Training Wheels
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It's hard to train to be a paramedic without ever working in an ambulance. That's why Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Georgia is donating this 1994 model ambulance to Albany Technical College. They handed it over today. It was a critical care unit ambulance, which means it's a laboratory on wheels. More importantly, it will give students the chance to have the experience of working in a moving ambulance before they're on the job. "They can actually see the movement of the needle on a persons arm while they're trying to establish these life saving therapies that they can perform, " said Charles Proctor, the paramedic instructor at Albany Tech. "It adds that degree of difficulty that we can do here at the school before they actually get to a place where they have to do it in the line of duty." When it was new, the ambulance was worth $192,000. The hospital donated one to Darton College three years ago.