By Kathy Cook Hunter
Twenty-three-year old Amy Yount’s planner is color-coded to help her keep track of her different activities.
“My schedule is never the same and I have to be organized,” she said.
A 2004 graduate of Silverton High School, Yount has two jobs, one as a paramedic technician for Silverton Hospital’s Emergency Department and the other on ambulance paramedic duty.
Yount has enjoyed working in the emergency department for three years. She is responsible for a variety of tasks, including helping to check-in patients, hooking up to the monitor, taking “vitals” and checking oxygen saturation. She does splinting, EKGs, IVs and blood draws.
She became interested in emergency medicine when she was exploring future careers as a Silverton High student and took her first ride in an ambulance.
“It was awesome,” she said. “I got really pumped because that particular ride was very exciting.” She knew immediately she wanted to work in the medical field.
Yount attended Corban College in Salem for one year after high school then transferred to George Fox University in Newberg, taking a semester’s worth of nursing prerequisite courses. “I came home for Christmas break and didn’t go back,” she said. “I decided to look at the paramedic program at Chemeketa. I had heard it was a good program from people I knew.”
She commuted to Salem while living at home in Silverton with her parents, Tim and Julie Yount, and is grateful for them for what they’ve done for her.
At Chemeketa Community College, Yount followed a curriculum comprised of basic and intermediate EMT (emergency medical technician) classes and paramedic classes along with academic courses in anatomy and physiology. She finished her training last spring and was certified as a techician in May.
Prior to her certification, she also worked at Silverton Hospital. “I was answering phones, paging, sending orders through on the computer for X-rays and lab tests, registering ambulance patients and readmitting emergency patients to a different hospital department pertaining to further care,” she said. “That gave me the encouragement to continue my schooling.”
“In the last phase of school you work under another paramedic who fills out a critique for each shift,” Yount said, adding that person gives the student pointers in an intern-like situation.
Her two jobs allow her to see a great deal of what happens in health care.
For example, on ambulance duty, she says she and fellow workers see some abuse of the system such as people calling 911 for a nosebleed. Yount said ambulance paramedics are not allowed to make diagnoses but sometimes may suggest that the caller use a taxi or call a friend rather than an expensive ambulance if it’s not a medical necessity.
Her career goals, she said, are to work with Life Flight and she’s “kind of thought of becoming a nurse. Maybe someday I’ll participate in Northwest Medical Teams or some other medical mission trip.”
Yount is engaged to Daniel Hailey and they plan to marry next summer. Their three-year courtship has been tough because of her erratic schedule. “He saw me when he could,” she said. “We made it work.”
Living in Keizer now, she likes being on her own and making her own decisions, and she likes juggling her two jobs.
“Each day is different in that it’s constantly new, and you have to think. It’s a challenge, one of the reasons I got into this field,” she said.
