Throughout the academic year, Lisi Krainer '06 (Villach, Austria) spends much of her free time responding to emergency medical calls on campus. As a Hamilton College Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) for the past two years, Krainer, an aspiring physician, takes the job to heart and says that comforting her patients is a priority high on her list. This is so important to her that she applied for and won an Emerson grant this year and has devoted a summer of research to discovering the degrees of empathy that EMTs exercise with their patients.
"I'm interested in how EMTs relate to their patients, how they identify with them and whether they connect or not," Krainer explained.
Krainer, who is working with Central Oneida County Volunteer Ambulance Corps (COVAC) and the Clinton Fire Department this summer, composed a survey of 30 questions regarding how EMTs treat their patients. She said she became particularly interested in the role of empathy after some of the completed surveys were returned to her.
"Some EMTs truly care about their patients, while others more or less remove themselves from any empathy," Krainer said. She will be interviewing a sample of the people who participated in her questionnaire, including people of varying ages and occupations, and will also be observing COVAC EMTs while riding in an ambulance.
"When I'm an EMT, I hope to make my patients comfortable," Krainer explained. "If they have a broken leg and I can't fix it, at least I want to make them as comfortable as possible."
A cultural anthropology major, Krainer, who is working with Professor of Anthropology Douglas Raybeck, plans on continuing her research over the course of the academic year and developing her Emerson project into her senior thesis.
Following graduation next spring, Krainer will begin medical school in Austria in October, 2006.
Hamilton students have been awarded Emerson Grants to collaborate
with faculty members during the summer on topics ranging from forgery
in the arts to Nietzsche's influence on the Harlem Renaissance.
-- by Katherine Trainor
