Thomas O’Neill is pursuing his Master’s of Public Health degree at the New York University School of Global Public Health with a concentration in Public Health Management. The Rutgers New Brunswick graduate has been an active member of the Glen Ridge Volunteer Ambulance Squad in New Jersey, being involved in all aspects of emergency response from the position of Operations Officer to an Emergency Medical Technician. In addition to his on-the-ground response training, Thomas has explored the operational and management side of public health such as through his role as a Government Affairs Intern for Robert Wood Johnson Barnabas Health.
To learn more about Thomas, we spoke with the master’s student about his interest in the field of public health and his experience as an EMT during the pandemic. Read our Q&A with Thomas below!
Interviewed by Meryl Phair.
Q: What sparked your interest in pursuing a career in public health?
A: I was involved with first responders in college and before that I started as an EMT in high school. I immediately liked the work because it was something new every time and I liked being able to serve my community in that way. Along with the challenges, I also liked the uniqueness of the role. Doctor’s and nurses’ jobs are to treat people, but how do we get that person to the hospital? It’s a unique kind of problem because they could be coming from anywhere like an attic with a spiral staircase. Or how do we get someone with a broken leg out of this house? Or the woods? It feels like a puzzle sometimes that you just have to figure out which is different from the rest of medicine.
Q: Have you had any experiences in your work in emergency response that have been particularly challenging in figuring out how to respond to the situation?
A: All of COVID-19 I would say our protocols were changing sometimes multiple times a week in the early stages and where I live in New Jersey, we were hit badly. One of the problems was wearing full PPE as we would often be called to lift people or walk up and down stairs. It’s a physically taxing job so immediately you will start sweating, breathing heavily, and the goggles! You can’t take the goggles off because then you might expose yourself so you’re going on to calls and you’re kind of half blind. There was one time I went on a call, and I told my crew member, I’m just going to go in and do everything I possibly can in five minutes. Then you come in five minutes later and take over. We just had to work like that.
Q: Being in an emergency response role, how do you handle the stress and pressures of the job?
A: One thing we do is debrief after every call and talk about what we did well and where we could have done better. If it’s particularly an emotional call, we’ll talk about that too. I’m usually able to separate what I do in the field with the rest of my life which is important. One thing I do that’s a little different from other medical roles is I don’t check up on my patients at the hospital. It’s easier for me to focus on my current patient, or that’s going on in the present. Once I hand them off, I don’t usually follow up.
Q: What skills or experiences are you learning now in your program at NYU that you can see translate back to your work in emergency response?
A: I’ve been learning just how big the field of public health is. I’ve mostly been involved in the response side as well as some planning but haven’t done any mitigation work. I’ve been learning more about how Emergency Management works from the top down, instead of from the bottom up.
Right now, in one of my classes at NYU we’re working on a project about how the health department in El Paso, Texas responds to a mass shooting. We have to ask questions like how do we get survivors to see their families, how do we inform the families of the deceased that they’re gone, and how do we make sure hospitals have enough supplies to accommodate a sudden increase in patients. It’s a familiar topic, but from a different angle which has been interesting to learn about.
Q: What is a current emergency or disaster that you believe is critical to address?
A: I would absolutely say gun violence in America is completely out of control. It seems like a problem that should have easy solutions but there’s a lot of politics involved, and nothing gets done. I responded to a mass shooting about six years ago that didn’t make national news but was in the local paper the next day. I was like, how is that possible? There was just a mass shooting, six people were shot!
Q: What is next for you after you complete your MPH degree?
A: I’m interested in exploring emergency and disaster management. The logistical, planning side is interesting because it’s different from what I’ve done before. There’s so much work that gets done in the field to develop plans that almost no one will ever see or even know about. I like doing that kind of behind the scenes work of figuring out all these details. If we can involve different groups of people and approaches in disaster mitigation plans years in advance, we can save a lot of lives at an unknown time in the future.