one point, he was acting operations manager for the Ambulance Service
and had recently been Director of Emergency Service for Fraser Health
Authority, a 23,000-employee corporation. He had already worked for the
Paramedic Academy twice on secondments and in early 2008 became its
Director. He had watched the Academy from the inside through the Tony
Williams period. Workhoven’s responsibilities as an instructor in the early
1980s and the second posting there in the mid-’90s as a Program Coordi-
nator were like ongoing briefings on the state of the paramedic profession
at the grassroots level.

The Paramedic Academy is responsible for maintaining the quality of
instruction for more than 200 students the Academy graduates every year.
They represent an average of 48,000 training days on the main campus at
New Westminster and five other locations: Victoria, Parksville, Chilliwack,
Kelowna and Kamloops. “Experience the thrill of fast-paced emergency
medical response,” reads the invitation to become a paramedic on the JIBC
website. The program description lists the satisfactions of paramedic work,
urging candidates for certification to “gain the reward of helping others in

In © coliaoeratinn with critical and life-threatening situations. The field of emergency response
the Coitial Okangati in health care is a stimulating profession that challenges, motivates and
Schoo! Disurict wat ine rewards”
Jusiica instivuis, nese Not only do paramedics make house calls, they also go to places as
Grad Twelve stents far away and as dangerous as Kandahar, Afghanistan. Canadian Forces
in Kelowne ere among Medical Technicians trained at the JIBC were among the first responders
velunteers—taking @ after the “friendly fire” accident in 2003 when Canadian soldiers on a night
HUNGICT ICSSICOM TUS exercise were mistakenly bombed by a U.S. Air Force F-16. According to the
as Well GS ON-3c0 commandant of the Canadian Forces Medical Services School, who spoke
1—*¢ ceriily us at a graduation of Canadian Forces paramedics at the JIBC’s Chilliwack
emergancy medical Campus shortly after the bombing, Canadian and American generals in
rasnonduts iy ie charge of the operation in Afghanistan reported on the professionalism of
orevincian Smergency the JIBC-trained paramedics who provided immediate, life-saving medical
iegical Assistent assistance to the surviving soldiers on the battlefield. Since that event, the
liceasing boar. commandant stated, outsourcing the medical technician training to the

JIBC was seen to have been a strategic move.

Most of the Academy’s graduates move into a B.C.-wide system of
3,300 paramedics, a third of them full-time employees. Those who take the
introductory course to become Emergency Medical Responders also work
in industrial and workplace settings as first-aid attendants, in lifeguarding
and ski patrol and with fire departments. They can go on to take the twenty-
week Primary Care Paramedic (PCP) program, launched in 2004, and
learn how to perform an organized patient assessment, to intervene in life-
threatening injuries and conditions, do PCP treatments, procedures and
protocols, and record and report patient information. Instructors include
physicians, registered nurses and practising paramedics. The Advanced

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