Good in an Emergency: Community Service Led Ethan Hobart to an Exciting, Hands-On Healthcare Field

When he was younger, Ethan Hobart didn’t know what he wanted to do for a career when he grew up. He was a curious and smart kid, interested in a lot of different things.

“I always thought I wanted to build things,” Hobart recalled, “so engineering was something I considered doing for college and then one day as a career.”

Hobart spent much of his childhood in Blacksburg, Virginia, but his family moved to Cranbury, New Jersey, as he entered high school. He was looking forward to getting his high school diploma when he learned that his New Jersey school district required all students to complete 50 hours of community service.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” Hobart said, “but I lived right across the street from a fire station in my town and thought there might be an opportunity there.”

Hobart went into it with the mindset of doing his 50 hours and moving on. The more he got involved, however, the more he fell in love with the field of emergency services. He ended up volunteering multiple times per week for nearly three years until he graduated from high school.

“Being a volunteer in the fire department also meant that I worked closely with the EMS system in the same town,” Hobart said. “We would regularly respond to calls, assist in patient care and interact with one another during community outreach programs and various educational events.”

When the time came for college, Hobart began researching possible opportunities for degrees focused on emergency services. Having lived in the New River Valley, Hobart was aware of Radford University Carilion (RUC) and the emergency services program offered there. After a visit, he knew it was the right choice for him.

“RUC offered what I wanted out of a college experience and was very close to all of the family and friends I had made over the years when I lived in Blacksburg,” Hobart said. As an additional bonus, Hobart’s mother and father moved back to Virginia shortly after he started at RUC, settling near Smith Mountain Lake.

Now in his third year in the emergency services program at RUC, Hobart’s favorite part of the program is the hands-on labs in which students practice their skills on state-of-theart mannequins during simulated emergency scenarios.

“They are a great learning tool for real-life situations,” Hobart said.

The emergency services program focuses on realism to ensure graduates are fully prepared for their careers beyond RUC. A fullsized ambulance simulator with everything an emergency medical technician (EMT) may need in the field can be found in the program’s lab on the second floor of RUC.

Beyond the lab, emergency services students also have the chance to log up to 700 hours of clinical and field time.

“My favorite clinical rotation so far has undoubtedly been anesthesiology,” Hobart said. “On these clinicals, you work closely with anesthesiologists to manage a patient’s airway and sedation during surgery, and I always find myself learning something new each time I go.”

In his three years as part of the emergency services program, Hobart has excelled, even earning the chance to teach classes and labs he took as a firstand second-year student.

“Being able to go back and teach those courses was an amazing experience,” Hobart said. “It helped refresh the information in my mind, and I retained it even more than I did as a student. Teaching is definitely something I may want to do later in my career.”

In addition to taking classes fulltime, completing his clinicals and teaching, Hobart also volunteers at the Vinton Fire Department. In all of these roles, he often finds himself talking to current and prospective emergency services students.

“I always tell them the truth,” Hobart said. “This field is hard, demanding but rewarding. You have the opportunity to meet incredible people, do incredible things and make life-changing impacts for both yourself and the people around you.”

Hobart continued by saying that the program at RUC teaches its students not only how to become an EMT or paramedic but also how to become a proactive member of emergency services.

“It teaches you the behind-the-scenes of EMS, as well as how far we have come as a profession and where we are heading,” Hobart reflected.

After his expected 2025 graduation, Hobart plans to work for a while as a paramedic, then transition to graduate school.

“Once I have some real-world experience in healthcare under my belt, I want to go to physician assistant school,” he said.

“Then I plan on staying in the Roanoke area for as long as possible, caring for the health of this community.”