A new organization is in the works at Saint Louis University that hopes to help the University population by providing a student run Emergency Medical Service.
The organization, under the current title of Emergency Medical Team, would function as an additional emergency response team in the case of non life-threatening emergencies, said Connie Tillman, the emergency preparedness coordinator in the Department of Public Safety and Security Services.
“If it’s a sprain, they can wrap it up. If it’s a heart attack, they can use AEDs and do chest compressions until an ambulance can get here,” Tillman said.
The idea for the organization started with Brent Seus, a student at SLU that started emergency medical technician training last year.
In an attempt to find a way to utilize his license to help the SLU community, Seus “found numerous other schools, from small private to large state, that have student run EMS.”
He approached Tillman with the idea, and they set to work to see if they could establish an EMS here.
Currently the group is in the research phase and purely conceptual.
“What we are doing right now is trying to advertise the idea of doing this to the student body to see if other students would be interested in and support such a potential group,” Seus said.
The group has no plans of approaching the administration for approval until it has reached a more concrete stage and has proper support.
They have been in contact with and are modeling the group after the Washington University in St. Louis campus EMS program, which, according to Seus, has been in operation for more than 30 years.
Should the group be formed, it would operate as a volunteer service, open to the entire SLU community.
The group would help to provide a faster response time to an emergency call.
A large benefit of the group would be its ability to counteract increases in the response time for an ambulance heading to SLU.
According to Seus, the ambulance staged at the fire department on the corner of Forest Park and Vandeventer has been shut down.
The closure of the Grand Avenue Bridge has also contributed significantly to an increase in an ambulance’s response time, Tillman said.
The organization intends to do more than provide emergency response should they find success on campus.
“We hope we’re going to have a joint situation with the [fire department] and do ride-alongs,” Tillman said.
Seus also mentioned that the group has been in contact with St. Louis Community College with the hopes of providing “opportunities for interested individuals to go through EMT training,” as the school currently offers such courses.
Interested individuals can contact Seus via email, [email protected], for more information.
