By Jack Minch
Lowell Sun
Copyright 2007 MediaNews Group, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
LOWELL, Mass. — Carol Bernier and Ryan Pouliot are hoping to finally get some rest when they start medical school this summer.
They figure that going to classes, studying for several hours afterward and then getting good nights of rest will be relaxing after years of working as paramedics.
They will finish out the rest of the month working in Saints Medical Center’s paramedic department, then start school in August.
Bernier is going to the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine, and Pouliot will attend Harvard University Medical School.
“It’s a pretty great thing, a pretty unique thing,” said Benjamin Podsiadlo, director of the paramedic department at Saints. “They are both great people, so I’m sure they will do well.”
Bernier, 47, who has salt-and-pepper hair, a self-deprecating sense of humor and a rich laugh, was teamed at work on a recent overnight shift with Pouliot, who, at first glance, wouldn’t seem to have much in common with his supervisor.
Then you discover they have enough energy to make a Navy SEAL blush.
Pouliot is a 26-year-old newlywed with close-cropped hair and an athletic build who leans forward eagerly when he’s talking about work.
His co-workers call him “professor” for his erudite ways, which is a lot better than the nickname they tagged him with when he joined the department in December 2002. Back then, he was called “Training Wheels” in reference to his youth compared to the other paramedics in the department.
The paramedics are already saving lives and helping people, so how is the calling to be doctors different from the work they’re doing? They say they always planned to be doctors.
“By some convoluted path, I ended up as a paramedic first,” Pouliot said. “I think I would still be happy if I could go to medical school and be a paramedic afterward.”
Bernier said that anyone who knows her well knows she’s been talking about becoming a doctor for 20 years. In fact, she had in the past taken the eight-hour Medical Call Admission Test, which might be compared to a SAT or the LSAT, but didn’t do as well as she wanted.
Then along came Pouliot, who motivated her to try again and together they took the test and did well. Pouliot did so well he got a 40 out of a possible 45 which was in the 99.4 percent to 99.6 percentile.
“Oddly, it’s not based on medicine,” Pouliot said. “It’s based on your ability to reason, and physical sciences.”
Knowing it’s unrealistic to pay for medical school and then go back to paramedics, Pouliot is planning to be a critical-care specialist doctoring the patients at the greatest risk of dying in an intensive-care unit such as burn victims or people with intense cardiac problems, which is akin to the work paramedics do.
“I think (the attraction is) just the intensity,” he said. “These are the sickest of the sick.”
Bernier said she’s considering a career in emergency medicine, such as an ER doctor, since it’s the closest specialty to what she ‘s already doing.
“But I’m open. I might run into something I really like,” she said.
The transition is coming at the right time for Bernier, who’s ready for a change in life even if it means being called a non-traditional student.
“It’s time to learn new things,” she said. “To step up to the plate and take care of people the way I think it should be done. ... I need the challenge now.”
Despite Bernier’s age and Pouliot’s new marriage, they don’t see the rigors of medical school as a great hurdle in respect to all the work they’ve done just to get to this point.
“This is a vacation coming up,” Bernier said of medical school as she and Pouliot started their 12-hour shift.
That’s because each has kept a robust schedule for years. Pouliot thinks he may see his wife, Kerri, more often.
The emergency-medical-service industry is only about 30 years old and Bernier has been in it since its infancy, first as an EMT and then as a paramedic.
Paramedics see an estimated 300 to 400 patients a year. Bernier has helped deliver 71 babies, including three sets of twins during her career, but she’s also been to every fatal fire in Lowell since 1993.
“For 30 years, she has done a remarkable job for the city,” said interim Police Superintendent Kenneth Lavallee. “Saved countless lives through her work as an EMT and paramedic.”
Since joining the then-Greater Lowell Emergency Medical Service on July 7, 1987, Bernier earned degrees at Middlesex Community College and UMass Lowell and, for the last 15 years, worked up to 70 hours a week between her shifts at Saints and Lawrence General Hospital, where she was a registered nurse in the emergency room. She also spent six years as an adjunct professor at New Hampshire Technical Institute and is a licensed pilot.
Bernier’s well-known among emergency workers through her years of teaching continuing-education classes for firefighters, police officers, ambulance companies and nurses, Podsiadlo said.
Pouliot did a 10-month field clinical internship with the paramedics at Saints while attending New Hampshire Technical Institute then joined the department as a full-time paramedic in December 2002. While working 12- and 16-hour shifts at Saints, he majored in biology with a minor in mathematics as a full-time student at UMass Lowell and graduated June 3.
During all of that, Pouliot found time to get married last August.
Bernier’s and Pouliot’s peers are around doctors all the time and say they have the tools to make it themselves.
“Their absolute intuitiveness with medicine” will help them, said Michelle Colton, the last of the original eight paramedics still working at Saints.
Bernier’s loss will be a blow to the paramedic department because other paramedics rely on her for opinions and help dealing with tough issues, Colton aid.
Pouliot is younger than most of his co-workers who are in their 30s and 40s but he won them over with his medical knowledge and personality.
“He is brilliant, he is truly brilliant and he shares that knowledge in such an easy and friendly way,” Colton said.
Gil Lewis has worked at Saints for eight years, and another five years before that with Bernier at Lawrence General Hospital as an emergency-room technician and EMT. He said Bernier has a practicality that’s needed in medicine.
“She took the classroom material and changed it so it became more ... clinical than technical,” Lewis said.