One of Nate Bryant’s goals after being named executive director of Jackson County Emergency Medical Services was to improve the hiring process.
At that point, a person turned in an application listing their certifications and came in for an interview to see if they could fill the position of emergency medical technician or paramedic.
Bryant said he wanted a more formal process, including testing a candidate’s physical agility because EMS is a physically demanding job.
On June 18, the organization’s first physical agility testing was conducted at Seymour High School’s Bulleit Stadium, consisting of nine stations.
Those involved getting in and out of the driver’s seat of an ambulance, opening the back doors and removing a cot, getting an airway bag and monitor out of an ambulance, carrying that equipment up and down a flight of stairs, delivering compressions on a CPR manikin for 3 minutes and walking up and down stairs without equipment twice.
Also, carrying a stair chair with a 100-pound weight attached up and down a half-flight of stairs, lifting the head end of a backboard with a 100-pound weight attached and holding for 30 seconds and loading a cot back into the ambulance and securing the doors.
“It’s applicable to the job. These are all practical things that they would have to do during a call,” Bryant said. “We utilize the stairs at the stadium quite a bit because not everywhere we go has elevators.”
Bryant said he initially had 21 applicants, but only 16 showed up for the physical agility testing. All 16 of them passed and move on to the written and practical tests, which are July 9 at EMS headquarters on West Brown Street.
Nearly half of those doing the testing at the stadium had recently completed Jackson County EMS’ EMT class, he said.
“Others are from everywhere. We had a couple from the Louisville area, we had one from Bloomington, so they came from all over, which is refreshing to see in the EMS world because nationwide, people are leaving EMS, so it was really refreshing to see that many,” Bryant said.
Surveys filled out after the testing revealed positive feedback, including one person who said for this being the organization’s first time doing physical agility testing, everyone involved that day did a wonderful job.
“It was pretty cool to see a lot of them had good things to say about it,” Bryant said. “Some of the people had mentioned ‘I’ve been to a lot of EMS organizations, and this is awesome. We’ve never seen this.’ That was good feedback.”
Bryant, Education Coordinator Neti Redelman and six other Jackson County EMS employees are on the hiring board that organized the new hiring process, including the physical agility testing.
“In talking to the other people on the team behind this, they thought it was great, and it was important that we can measure their abilities, see where they’re at so we can attain the highest quality candidates that we can,” Bryant said. “Especially hearing some of the candidates’ feedback, that’s what really tells us this is important because they saw it as a good thing.”
Redelman said the candidates weren’t evaluated on how well they could use the equipment because most of them wouldn’t have known. It was about whether or not they could do the skills.
“I thought it had a lot of value, and it was nice, too, because we got to know some of the candidates a little bit the couple hours that we were there,” she said.
Redelman said the written exam will consist of 32 cognitive and character questions, and Bryant said the practical exam will include simulated scenarios to see how a person would be as an EMT or a paramedic.
“They’ll have a patient, and they won’t know until they start actually doing their assessment. They get a run, they’ll get the initial dispatch information and then once they get on scene, which they’ll already be there, their assessment will determine how that scenario goes,” Bryant said. “We’re able to see how they can perform in a true emergency to ensure we get the highest quality caregivers that we can.”
A week or so after that, the candidates will find out if they advance to the interview phase with Bryant, Redelman and supervisors.
“I think having a team of people is extremely valuable because you get different perspectives,” Bryant said.
The current plan is to hire from the final list of candidates until the next hiring process begins.
“We’re looking to hire several, but we don’t know what the future holds,” Bryant said. “Six months from now, we could have three people leave and we need to pull from this list, so we’ll keep that list until the next process.”
Bryant said the team plans to do this testing once a year.
“We’re going to shoot for once a year and see where that gets us, but it could be a thing where we need to do it twice a year,” he said. “We want to continue to be that organization that is leading EMS. When we hear people say, ‘I’ve been to multiple EMS places. Nobody has ever done this,’ that’s a good thing. It tells us we’re doing the right thing, and so we want to continue doing it in the future.”