Sitting in an otherwise quiet East Crotona neighborhood that hears the rumbling of incoming and outgoing 6 trains, Hunter Ambulance is always busy, always bustling and deploying as many as 40 of its ambulance trucks throughout the city to wherever needed each day by 10 a.m.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when most of the cityscapes were quiet, private company Hunter Ambulance was making as many as 190-200 medical transports a day. At the same time, New York City’s EMTs and paramedics were increasingly burned out, with more than 13% leaving their jobs.
“After 9/11, everybody wanted to be an EMT or a paramedic. They wanted to be a hero,” said Shannan Graves, director of operations at Hunter Ambulance. “After COVID, no one wants anything to do with this kind of work.”
In 2021, Hunter Ambulance became a solution for a workforce facing crisis-level staffing and attrition — among other concerns such as low pay and heightened instances of violence on the job — as its recently-implemented Earn While You Learn program paved a way for those wanting to become EMS professionals.
FDNY EMS has been in the throes of an employee retention crisis, with 50% of EMTs quitting after just three years on the job and 70% leaving for other jobs and careers by the fifth year, according to the Local 2507 union. During the pandemic, New York state EMT graduates and enrollees dropped by 30%.
Nationwide turnover rates — percentage of employees leaving within a certain period of time — for paramedics and EMTs increased in 2022 to 36% for EMTs and 27% for full-time paramedics, according to a 2022 American Ambulance Association survey.
Graves said she saw roughly 40 members of her staff depart during the pandemic, but feels Hunter Ambulance has set a standard — through the Earn While You Learn Program — that can rebuild the city’s paramedic workforce while inviting anyone interested in finding a pathway into the industry.
“We have people in the Earn…
Read the full article here
