UD Emergency Medical Services Earns National Honors for Life-Saving Work

University of Dayton Emergency Medical Services, a student-run volunteer EMS organization and a division of UD Public Safety, received four awards for excellence and professionalism during the National Collegiate Emergency Medical Service Foundation annual conference Feb. 22-24 in Pittsburgh.

UD EMS won the Sudden Cardiac Arrest Association award for saving a life using CPR and an AED, a recognition resulting from the group’s work to resuscitate a former staff member during a medical emergency on campus in October. UD Public Safety officer Robert Babal was the responding officer during this incident, and the UD EMS crew included Robert Oberholzer, a senior pre-med major; Patrick Conroy, a junior exercise science major: and Henry Kuechly, a junior pre-med major.

Other honors for the organization included a Bronze award in the Emergency Ready Campus category, a Striving for Excellence award and the EMS Week Celebration of the Year award, which is given to one agency that has done the best job during National EMS Week of educating the community about the role of EMS on campus as well as the accomplishments of the EMS program.  

More than 110 collegiate EMS agencies from the United States and Canada were represented at the conference.

“These students are volunteers in the truest sense of the word,” said Joe Cairo, a UD police captain and adviser to the organization. “They all contribute several hundred hours a year to UD EMS and they deal with real medical issues. This string of awards continues to validate what they do as an organization and add to their reputation as a collegiate EMS unit.”

Comprised entirely of undergraduate students, UD EMS provides pre-hospital care and transportation for all medical and trauma emergencies on campus 24 hours a day, 7 days a week during the academic year. All members undergo extensive classroom and hands-on training to receive local and national Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) certification and partake in continuing education through training on campus and seminars at local hospitals.

UD EMS has 60 student volunteers.

“The young men and women of UD EMS personify the University’s definition of community,” Cairo said. “They give of themselves to serve others.”

Originally published at https://www.udayton.edu/news/articles/2019/03/ud_ems_honor.php