David Stossmiester is the EMT teacher at Chapel Hill High School. He teaches high school students how to become first responders. He is showing off the program’s newest piece of equipment — a full-sized, recently retired ambulance. He opens the back and says, “We’ve got a bunch of road cones in there right now because we have to set up our driving course this weekend.”
The ambulance was donated by the South Orange Rescue Squad, and officially dedicated on May 19th.
“We have done some scenarios in the back of it,” Stossmiester says. “Early in the year it was having some mechanical work done, so we have not really been able to utilize it to its full capacity all year. We have done some scenarios inside of it, in the back of it, we started a little bit on the driver training. And next year it’s going to be all over campus as kind of a mobile training lab for us.” Â
The EMT program at Chapel Hill High School has been around for 4 years, and gives students the foundational knowledge and experience they need to become EMTs.
“We are actually preparing the students to become certified as emergency medical technicians,” says Stossmeister. “So it’s kind of a wide range of normal anatomy, physiology, alterations in physiology — which is called pathway physiology. How to recognize problems, how to treat them. How to move people around is a big thing. If you go into someone’s house, you have to get them out and into the ambulance, so we spend a lot of time practicing movement in and out. In a lot of ways it’s just creative problem solving.”
CHCCS leaders joined the Chapel Hill High School EMT class for the ambulance dedication on May 19, 2022. (Photo via Kathi Breweur.)
Stossmeister insists that this all becomes much easier to teach with an actual ambulance.
“We talked about South Orange Rescue donating the ambulance,” he said, “but I really cannot stress just how important that is. It really is a massive asset to the program. It lets me make the class more real to the students, and ultimately makes them better EMTs.”
Katya Arbeeva agrees. She is a 12th grader in the program. Her goal is to become a firefighter, and this course allows her to finish off part of her fire certificate.
“It prepares us for after high school,” she said. “So we know right after graduating if we want to go into working, or into medical care, or into the fire service.”
As the end of the school year grows near, many of the students in class are closer and closer to becoming certified EMTs. Stossmeister says, “We have gotten six so far that have their emergency medical responder, which is the entry level first responder certification. And they are preparing now to test for the EMT next month.”
For these students, the opportunity to take a class that has an immediate real world impact is something special.
“This is kind of like a one of a kind class,” Arbeeva said. “There’s really no other class where you learn stuff like this.”
Photo via Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools.
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