Pitt-Bradford’s new emergency medicine program is meeting a crucial community need

MS bag: check. Two-way radio: check. Defibrillator: check. It's a Tuesday afternoon, and Jay Mckenzie is on his way to save a life.

Just moments earlier, a 911 dispatcher blared over the City of Bradford Fire Department's public address system: McKean County Ambulance 1, ALS response in Bradford City, cross streets of Mill Street and York Street, unresponsive.

Mckenzie is an emergency medical technician (EMT) and firefighter. He's also a history and political science major at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford - the first City of Bradford Fire Department employee to also juggle a full-time college workload.

In 2022, when Mckenzie was a beginning student, Pitt-Bradford's Division of Biological and Health Sciences began offering an EMT course; taking that class jump-started Mckenzie's own EMT path.

His training couldn't have been more timely. Emergency services have long had trouble recruiting and retaining workers. According to the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, an additional 40,000 full-time emergency medical personnel are needed across the country by 2030 to keep up with demand.

To address this shortage, Pitt's Bradford campus, in partnership with the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, launched a bachelor's degree program in emergency medicine this school year. Students in the program, which will see its first graduates by 2028, gain the expertise and skills to become certified paramedics, fluent in critical care medicine.

The introduction of the EMT course and emergency medicine major upholds Pitt-Bradford's legacy of responding to the challenges faced by its surrounding communities, says Rick Esch (UPB '81, '83, BUS '98G), president of both Pitt-Bradford and Pitt-Titusville. The new major is also yet another example of the University's impact throughout the entire commonwealth.

"Over time, we've oriented our curriculum to address the region's needs; we established our nursing program in the late '70s because, at the time, there was a shortage of nurses, and today we are addressing the deficiency of EMTs and paramedics," he says.

More than 99% of the land in McKean County, where Pitt-Bradford resides, is classified as rural by the U.S. Census Bureau. For Esch, who has lived in Bradford since kindergarten, supporting his neighbors' access to essential health care services, including emergency medical services (EMS), is a personal mission.

"We can't sustain ourselves without investing in emergency services in the region," says Esch. "It's essential we train professionals and add them to the workforce because the need here is so large."