LCOOU EMS Training Center

Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe University (LCOOU) is pleased to announce its plans to become an Emergency Medical Service Training Center (EMS Training Center). The Wisconsin Department of Health Services issued their approval to LCOOU on October 4th, 2023.

The EMS Training Center shall offer Emergency Medical Service (EMS) courses. The University is seeking an Emergency Medical Technician II (EMT II) as an Adjunct Instructor who would teach those didactic and practicum courses for the program, starting June 2024. Dr. Dorothy Novak, emergency medicine, will be the Center’s medical director. She will be working alongside Jamie Gohde, LCOOU nursing program director.

“To address the shortage of emergency medical service personnel in our area, we created a workgroup with Round Lake/Rescue Medical Responders, Sawyer County Ambulance, and Great Divide Ambulance Service. The workgroup found the major barrier to recruiting and producing emergency medical service personnel was the lack of a local EMS Training Center, and that’s where we developed a plan for LCOOU to become one,” Gohde said.

From the Wisconsin Flex Grant that the Round Lake Fire/Rescue Medical Responders received, $26,683.47 will be going to LCOOU for the establishment of the EMS Training Center. These funds shall cover the cost of equipment, tuition, and books.

Further down the line, LCOOU hopes to partner with high schools in the Sawyer County area, helping them in teaching EMS courses to their students to facilitate for them the path towards a medical career.

“I often say that we don’t have time,” said LCOOU President Russell Swagger. “Working day in and day out to provide our local communities with what they need is what the university is here for. We have grown a lot over the past years, from a community college to a university. We are always looking for ways to do more for the people we serve, and this EMS Training Center is just one such way to do that.”