\u201cIf it wasn\u2019t for that show \u2018Emergency!\u2019 on television, nobody would have known what a paramedic was. I didn\u2019t know what a paramedic was. I thought they jumped out of a plane.\u201d –Dave Smith, UConn Health’s first firefighter<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The class of 12 firefighters \u2013 four from UConn Health and eight from East Hartford \u2013 had spent the summer training with a curriculum based largely on the Los Angeles County Fire Department paramedic program and supported by a small group of UConn physician and nursing allies.<\/p>\n Put another way: UConn Health is the birthplace of paramedics in the Northeast.<\/p>\n \u201cOur firefighters were trained as EMTs, or emergency medical technicians, and we were providing EMT level of care at time when the EMT concept was just evolving in Connecticut and not very prevalent on most ambulances,\u201d says Greg Metcalf, UConn Health\u2019s public safety director from 1975 to 1986. \u201cIt seemed only natural to upgrade to the advanced level of care for the area that we served.\u201d<\/p>\n The paramedic concept has roots in the military, a method of providing advanced medical care in the field that for many came to light in Vietnam and would lead to calls for a similar level of care in civilian American life.<\/p>\n \u201cWe just happened to have realized this a little bit earlier than most and had a unique set of circumstances that allowed us to try to pull it off,\u201d Metcalf says.<\/p>\n One of those circumstances was the support of Dr. Fritz Hinz, a UConn School of Medicine associate dean who helped win physicians over to this fledgling program. Another was the foundation provided by Irene Engel, then a nurse supervisor in the John Dempsey Hospital Emergency Department. Metcalf says both were instrumental in bringing the paramedic profession to the state by providing instructors, coordinating with key hospital personnel to train this new breed of first responder, and getting others to buy into the concept.<\/p>\n \u201cWe brought in all the groups who would interact with the paramedics,\u201d says Engel, who today in retirement is facilitator of the UConn Health Auxiliary. \u201cBack at that time, \u2018paramedic\u2019 was a new word. Everything before that had been EMTs, and they were technicians who had been trained by their ambulance company. Eventually, when we got the paramedic program into the state, we then revised the laws for EMT, and if you weren\u2019t certified you couldn\u2019t ride in an ambulance.\u201d<\/p>\n EMTs are trained to provide basic emergency medical care, including bandaging, CPR, and limited drug administration. Paramedics, as current UConn Health Fire Chief James Brown describes it, \u201cbasically can take the emergency department out to the street.\u201d<\/p>\n Examples of what paramedics are trained to do include intubation with advanced airway equipment, performing on-site cardiac monitoring, and administration of medications or fluids intravenously. They operate while in contact with and under the medical direction of a physician.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have different types of medications for things like diabetic issues to allergic reactions to cardiac issues to seizures to strokes, so they really do carry a pretty big toolbox when they go out into the street,\u201d says Brown, himself a graduate of the UConn Heath paramedic training program while a member of the Manchester Fire Department in 1983.<\/p>\n Retirees Don Perrault, Dave Smith, Walt Rasmussen and Jerry Rio were the UConn Health firefighters in the inaugural class eight years earlier.<\/p>\n \u201cIf it wasn\u2019t for that show \u2018Emergency!\u2019 on television, nobody would have known what a paramedic was,\u201d says Smith, the first UConn Health firefighter hired. \u201cI didn\u2019t know what a paramedic was. I thought they jumped out of a plane.\u201d<\/p>\n Perrault says he first learned about the concept at a fire department meeting led by Metcalf in the spring of 1975.<\/p>\n \u201cHe comes in and says, \u2018I got a crazy idea\u2026 I want to bring paramedic training, and have you guys respond throughout all Farmington Valley as trained paramedics,\u2019\u201d Perrault says. \u201cAnd we\u2019re looking at each other going, \u2018What the hell\u2019s a paramedic?\u2019\u2026 Everyone was there, and the four of us put our hands up and said, OK, we\u2019ll try it.\u201d<\/p>\n Less than four months later, Connecticut had its first paramedics. Their training was only beginning though, as they regularly would take continuing education classes in the years that followed.<\/p>\n \u201cThe state of Connecticut had no mechanism for testing and thus certifying paramedics, so we wrote the state\u2019s first paramedic written and practical examinations,\u201d Metcalf says. \u201cWe faced a number of barriers and detractors early on, even from our own institution, but because we were so very far ahead of the curve, no one knew quite what to do with us, and therefore on many occasions they just deferred to us and just accepted what we had done as established protocol.\u201d<\/p>\n Not long after becoming paramedics, Perrault and Rasmussen, while fighting a house fire on Old Mountain Road, realized their days as traditional firemen were over.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re upstairs and we\u2019re battling these flames and all the sudden the captain pokes us on the shoulder and says, \u2018You guys have to get off the hose line, you got a medical call,\u2019\u201d Perrault says. \u201cI remember thinking, \u2018What? Are you kidding me?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n It would take some getting used to, for both the paramedics and those whose paths they crossed.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we were doing it at first, we were learning every step of the way,\u201d Perrault says. \u201cThere was no blueprint for any of it.\u201d<\/p>\n Read The 1st Paramedics, Part 2: Evolution<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n![\"Dr.](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Dr-Fritz-Hinz-240x300.jpg\")
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