TK Keels, Paramedic: Interesting part of this job is that it's something different every day.

David Andrews, Paramedic: Wonderful that we're able to make an impact here in your local community.

Pam Brown, EMT: This is definitely a job that you can make a difference. I got in the volunteer side of it and loved it and wanted to go full-time, paid. I've been here 19 years. I get to work in my hometown. This is where I was born and raised.

TK Keels, Paramedic: I'm a part-time paramedic here. I've been here 8 years. I like to give back to the community. I love being a caregiver, taking care of someone that's sick. Just to know that I'm in a field where it requires me to give something to somebody else. That's the most satisfying part.

David Andrews, Paramedic: I've been here for 7 years or so. I'm a paramedic. It's very neat to work with people that you've grown up with and to also serve the same people that you eat in the same restaurant with on Sunday or go to church with.

Will Morse, AEMT: I've been here about a year now. I'm an EMT here at Newberry. I really enjoy working with people. I have a passion for getting to meet new people in the county and getting to serve my community.

Greg Kitchens: I'm the EMS director for Newberry County EMS. I've been with EMS for 33 years. I find it important in this role to prepare the next generation of EMS providers. It's my job to help mentor and get them where they want to be and to help them be successful. Our crews work very closely together. They're like family. Our folks live together, they eat together.

Pam Brown, EMT: This headquarters is like our home. We cook, have to clean. We have daily chores and things that we do, but we all get in there together and get what we need to get done done.

Will Morse, AEMT: Some days at headquarters I feel like I'm at home with family.

Greg Kitchens: They have to learn to rely on each other because you never know what the situation they're walking into could entail. They need to have complete trust in one another.

TK Keels, Paramedic: You just have to have the mental capacity to go from enjoying yourself, enjoying your personal time with your employees, to high stress levels.

Pam Brown, EMT: You never know what you're going to run. You could be here eating dinner and...

Will Morse, AEMT: The tones drop and the call goes out and all of a sudden you're from zero to wide open.

TK Keels, Paramedic: So now your adrenaline is rushing, your neurons are frying off.

David Andrews, Paramedic: Getting your stuff together, going to the truck, then trying to get those resources coming whether you need them or not.

TK Keels, Paramedic: The drive there is thinking and focusing and you always want to prepare for things that may go left and things that may go right.

Pam Brown, EMT: Five minutes later you could have five GSWs, which is gunshot wounds.

Will Morse, AEMT: House fires, car flipped over, anything like that. It's just the surprise of seeing what's there and then going into action.

David Andrews, Paramedic: A lot of what we encounter out there is in fact what a physician would hope to encounter in an emergency department, but we're encountering it in a living room, in a Wendy's, in a Taco Bell parking lot.

TK Keels, Paramedic: The most important thing is we got them to the hospital. That's our main job, is to get them to the hospital.

Dr. Sean O'Meara: My name is Sean O'Meara and I'm the medical director for Newberry County EMS. And I work here at the Newberry County Memorial Hospital as one of the attending emergency physicians. And we view the ambulance as an extension of the emergency department.

Greg Kitchens: The term paramedic literally means beside the doctor. So everything that we do is an extension of Dr. O'Meara's medical license.

David Andrews, Paramedic: He's allowing us to do a lot of stuff that other services might not necessarily be allowed to do.

Pam Brown, EMT: There's things that are done on the back of that truck that our ENTs can't do because of our stand-in orders.

David Andrews, Paramedic: We are very fortunate here to have state-of-the-art vehicles, state-of-the-art equipment. We have an automatic chest compression device that allows us to free up a responder so that we can begin to do things like administering drugs and working on the airway during a cardiac arrest.

Pam Brown, EMT: We are almost like a rolling hospital emergency room.

Dr. Sean O'Meara: They have an extensive written protocol book that allows them to institute treatments like starting an IV and administering certain medications.

TK Keels, Paramedic: As long as we know that we've done our best and we follow all the protocols and we implemented all our training that we've learned, it's sort of like a pat on the back. Self-motivation is always important when it comes to dealing with all these high stress levels and incidents.

Greg Kitchens: It's really important when you have a call that may have had a very, very negative outcome that you do talk about it and not carry that with you.

Pam Brown, EMT: We openly speak about our calls after we brand them. What could we do better? Are you okay? Because, of course, we run bad situations.

Will Morse, AEMT: You have to take care of yourself. You have to take care of your other co-workers.You have to reach out to your other co-workers and make sure they're okay.

TK Keels, Paramedic: You have to be able to decompress fast and you have to be able to be motivated to do the same thing maybe all over again.

Greg Kitchens: Once people get a taste of EMS, it really gets into your blood. No two days are the same in EMS.

Will Morse, AEMT: I get excited coming to work every day. Getting to come into that person's life in the worst possible moment makes some sort of difference.

Pam Brown, EMT: And even though we're not with them but maybe 15 minutes, that time frame makes a difference in their life and in mine.

Dr. Sean O'Meara: I was a paramedic for 10 years. It's a fantastic job. And the variety is what keeps the job interesting.

David Andrews, Paramedic: The ability to offer those services is very rewarding.

Pam Brown, EMT: It's something that you'll never forget.