When most Calgarians think about EMS, it likely conjures images in the mind of the white Alberta Health Services ambulances staffed by men and women in their blue uniforms.

But across EMS, paramedics respond to emergencies wearing a variety of uniforms—and hats and helmets—as the situation demands.

From paramedics to attend to patients on air flights, to incident response paramedics who don suits to respond to toxic chemical leaks, to the tactical paramedics who give life-saving treatment in the most serious of violent situations.

High school through post-secondary students learned about all those aspects of paramedicine on May 23, at the AHS EMS facility in Stonewall in northeast Calgary as part of Paramedic Services Week in Canada.

“I wanted to host an event for future paramedics, and for some of our frontline staff to bring family members to show what we do within Alberta Health Services. We have so many specialty teams and opportunities to do work outside of working on the ambulance,” said Naomi Nania, Public Education Officer for AHS EMS.

“We have everything from public dispatchers, our 911, we have our incident response paramedics, we have our tactical team. We have some amazing opportunities to kind of do some hands-on, live demonstrations for students. Zoll [Medical Devices], who is the sponsor of this event, is here as well to show CPR and resuscitation and what it takes to do that.”

Hands on learning on what it takes to be a paramedic

Nania said that getting to meet paramedics first hand was important for young people as they consider their career choices.

“This is how I actually got into the job. I was a lifeguard, and I ended up having to do a resuscitation when I was working. I got to see how the paramedics worked, and it was very interesting to me. Because of that, that’s how I started my career.”

“Unfortunately, some of this job, there’s things that we see that are incredibly sad and traumatic, but we also have the opportunity to truly save a life. We can show that to students, and to show them that you can do some pretty miraculous things with the skills and equipment and technology that we have now.”

Among that technology on display was the training simulator used by AHS to train paramedics through true-to-life scenarios that range from everything from a mother giving birth and having to treat both them and their baby, to grievous injuries that cause loss of limb.

“When we’re able to allow the crews, the operations staff, to come in and comfortably run a simulation, it gives them that confidence out there to be able to make the choices that they need to within our protocol set,” said Clayton Skwarok, Advanced Care Paramedic Clinical Education and Patient Care Simulation Team Lead for AHS EMS.

“They practice this in a safe, simulated environment. But then when they go out into that field… that cognitive load and cognitive strain that they have becomes background noise where then they can rely on their training that they’ve received doing the high fidelity simulation, but they can also work in that high cognitive stress environment.”

He said that having this level of technology, which allows for training dummies to provide realistic feedback with movement and even simulated blood.

Skwarok used the example of learning how to apply a tourniquet, and how the strength and pressure required and the pain that can cause a patient is more than expected, but can be learned through the simulator.

“I never had this when I was coming through my growth into this career. I think that being here to help these new people actually getting to see it—and I’m not trying to cause any trauma with the trauma mannequin that we have out there—it’s just showing that these are the tools that we have at our disposal,” he said.

“We’re a group of clinical educators. We love helping people grow. These students here, all the people coming in here and maybe looking at this career, this is a great way to see it and it helps them gain more confidence.”

More than just your typical ambulance

High School student Madison Clarke said that even though her mother, who works for AHS, gave her an interest in paramedicine, she learned a lot by attending the day.

“I just learned about flight paramedics and how they fly, and all the different stations that they have, and all the different types of patients they see. They have patients that just walk onto the plane that are perfectly fine and just going for a like appointment in Calgary, and then the major extreme to not [being] sure if they’re going to make it through the fight,” Clarke said.

“It’s just crazy to know that everything, every single call, every single different situation, is going to be different from the last one.”

She said that her plan was to get her emergency medical responder certification, followed by her primary care paramedic certification, and then get her advanced care paramedic certification once she graduated from high school.

Nania said that among the students at the event, there were already individuals who were working their way through those certification levels.

“I think one of the biggest things is just understanding how we as paramedics work when it comes to frontline. So, at any point, if you need to call 911, we are there. We work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and your paramedics are there to come in all those different scenarios,” Nania said.

“It could be in a football field. It could be in the back of someone’s vehicle on the side of a highway. You will get a paramedic when you call 911.”