'A whole new world of care': NCMC graduates second cohort of paramedics

GAYLORD — The next round of licensed paramedics are being trained right in Northern Michigan, thanks to North Central Michigan College’s paramedics program.

NCMC began offering its paramedics program in 2020. Now, the second cohort is graduating from the 2-year program. The next cohort is set to begin classes this fall.

Students within the program start their days with lectures and instruction, and spend their afternoons in a lab setting, applying the skills they learn in the course. The program has different items borrowed from local departments as well as from the Petoskey campus to ensure the students are getting practice with the latest technologies that they’d be most likely to see in the field.

Joe Rubino, who runs the program, said it’s been well received. Students come from across the upper Lower Peninsula to take the course. This cohort includes students from Boyne City, Alpena, Gaylord, Houghton Lake, Roscommon and Cheboygan.

Rubino said he works as the assistant director for the Houghton Lake Ambulance Authority and a few students in the program work with him as well. He said hearing from patients that they couldn’t tell the students weren’t professionals yet and still in training was really rewarding for him.

While the college offers different medical first responder courses, the paramedics program is the longest course with the most in-depth coverage. For example, the college offers a 15-week medical first responder course, which touches on what different ailments may look like, but not the how or the why. Medical first responders typically provide on-scene care.

The Emergency Medical Technician courses are more in depth, learning the anatomy and physiology of the body, and the whys behind offering medications and practices. EMTs offer on-scene care as well as transport to the hospital.

Paramedics course offerings are the most intensive, Rubino said, similar to nursing. Paramedics provide advanced care, including cardiac monitors, medications and more. He said paramedics are responsible for figuring out what’s wrong with patients and deciphering between things like whether there’s chest pain or abdominal pain before taking the next steps to figure out what medication would be best.

Anthony Wojtylko, 46, has worked as an EMT for a few years, but was looking for a paramedic program to join. From Houghton Lake, he works for four different local departments but drives north for the class because he liked working with Rubino.

He said that while the information can be overwhelming, “it’s been great.”

“The hands-on experience and the knowledge that you get from this program is pretty good,” Wojtylko said. "There's a lot of information, every week it’s something new.”

Throughout the program, Wojtylko's been given information that can be used in multiple different fields, which he said he appreciates.

Wojtylko added that the lecture-first system has been beneficial in helping solidify concepts and information for the students before they get the chance to actually use the tools or practice the information.

For physician Jon Alterie, who helps work with the students in the program, using hands-on learning gives students the opportunity to practice before working with real patients.

“Medicine is a practice, and so when we do scenarios and tests, we're training for real life experiences,” he said. "When we're going to learn how to better manage our patients in our community, here's where you want to practice, in order to prepare for what's in the field."

Alterie, based in Petoskey, said working with paramedics and EMTs is one of the most important jobs he has as a physician because it allows multiple people to work together when it matters most: out in the field.

Providing emergency care for people can be an exhausting job, Taylor Dodder, 22, said. In a field where there’s a lot of turnover, it’s important to have different programs like this one to help train the next generation of paramedics and provide different career goals and options.

“It's nice having several different options,” Dodder said. “We need (paramedics). Absolutely everyone needs them.”

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Nathan Moyer, 28, originally took the college’s EMT program five years ago. From Boyne City, he said the paramedic course, “opens up a whole new world of care you can provide to your patients and your community. The skills you can do, the critical thinking that you obtain through it, it's just amazing.”

He said he thinks it’s amazing that people can “survive and get the care they need at the dial of a few numbers.”

The hands-on training the course provides, Moyer added, lets the workers know exactly what to expect out in the field.

While this cohort’s training is done and they prepare for testing and apply for their licenses, the college is getting ready for the next round of students. The program is being condensed down into four semesters instead of five, with classes expected to be offered in Petoskey and Gaylord.

The first semester will teach students about anatomy and physiology, while the second semester will include more hands-on training opportunities, Rubino said.

For more information on the program, visit the North Central Michigan College website.

— Contact reporter Karly Graham at kgraham@petoskeynews.com. Follow her on Twitter at @KarlyGrahamJRN. 

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: 'A whole new world of care': NCMC graduates second cohort of paramedics