a water rescue or a technical rescue, which means that someone is trapped in a high or tight location and needs assistance,” Ferrell said. She noted that these calls do not come in as often.
Still, CARS volunteers must be prepared to respond to any kind of call. They are therefore required to undergo an intensive training regimen and must practice regularly to maintain these skills and their ability to handle an emergency situation.
There are different levels of training, Ferrell said. The first level, EMT Basic, requires 120 hours of classroom time. At least one class is held every semester, generally in two four-hour sessions each week. The class is free through CARS, and students can receive credit from the University upon completion, Kim added.
“Most students at CARS are Basics,” Kim said. “This means you’re allowed to do splints, broken bones — basic things like that. You’re mainly stabilizing [the patients], keeping them alive and taking them to the hospital.” Basic training also involves taking a driving course for emergency vehicle operations.
The next level is EMT Enhanced, which requires 80 more hours of training. This is followed by Intermediate, and then the highest level, Paramedic. Kim, who began paramedic training during his third year, said he temporarily became a part-time student at the University while commuting twice weekly to Richmond for the paramedic class.
For Morton, training is also a time-consuming but crucial part of remaining an active CARS member.
“I’m also involved in the vehicle extrication side of it, and I’m also a member of the water rescue team,” she said. “We meet and go diving a lot.”
Morton said the team uses tools to practice potential scenarios. “It’s just good practice,” she noted. “You get on scene, and there are so many different ways that cars can wreck and people can be stuck in them. You have to sort of be creative in every situation and use the tools you have.”
Everyone involved with CARS, regardless of individual EMT levels, is held accountable for keeping up with medical training.
“We have training meetings every month, and you have to do CE [continuing education] hours to get your certification renewed,” Morton said. “You have to force yourself to train and keep up your skills, even those you don’t necessarily use often, such as intubations.”
After all, there is no such thing as a typical shift, Kim said, meaning volunteers need to be prepared for anything. “You show up at 5:30 [p.m.] on the dot — or hopefully a little earlier — and begin to get everything ready. Ideally, for the first 20 minutes or so, we are going to our trucks, checking everything out and making sure it’s in working order.” From that point on, the schedule is up in the air.
“CARS is a really busy rescue squad,” Kim said. “Dinner sometimes doesn’t happen until midnight; it just depends on when we get calls and what kind of calls they are, which is something you can never predict.”
The rescue squad responds to about 12,000 calls a year, Kim said. It aims to have at least three trucks running every night, with each truck requiring a minimum of two people for operation.
When it comes to responding to emergencies, student CARS members agree the hands-on experience they regularly receive while volunteering at CARS is crucially valuable.
“The best part,” Morton said, “is you learn so much. I’ve learned a lot about just medicine in general, and how to deal with patients in different situations ... how to judge patients in certain situations and know what they need to hear from me.”
Ferrell also said working at CARS has helped her to recognize the importance of patient care.
“The best part about running calls is you see a side of medicine that most doctors don’t even see,” she said. “You go into people’s houses, go pick up people who are having the worst moment of their lives, and you get to take care of them.”
She said she feels the experience will benefit her in her pursuit of a future medical career.
“The thing is, it’s not just something that looks good on an application. I feel like I will have a huge advantage over most of my medical school class who have never touched a patient and don’t know anything about having a bedside manner.”
At the same time, though, Morton said it is important not to become too attached to patients.
“Everyone always asks how I deal with death and with patients dying,” she said. “The first time I saw a person die was, I think, the hardest. You begin to realize that you’ve done the best you can and you have to learn to push past that.”
Ferrell echoed Morton’s sentiments. “There are those calls that come in once in a while that really strike a nerve for some reason or another, like when it’s a sick child or maybe somebody our own age.”
Ferrell said she has come to recognize, however, that the job of the CARS EMTs is to intervene positively and do the best they can to help the patient.
“Even if you’re on a bad call, you’re still helping or at least trying your very best to help someone,” she said.
Although they were drawn to the squad for different reasons, the desire to help others is a universal goal for the members of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Rescue Squad.
Morton said she originally became interested in volunteering as an EMT after her cousin was seriously injured in a car accident when Morton was younger.
“She was in really bad shape when the paramedics got there, and they ended up saving her life,” she said. “I started dreaming about doing something like that.”
Ferrell, who said she became involved because she has always been interested in emergency medicine, noted that volunteering for CARS will “definitely show you if medicine is the thing for you or not, and it showed me that I’m addicted to the field and what we do.”
Ferrell also said she encouraged anyone who is interested to do a ride-along and watch the EMTs at work. She said watching them as they hang out, train, take calls and respond to emergencies undoubtedly will help observers understand why members of CARS are so committed to the work they do.
“It’s definitely a passion,” Kim concluded. “As long as I feel that way, I can always find time to do it.”
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