George W. Contreras, M.P.H., M.S., M.E.P., CEM, FACEM
George Contreras, NYMC's assistant director for the Center for Disaster Medicine put his own lessons in disaster medicine to use--working as a paramedic at the center of the COVID-19 crisis.
As the assistant director of the Center for Disaster Medicine at New York Medical College (NYMC), and a seasoned New York City (NYC) paramedic, George Contreras, M.P.H., M.S., M.E.P., CEM, FAcEM, has spent his 30-year career both providing emergency medical services for patients, and training front-line workers to provide emergency care amidst some of the worst disasters. In this regard, he has served as a NYC paramedic during the 1993 terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center, the TWA 800 plane crash, Hurricanes Irene and Sandy, the historic snowstorm in January 2016, and the September 11th terrorist attacks.
Yet Mr. Contreras says nothing fully prepared him for the harrowing experience he faced working as a paramedic at the front-line of the COVID-19 pandemic. Amidst the emotionally grueling work and a rapidly climbing death toll, Mr. Contreras treated the patients he served with empathy and dignity, highlighted in this incident involving a COVID-19 patient who died in his ambulance:
“At that moment, I realized because this person died in my ambulance, the next step for this family, for this patient, was going to be the city morgue," Mr. Contreras said. "This was going to be the last time that family was going to see that person for another two weeks, if that. They were distraught. On this street corner in New York City, in the middle of the night, I decided to allow the family to say their final goodbyes right there in the back of the ambulance," he continued. "I never thought my ambulance would become an ad-hoc funeral home and be the site for a wake in the middle of the night."
In addition to his work delivering crucial healthcare at the front-line, Mr. Contreras has been an impactful thought-leader, helping educate the public on how to fight COVID-19 through social distancing, mask wearing and hand-hygiene. In this regard, he has addresses hundreds of thousands of Americans, appearing on numerous news media outlets including , the Dr. Oz show, and Daily News and STAT news to name a few.