Military & Veterans' Issues

In COVID-weary New York, the National Guard is getting medical training to help in nursing homes

American Homefront Project | By Desiree D'Iorio

Published January 25, 2022 at 5:38 PM CST

Instructor Andy Bershad shows New York National Guard members how to assess a patient. Forty Guard members are training to become EMTs to assist understaffed nursing homes.

In a sign of how desperate some states are for health care workers during the pandemic, New York has begun teaching EMT skills to National Guard members.

Just a few weeks ago, Robert Coleman was working at his civilian job as a mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service in Freeport on Long Island. Now, he’s one of 80 New York National Guard members in a pilot program that will train him to become a certified Emergency Medical Technician.

Coleman and the other troops — most with no health care background — were placed into a four-week course to prepare them for the state EMT exam. The plan is to deploy them to nursing homes.

For Coleman, this is just his latest pandemic relief mission on a list that keeps growing longer.

“At the start of COVID, we were all over the state delivering PPE, masks, everything,” Coleman said about his recent deployments. “Then last year, we're doing vaccinations. Now this year, we’re training to be EMTs in the field. It's a lot. We've done everything you can think of.”

The troops in the pilot program practice how to perform CPR, take blood pressure readings, and identify patients who may be in shock. They study anatomy and physiology.

“It's intense,” Coleman said about the 10 hour days of PowerPoints and hands-on demonstrations. “[It’s] a lot of information. It's someone's life that's in your hands.”

The EMT-training pilot program is the latest example of unusual assignments for National Guard units around the country, which previously mostly deployed overseas or responded to natural disasters like hurricanes and floods. But as the pandemic continues to strain the nation’s health care workforce, the National Guard has increasingly been called on to bridge the gaps — a sign of how desperate some states are for trained health care workers.

Major Michael O’Hagan, a public affairs officer for the New York National Guard, said the EMT program is nontraditional, but not surprising, as the pandemic continues to tax the health care system.

“That's just been a continuation from the very first calling to now, how it's evolved into multiple different mission sets that are not traditional to what we would usually do,” O’Hagan said, noting that the program will ultimately improve readiness and create a more adaptable force overall.

“Having the amount of service members underneath the New York National Guard umbrella that are going to come away as EMT-certified after this certainly is a huge benefit for us," he said, "to be able to have personnel that are that much more medically qualified, whether to cover on mission stateside, natural disasters and on the civil support type of mission, or downrange overseas.”

The expanded skill set can also help troops further their civilian careers, which is part of the reason why Army Specialist Coleman volunteered for the mission.

“It would be good on a resume, first and foremost,” Coleman said, adding that he’s in the process of applying to be a police officer with the NYPD or Port Authority.

New York National Guard members sit through 10 hour days of PowerPoints and hands-on demonstrations to train for their EMT certifications. '[It’s] a lot of information. It's someone's life that's in your hands,' said Army Specialist Robert Coleman.

Andy Bershad, the CEO and founder of Flying Aces Enterprises & Consulting, is running the rapid four-week program. He runs similar programs for the NYPD. It’s Bershad’s job to train the troops to pass the state exam for EMT certification.

He said they’re model students.

“We did a question and answer this morning, and I was even taken aback and impressed [by] how much of the information they returned, and a lot of the time, retained,” Bershad said during a mid-January session. “A lot of time it’s letting the student realize, ‘look at what you did.’”

Bershad said the course is designed to instill confidence. “I tell my students, when somebody is hurt, I want you pushing people out of the way [to] get up there.”

Other states have also been turning to their National Guards to help with worker shortages. They're serving as substitute teachers in New Mexico and worked as bus drivers in Massachusetts.

Minnesota and Wisconsin are training their Guards as certified nurse assistants, reflecting a survey published last June by the American Health Care Association and the National Center for Assisting Living that found 94% of nursing homes were understaffed.

New York has more than 600 nursing homes. As soon as the Guardsmen pass their EMT certification exams, the plan is to quickly deploy them to those that need staff.

Army Specialist Coleman said he’s worried about the exam, but confident in Bershad’s instruction.

“We're here to support the state,” Coleman said. “Whatever the state needs.”

This story was produced by the American Homefront Project, a public media collaboration that reports on American military life and veterans. Funding comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.