Name: Lisa Davis

Job Title: Paramedic / EMT instructor at Colonial Forge Highschool

Education: Penn State – Communications and Advertising 

Her inspiration was derived off of the multiple interactions that she had with first responders, one in particular that pushed her was her near death experience when she got into a car accident. The first responders that were on scene helped her, not just in the physical sense, but also in the mental sense too. This really pushed her to be where she is today. This was not long after graduating from Penn State. She also had another interaction with first responders when her house burned down, which at that point she was convinced to start volunteering as a firefighter, that quickly changed to her being thrown into an ambulance and she hasn’t looked back since then. A couple years after that happening, she went to paramedic school which she spent some time being a paramedic, then she went to study public safety. She is now an EMT instructor at Colonial Forge High School, and she is the most influential person in my life to this day.

Her main roles and responsibilities for being a paramedic are maintaining mental and physical health; to be knowledgeable; follow the standards of care; to keep up to date on procedures and methods; be aware of the different drugs that people are overdosing on and focusing on fully understanding what she needs to do in every situation for pre hospital care. 

Her main roles and responsibilities for being an EMT instructor are maintaining the certifications and keeping up with her education; mostly the same things as a paramedic; she also needs to make sure that she’s teaching current methods.

In the instructor aspect, it’s the students. Watching the passion ignited in someone for something that you are also passionate about is really rewarding

In the paramedic aspect would be the sense of family with the people that you work with. it’s different when you’re living with each other on a daily basis it’s different than just being in an office with random people. Also helping people, she has gone and met people that she literally saved doing CPR and its rewarding when you know that you saved their life. It allows you to help people on the darkest moments of their life. 

Paramedic Most surprising aspect would be that she didn’t know how much faith that she had in herself as she looked at herself as someone that wouldn’t be capable of achieving what she has done with her life. 

Instructor most surprising aspect would be how much she was able to connect with the highschool juniors and seniors as she thought that she would be a million miles away but there is a direct connection that she has with every single student

Teaching; putting up with high school administration. There is a huge disconnect between teaching and administration with the smoothness of operating this type of program in a high school

Paramedic – lots of things are challenging, physical and mental health; everything involving with loved ones; long shifts; it’s not really things that you are taught; some situations are just rough mentally as it can involve something or someone close to you or it could make you relate the situation to someone close to you in a sense

Advice – no matter what you are doing in healthcare, it is important that you need to make sure that you are doing it right. When taking care of a patient and you aren’t able to fix the problem; but knowing that you did what you could and doing things that are correct.