I was in high school when I started in EMS. In New Jersey, you get your driver’s license at 17, so at 17 and one day old, I drove to my local rescue squad. They told me I had to be 18, so I drove to my other local rescue squad and said I wanted to volunteer.
I wanted to save lives, drive fast with the lights and sirens, see all the blood and guts, and just ride that adrenaline high forever. That is what I knew of EMS; I saw it on TV, so it had to be true. There was no internet back then, so I couldn’t verify any of it.
I was young, impressionable and thought that this was the best thing ever. The squad I joined was small – we only ran 800 or so calls a year. There was one paid truck during the day, Monday through Friday, otherwise it was all volunteer.
I spent about a year there, got my initial first responder certification, and then my EMT-B, and of course got my “defibrillation” rocker, which meant I was an EMT-D.
Once I turned 18, I joined my local volunteer fire department, started working in an emergency department and joined my hometown EMS service.
They were a bit busier and a bit more professional, and that was where growth started to happen for me. I was young, a little hot headed, and I am forever grateful for the people that took the time out to show me the way, some 18-year-old kid that thought he knew it all.
Where Has that Gotten Me?
Almost 25 years later, many of those people are still friends, or family at this point, and the lessons they taught me still have an impact on my life and the way I approach my job today.
There are more stories like mine than not, I think. We have a lot of young people entering our workforce who may or may not have any work or life experience. How do we guide them, and show them how to be successful?
I think of a meme I saw a while back when I think about mentoring and training in EMS. It is a picture of three bird nests, each with a bigger bird and a smaller bird. The first is a firefighter, wing over the younger firefighter’s shoulder saying, “I’ll show you the way brother.”
The next is a police officer, wing over the young officer, saying “I have your back, I’ll guide you.” The third picture is the paramedic, swiftly kicking the smaller bird out of the nest, saying “Just fly.” I might have left out a word, but you get the picture. How do we help to change this mindset and culture?
Mirriam-Webster says that mentorship is the influence, guidance or direction given by a mentor. A few of my old English teachers would have scoffed at me using the word I was defining in the definition. They go on to define a mentor as a trusted counselor or guide.
Mentorship is just that, being someone that people can go to that can help them achieve their goals, guide them in the right direction, or someone that sets the positive example, which helps others find their way. This can be official or unofficial.
The unofficial mentors are typically those unofficial leaders in your agency, the ones that may not have an official title, but those that others look to.
Mentorship Matters
Why does mentorship matter? Personally, if I didn’t have mentors in my career, I would not have been as successful as I have been. I had a Jay Potter to show me how to be a leader and to care deeply for your people and your agency. I had a Danny Berglund, a Frank Intessimoni, and an Angelo Vasquez, among others, show me the kind of paramedic
I wanted to be as a paramedic student and a new paramedic. More officially, Forbes says that mentorship programs can increase skill development, increase job satisfaction, increase retention, improve career development, and improve performance.1
Official mentorship programs provide a bit more structure than unofficial ones, not to say they are necessarily better for everyone or every situation. Mentorship programs need to have structure, but not be so rigid that they cannot be flexible to individual needs. They also must have total buy in from agency leadership and culture. If no one believes in the program, and no on supports it, then it is doomed to fail.
The program needs an overarching mission and vision statement that guides its purpose; saying that we want to start a mentorship program is not enough.
Goals should be measurable and achievable. To say that your program’s goal is to improve employee morale sounds good, but is hard to measure, at least objectively.
Reducing turnover and improving retention is measurable, having more people apply for promotional assessment centers is measurable. Surveys work to measure engagement and employee satisfaction more objectively, if they are done in an anonymous way, and not done too often.
Important Mentorship
I was fortunate enough to participate in the National Association of EMTs Lighthouse Leadership Program. It was a structured program where we had set educational sessions, but each of us was assigned a mentor. My mentor was Steve Wirth.
We met to work on my individual goals and my individual plans, providing flexibility to my needs while staying within an overarching program. We also were afforded the opportunity to connect with other mentors in the program individually if we felt they could help with an area of their expertise.
There are a few different formats for mentorship programs. They can be one-on-one, which is a traditional mentor-mentee type relationship in which the senior mentor is assigned a junior mentor. Another is reverse mentoring, where the junior mentee leads the program with a more senior mentor.
The thought is to provide some guidance, but to allow the junior mentee to bring new ideas and fresh vision and encourage generational collaboration.
Group mentorship is just what it sounds like, there is one mentor to a group of mentees that are encouraged to share thoughts and ideas and provide diverse viewpoints on issues and achieving goals.
Goals
In the Lighthouse Leadership program there were ten of us in our cohort. Over the course of the eighteen-month program, we became close, shared ideas, collaborated on projects and encouraged each other to achieve our goals.
This is an example of peer mentoring. Typically, less formal, it is a group of peers that use their unique experience to collaborate with others in the group to achieve their goals and grow.
The buddy system program is one in which a senior employee is matched with a new hire to assist them with onboarding, acclimatization and gives guidance to help the new employee be successful.2
Regardless of the type of program used, there should be some level of oversight of the program that can looked at from the ten-thousand-foot view. This can be in the form of a senior officer or chief but is typically better being a group relative to the size of the program and agency.
A group tends to provide more diverse input and experience and provides a collaborative approach to overcoming challenges. The purpose of the oversight team is to ask, “Is this working?” and “Are we doing all we can to help the mentors and mentees succeed?”
They look at the program’s vision and goals to ensure the program is staying on course, or maybe adjusting the vision and goals to fit the needs of the agency or program over time.
Choosing Mentors Can be Challenging
They need to be motivated to be involved for the right reasons, to help the mentee, and not driven by ego. They need to be able to see the vision and goals of the program and support them. If the vision of the program involves creating a more diverse, inclusive, and patient centered agency, and that person does not share that vision, then the steering committee should not include them as a mentor.
Mentors also need to have the bandwidth to be able to commit the time needed to truly assist the mentee and be available to them. Mentors should be willing to put in the work for their mentee, to help them network, help them to push their limits, and be emotionally intelligent enough to provide constructive feedback and criticism.3
Choosing mentees for a mentorship program can be just as challenging as finding the right mentors. Mentorship programs should not just involve communication from the mentor to the mentee, there should be a back-and-forth flow of information. The mentee should be engaged, enthusiastic, and help to drive goal development and success.
The mentor is there for guidance, motivation and advice. Mentees should be willing to accept constructive feedback and criticism, to push their boundaries and their limits, and challenge themselves. They also should be committed to the program’s success, and the success of their fellow mentees.4
Mentorship programs can benefit not only the mentee, but also the mentor, and the agencies they represent. EMS is a team sport driven by one goal, and that is the best outcomes for our patients. We achieve those outcomes by continuously improving ourselves and supporting those around us.
References
- Dennison, Kara. “The Power of Mentorship: How Mentors Can Help Employees Grow and Succeed.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 28 Mar. 2023. www.forbes.com/sites/karadennison/2023/03/27/the-power-of-mentorship-how-mentors-can-help-employees-grow-and-succeed/.
- Verlinden, Neelie. “Mentorship Programs in the Workplace: Your 2024 Ultimate Guide.” AIHR, 15 Dec. 2023. www.aihr.com/blog/mentorship-programs/.
- Patel, Sujan. “6 Things Great Mentors Do Differently.” Entrepreneur, 5 June 2017. www.entrepreneur.com/leadership/6-things-great-mentors-do-differently/289021
- Corkery, Liz. “Being a Mentee.” Human Resources, 28 Oct. 2022, hr.ucdavis.edu/departments/learning/toolkits/mentoring/being-mentee
