What does it really mean to prepare someone for a career in EMS? It’s a question that Kevin Adams—certified EMT and Health Careers Instructor at NVTAHEC—asks himself every time he steps into the classroom. The answer, he’s learned, goes far beyond mastering protocols or passing exams.
This EMS Week, Kevin shares a powerful reflection on what it takes to truly be ready for the field. Drawing from his own journey as a provider and educator, he explores the realities that no textbook can fully capture—the human moments, the emotional weight, and the quiet, compassionate presence that often matters most to patients.
Whether you’re in the field, in the classroom, or just curious about the world of EMS, Kevin’s words offer a moving reminder: being an EMT isn’t just about what you know—it’s about who you are when someone needs you most. You can read Kevin’s reflection below:
As an EMS educator, it is always on my mind what I am trying to prepare my students for.
EMS providers see an incredibly diverse range of situations—from medical emergencies to traumatic accidents and drug overdoses, to really anything that might be followed up by a call to 911. After completing my EMT course in 2015, I was ecstatic to begin running calls, and I felt more than prepared to manage the emergencies I was taught to expect.
However, what I soon realized was that no matter the instructor, there was not enough time or training to prepare me for the reality of EMS.
EMS is much larger than “simple” emergencies, because no emergency is simple when we take the human aspect into account.
Being an EMT is more than just learning how to recognize and treat life-threatening emergencies. It is also recognizing that you will inevitably be the one to help someone on their worst day, that you are the only person in the healthcare chain who truly sees the situation outside of the clandestine walls of the emergency department, and that you inevitably will be the person to explain the situation to your patient’s family—with hope or with empathy.
It is this factor that stood out to me as the most poignant aspect of being an EMT. Yes, the mastery of skills, the medical knowledge, and the certification technically make you an EMT, but when you realize that the medicine is only a fraction of the benefit you can offer, that is what makes you a provider.
In EMS education, we teach that basic life support should always come before advanced life support. For those unfamiliar with EMS, this means that simple treatments like bleeding control or body positioning should always come before we move to more invasive measures like establishing an IV or administering most medications. However, I like to take this one step further. To me, the most basic life support we can offer is being a kind and compassionate fixture on our patient’s terrible day. If you ask a patient in the emergency room what they remember most about their time in the ambulance, it is never, “Wow, that EMT really had their acronyms down,” or “Man, those EMTs really diagnosed me perfectly.” It is more often than not something to do with how they were treated as a person, whether positive or negative. It is that memory that will carry on with them through their life and future interactions with healthcare.
When you work in EMS, sometimes it is hard to remember your humanity. It is easy to put up an ambulance- or uniform-shaped wall between you and your patients, since their terrible day might, for you, simply be a Tuesday. However, it is this factor that I try to prepare my students for.
Being an EMT is not simply a certification or a scope of practice—it is an agreement with yourself to always try and see the humanity in hard situations, to be an advocate for even the most marginalized in our communities. EMTs are not, by default, heroes. When it comes down to it, we are humans with training—humans who one day might very well find ourselves in a similar situation to our patients. It is when we prioritize our compassion and how we treat the human in our ambulance that we can truly make a difference.
As an EMS educator, my goal is to create the most prepared and compassionate providers that I can. I myself am one EMT, and I can help the patients that I see, but if I can adequately prepare a group of EMT students to be better providers than I am, I will have been able to reach a new and untold number of patients through the values that my students bring with them into the field.
This EMS Week, I am putting out my thanks to EMS educators everywhere who emphasize humanity in their classes, and to those providers who took this learning to heart. It is you who truly makes a difference in your patients’ lives and who inspires others to follow after you.
Northern Vermont AHEC is proud to support the development of future healthcare professionals through mentorship, education, and real-world insight. During EMS Week, we extend our deepest gratitude to those who serve—and those who teach them to serve with compassion.
You can read more about the EMT Hybrid Course Kevin teaches here: https://nvtahec.org/professionals/emt_hybrid_course
Thank you to EMS educators like Kevin who shape the next generation of compassionate care providers.