LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Louisville Metro EMS is often the first line of defense or the first phone calls when there is an emergency around the city.
Louisville Metro EMS is looking for first responders amid a nationwide staffing shortage. The city is looking to recruit more EMTs, paramedics and dispatchers.
Louisville is addressing the shortage in the classroom.
"We are actually just finishing up our trauma section right now, so it's treating all of like traumatic injuries," Haley Zempel said.
Zempel is one of a handful of Louisville Metro EMT recruits and hopes to be on the streets by the end of the year.Â
"Our graduation date is set for November 1," Zempel said.
A Louisville Metro EMS training class learns in Louisville, Ky. on Sept. 30, 2024.
Louisville Metro Emergency Services is looking for at least 150 first responders and dispatchers. Officials said Emergency Services has about 140 openings, while MetroSafe has about 40.
"We have a number of positions at various levels," said Maj. Chris Lokits with Louisville Metro EMS. "We have MET, advanced EMT and paramedic positions.
Lokits said the shortage is not just a problem in Louisville.
"Across the country, emergency services are struggling to find applicants to fill the positions that we have, and so it's not unique to Louisville, for sure across the state other EMS agencies struggle to find qualified applicants to apply for their positions as well," Lokits said.
Lokits was asked if the shortage is impacting safety or response times.
"It doesn't impact it directly in that we have personnel that are held over and so that contributes to overtime hours that they work so that we can still staff to meet the needs of the community and respond to those 911 calls," Lokits said.
Whether it's a dispatcher, paramedic or EMT, Lokits said it's a meaningful career and a chance to make a difference.
"Whether it is that person who's answering that 911 call, the vital first step and to get us responding to the person who's walking into the living room to deliver that AED shock," Lokits said.
Those are some of the things that sold Zempel on the job.
"Just being there for anyone in their time of need," Zempel said.
In July, the Kentucky Board of Emergency Medical Services testified in front of state lawmakers that the state is hemorrhaging EMS providers.
John Holden, the board chair, gave a grim report in Frankfort about the dire state of emergency medical services providers across the state. Kentucky is losing more paramedics than its gaining, he said, worsening an already concerning shortage.
"It truly is a crisis," Holden said in July. "We have services that are going to shut down if we can't find a solution to this problem."
So many people are leaving the profession, Holden said, that fewer than half of the state's certified paramedics are actually working on ambulances.
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