GREENVILLE — What makes a good Emergency Medical Technician (EMT)?
According to Spirit Medical Transport LLC, (Spirit) President, CEO and Advanced EMT Brian K. Hathaway, it is compassion. Hathaway and his brother-in-law and company Vice-President Aaron L. Guthrie own the business. The motto for the family-owned company, is “Our family taking care of your family”.
“Providing a good service to the people that have entrusted their faith and lives in us, is of up most importance,” Hathaway said. “I am very passionate about the fact of knowing that people really need this service and are dependant upon us.”
Hathaway said it is a personal challenge that has become a business venture. From there, things have continued to grow and prosper. As a result, Spirit celebrated 10 years of service to the county, in February. The company began February 16, 2007, in a little building down the road from its current location, with three ambulances, two wheelchair vans and eight employees – seven that were part-time. In 2010, Spirit relocated to its current location. It has offices in Greenville, Celina, Sidney, and Van Wert, Ohio, along with Richmond and Liberty, Indiana.
“They say that God opens the doors to opportunity,” Hathaway said. “When one door closes another one opens, that continues to be the case. If you would have told me 10 years ago when we first started in this business, that we would have the number of employees and locations we have, I would never have dreamed that was the case. A love for people and being touched by their needs got me interested in this career, and it continues to grow and evolve.”
According to Hathaway on an average day, Spirit has about 45 people working out of 100 total staff members. Between its six different locations, it averages eight to 10, ambulances on the road everyday running 800-1,000 Emergency Medical Services (EMS) calls a month. In addition, last year Spirit did a total of 36,000 transports, with wheelchair van and ambulance, with an average of about 20 vehicles on the road every day.
To help meet that growing need, Spirit announced its creation of 15 new emergency medical technician positions through a scholarship program offered by the company. Hathaway said it’s becoming difficult to find well-qualified EMT’s and paramedics, and that shortage is being felt across Ohio and Indiana in both the private and public sectors. One of the hurdles is time. According to Hathaway, it takes people about four-five months attending class two-three days per week, in order to get certified.
“With this program, we are bringing people in, paying them while they are here and getting them through class in a matter of six weeks,” Hathaway said. “It also allows us to train them the Spirit way. It provides an opportunity not only to get local jobs, but it also gives volunteers or part time people back to those communities in which they live. It is a win-win situation, not only for us as a business because we are bringing jobs to the area, but because our business is able to give back to those communities, which will ultimately give to us.”
According to Hathaway, the field can be very rewarding.
“Whether someone has called you one or one hundred times, that hundredth call can be the real major incident,” he said. “An emergency to one person, isn’t an emergency to another. It is a matter of talking to them and a lot of times in an emergency, a lot of it is emotional distress. They may be having chest pain, but what led to that chest pain? We are able to help people sometimes at their darkest moment, or when things aren’t going well for them on a non-emergency basis. At the very end of the day, it is about how we can do the very best job of taking care of these people in their time of need.”
Deadline for the Spirit Scholarship is 5 p.m., August 25. Application requests are made on-line at www.spiritmedicaltransport.com or by e-mailing Spirit’s Director of Employee Relations Sally Wilson at [email protected]
