HGTC EMT program healthy after two years of intensive care

It’s hard to write about the last several years of the emergency medical training program at Horry-Georgetown Technical College without using terms such as “critical condition” and “intensive care.”

But rather than hackneyed descriptions, in this case they would be apt.

Over the span, the program has emerged from having an unacceptable percentage of its graduates passing state certification exams on their first try not only to be among the tops in the state but also a beacon of cutting-edge training for other programs to try to emulate.

School officials attribute the turnaround to Scott Cyganiewicz, a former EMT trainer for Horry County Fire Rescue.

He has a gift for teaching, the officials say, and the ability to put the complex training EMTs must have into terms that beginners and advanced students can easily learn.

“We got the expert in the field,” said Marilyn Fore, the college’s senior vice president for academic affairs. “Scott came to us knowing all the players, knowing all the agencies, knowing what needed to be taught.”

Cyganiewicz describes the program as needing “some straightening up and reorganization” when he arrived at the school in December 2009.

He changed the textbooks to one that gave students audio versions as well as online teaching aids. He instituted online quizzes for each chapter students were to cover and has set up real-life simulations so that students can get a taste of what they will experience on their future jobs.

“It puts them into an uncomfortable environment so they can see what they know and what they don’t know,” Cyganiewicz said.

Cyganiewicz has instituted simulation training on medevac helicopters and arranged ride-alongs in ambulances. Students use dummies and other training aids to emulate other things they need to know.

Now, bigger structural changes are in the works that will alter the courses the college offers and the way they are taught, Cyganiewicz said.

Beginning next academic year, the U.S. Department of Transportation – which sets education standards for EMTs and paramedics – has decreed that basic and intermediate EMT training will need 240 hours of class work rather than 143 hours and 68 hours, respectively.

The school will respond to the new standard by stretching the basic training from 15 weeks to 30 weeks and eliminating separate intermediate training altogether, instead folding it into the school’s paramedic coursework.

Basic training gives students the knowledge to do medical and trauma assessments, spinal immobilization and splinting and bandaging, Cyganiewicz said. The additional weeks of class means that students will need two rather than one semester at HGTC. The college eliminated the intermediate courses partly because the material is covered in paramedic classes and partly because having all three courses could mean that some students would have to be in school for more than two years to get an associates degree.

“We just don’t want them here for more than two years to get an associates degree,” Cyganiewicz said. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

He said he expects that the move will mean the school will lose half of the enrollees it now has for the basic course, many of whom would be weeded out anyway before they got to the intermediate work. The school will track the pass-fail and attrition rates for basic students to assess if the move is a good one.

Cyganiewicz, 39, has a BS in biological science from Coastal Carolina University and is a registered nurse and paramedic.

His college career was interrupted when his mother had a stroke and he thought in the interim that perhaps he’d aim for a medical degree when he returned to academics. He joined Horry County EMS (at the time, now Horry Fire Rescue) to get a taste of medicine, and suffered a back injury when he was trying to lift a woman from a bathtub where she’d been stuck all day.

The injury limited his ability to respond to emergencies and he started training classes at the Horry County department.

“People actually liked my class,” he said.

One thing led to another, a pattern that he says might have been ordained for him long before.

“When I was a kid,” he said, “I always thought that teaching would be a cool thing to do.”

Christy Cimineri, chairwomen of HGTC’s nursing and health sciences program, said that funneling students into an associate’s degree is ultimately the best thing for them.

While EMT jobs are relatively well-paying in a job market such as that in Horry County, an associate’s degree puts them in line for advancement into management.

“It would just open some doors for them,” she said.

She said the school now works to get Horry Fire Rescue EMTs into the paramedic course, and the pass rate is important not just to the college, but to students as well because if helps assure them they can pass certification exams and get a job.

Prior to Cyganiewicz, HGTC’s EMT program registered a 2009 first-time pass rate of 47 percent of students taking the exam after completing basic EMT coursework. None of the school’s paramedics passed their certification exam in 2009, matching the figure of intermediate students the year before. The 2011 pass rates were 75 percent for basic EMT graduates, 100 percent for intermediate and 82 percent for paramedics.

The numbers are not only impressive, but they are important beyond Horry County as HGTC’s EMT program provides more workers than any other to emergency services throughout South Carolina.

Mastering the knowledge, Cyganiewicz said, is critical.

“They need to know what to do,” he said, “because when you go into someone’s house (on an emergency call) they expect you to know how to deal with it.”