UMass Emergency Medical Services Staff Earns Designation as Heartsafe Campus

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Left to right: Robert Laford, Dominic Singh, Brandon Skwarto, Meghann Zapcic and Ryan Desrochers
Left to right: Robert Laford, Dominic Singh, Brandon Skwarto, Meghann Zapcic and Ryan Desrochers

UMass Emergency Medical Services (UMEMS) staff was well represented at this year’s National Collegiate Emergency Medical Services Foundation (NCEMSF) conference, with 42 members in attendance at the event in Boston. UMass Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) staff as well as UMEMS alumni also spoke at the conference, providing training across a wide variety of EMS and response topics.

Representing UMass as speakers were Dominic Singh, EMS coordinator for EH&S, Robert Laford, assistant director of emergency management and Brandon Skwarto, a past UMEMS director and December graduate.

Also on the agenda during the three-day conference were Meghann Zapcic and Ryan Desrochers, both of whom are UMass graduates and UMEMS alumni. Zapcic currently attends medical school at Temple University. Desrochers attends medical school at Brown University. Topics presented by these speakers included EMS ethics, leadership, incident command, care transfers and preparations for graduate study.

More than 110 colleges and universities across the United States and Canada gathered in Boston for three days of education, competitions and networking. UMEMS members participated in all manners of these activities and earned the designation of being a Heartsafe Campus based off of community training and preparation initiatives conducted in Amherst in relation to sudden cardiac arrest. 

“The conference programs not only help mold the future of collegiate EMS,” says George Koenig Jr., President of the NCEMSF, “but helps guide our NCEMSF members to achieve their career goals.”