New Paramedic Training Program Planned for Manitoba

Red River College will set up a 12-month intensive training program for paramedics that is expected to produce 40 new ambulance attendants per year, officials announced Monday.

The province is investing $1.3 million in the program, which is aimed at boosting the number of paramedics in Winnipeg, and northern and rural areas.

Paramedic Jason Doyle says the program will offer more in-depth training than previously available in the province.

"Programs were only two, three months long, and they're getting taught the basics and just being thrown into the field and learning as they go," he said.

"Now they're getting more didactic work and more practical to it, and learning how to deal with a lot more issues than just being thrown out to, like, a pack of wolves pretty much and just trying to learn as they go."

The province will also provide $100,000 in financial assistance to students who agree to serve outside Winnipeg. Some details are still being worked out, including the tuition fee for the program and the length of commitment required in exchange for financial support.

Paramedics applauded the news, saying an additional 40 paramedics per year will go a long way toward alleviating a chronic shortage.

"It'll affect us positively, I think, because right now we're kind of strapped for people. We're looking for people all the time to replace us for holiday time, sick time," said Crystal Dovzuk, a paramedic in Selkirk.

"This will just give us more advance people to know that we're leaving them in capable hands, know that they're trained properly and that kind of stuff, so we don't have to feel so bad about leaving."

The program will launch in Winnipeg in the fall of 2008 with 16 students. The rest will be trained at three rotating sites in rural and northern Manitoba.