By Minka Atkinson
The Daily News
LONGVIEW, Wash. — The Longview Fire Department served as a test location for a new expansion to a University of Washington program that allows pre-med students to work with health care professionals during their spring break.
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The Health Care Alternative Spring Break program typically embeds students in hospitals and clinics to gain real-world experience in rural communities. This year, it also sent three students to observe the fire department’s emergency medical services.
The students shadowed emergency medical technicians and visited the 911 dispatch center. On their last day, they spoke to health science students at R.A. Long High School about their college experience and what pushed them toward medicine as a career.
The Longview Fire Department and UW, in Seattle, have been discussing the necessity of giving students experience with pre-hospital care since 2000, but this marks the first year that idea became a reality, Battalion Chief Eric Koreis said.
Data shows the majority of calls to Longview Fire are for medical services, as opposed to fires.
Rescue and EMS calls made up 82% of the department’s total responses in 2024, according to its most recent online annual report. That includes both actual rescue and EMS requests, at 49%, and good intent calls that were later cancelled, at 33%.
Fires accounted for only 3% of the department’s calls that year, which the report stated is typical.
New experiences
The spring break program allows students to see how rural and suburban health care differs from working a clinic or hospital in Seattle, neuroscience junior Gauri Raman said.
For example, emergency medical technicians in Cowlitz County regularly have to help transfer patients to larger cities like Vancouver, operations manager Don Thomas said. The trip can take an hour or more, and ambulance crews can’t easily get help if something goes wrong en route.
PeaceHealth St. John Medical Center in Longview is a level three trauma center, meaning it can stabilize patients and complete some surgeries, but may need to transfer patients with more serious or specialized cases. PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center in Vancouver is a level two center, meaning it has more specialists and surgeons available and can handle more complicated cases.
Raman said she also noticed a positive difference in Longview, where the department covers a 14.7-square-mile area. There is a sense of community she doesn’t often see in Seattle.
“It’s really nice to be able to see that community, especially since we’re seeing so many of these patients in a moment of crisis or vulnerability, and how their community shows up to support them in a lot of ways,” she said.
As future medical professionals, it’s important for the students to understand the limitations different communities face in terms of providing medical care, Koreis said.
Expanding the program to include pre-hospital care follows similar logic. It allows students to observe parts of the treatment process they wouldn’t typically see, as well as teaching them how to provide care in less controlled environments.
“I think this has been a really great experience to be able to see the whole scope of emergency medicine,” Raman said. “Almost more than half of it is something you miss if you’re just shadowing in clinical environments.”
Koreis said he hoped it also gives the students some perspective in how mistakes can happen when EMTs are first treating a patient in an emergency.
Biochemistry and neuroscience junior Yooseon Chang said the expanded program raises awareness of career options in health care outside of medical facilities, which she hoped to highlight when talking to the R.A. Long students.
“There are so many options, and those things are accessible to you, and it doesn’t have to feel daunting,” Chang said. “Although it can be daunting at times, definitely, it’s not impossible.”
If you could create a ride-along program in your department for pre-med students, what would be its goals and lessons and how long would the program run?
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