When Russ Myers became a chaplain working with EMTs and paramedics in the Twin Cities, he decided to take a college course on emergency medical care.
He never aspired to do their work — “I was aware of my own anxiety about sticking needles in people’s arms,” the pastor said. But he wanted to understand their work, so he could look after the well-being of crews as they cared for others.
“As I started, I think I probably knew as much about EMS as the general public, which is to say, not very much,” Myers said recently. “I thought it was all lights and sirens, a lot of trauma, a lot of drama. I came to realize that it’s all those things, but that’s really a small part of it.”
Perhaps 25-30% of EMTs and paramedics’ responses are high intensity, but even routine calls can be stressful, and it all takes its toll over time, Myers said.
Myers, a pioneering chaplain for emergency medical services, retired Friday after 31 years with Allina Health. He was previously a chaplain at United Hospital in St. Paul and was the first chaplain for Allina Health Emergency Medical Services.
He focused on employee wellness, riding in ambulances with crews so he could be a listening ear for them. Myers is a board-certified chaplain and their code of ethics says they aren’t to proselytize, which he said allowed him to help people from all religious backgrounds and people for whom faith isn’t part of their lives.
In a field that previously expected toughness from its workers — paramedics used to hear sayings along the lines of “Suck it up, buttercup” — Myers has been “pioneering a trail in this new field of public safety chaplaincy that’s taking care of first-responders,” said the Rev. Gwen Powell, an Allina Health EMS chaplain who Myers mentored.
At a going-away gathering, Allina Health EMS chaplain Nikki Holm told Myers: “For nearly 18 years, you have worked to care for the caregivers.” Holm and Powell are carrying on Myers’ work at Allina EMS and expanding it.
A new kind of chaplain
Myers’ work was unusual in two ways. While many chaplains in public-safety agencies are volunteers, he is clinically trained as a professional chaplain. And it’s uncommon to have chaplains who are focused on EMTs and paramedics.
When another ambulance company asked Myers about his work, they were interested until they found out that Allina EMS paid him, saying, “‘We don’t have a budget for that,'” Myers said. “For me, that’s kind of the point: I don’t see it as an expense, I see it as an investment” in employee wellbeing.
The work of hospital chaplains is well-established, but Myers helped created Allina Health EMS’s employee wellness program from the ground up.
“What began as a ‘let’s-try-this-and-see what-happens’ one day a week EMS chaplaincy job has grown over the past 18 years into its own career field,” Myers said.
Myers’ approach is to “listen and acknowledge,” said Jeff Czyson, Allina Health EMS director of workforce. “When somebody asks for help or advice, rather than just give it directly, he kind of helps them unlock it.”
Myers, who has written for trade publications and journals, penned a book published in 2021 — “Because We Care” is a handbook for chaplaincy in EMS.
On board the ambulances
The Allina Health EMS primary service area covers more than 2,700 square miles in the Twin Cities metro area, along with greater Minnesota and Western Wisconsin. They have ambulances based in Savage, from which their service area includes Bloomington and the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, and in Mounds View for suburbs in Ramsey and Anoka counties. Dispatchers work in downtown St. Paul.
Myers used to say at new employee orientation: “I don’t want to be an anonymous voice on the phone from an 800 number from five states away. If something happens, I want you to know who I am.”
The way for that to happen, he said, was “to show up, a lot.” Myers spent most of his work at various Allina Health EMS locations, riding along with ambulance crews, and sitting with dispatchers to listen to their calls. He’d arrive at Savage for a 4:30 a.m. shift or at Hutchinson at 5 p.m. on a Saturday, joining crews on ambulances both times.
“It brought a smile to my face to see the jaws drop,” Myers recounted. “‘What brings you here?’ they asked. I tried to keep a straight face as I said ‘I was at home in St. Paul and I kept thinking, I wonder how things are in Hutchinson today? So here I am.’ … I knew that this is a 24-hour-a-day business, and if I wanted to connect with people, I had to work when they did. It wouldn’t be enough to give myself a schedule of only working Monday through Friday, 9-5.”
He remembered a time when he rode with a paramedic and told her he knew she’d recently been on a call that was potentially distressing.
“She acknowledged that, and then changed the subject and started asking about me,” Myers wrote. “It was light and conversational, but focused: How long had I been doing this job (at that point, 12 years), did I ride with crews very often (yes), when was the last time I did a ride along (last week), and what were some of my hardest calls (I referred to a recent suicide call, a cardiac arrest, and a situation where the family was very upset). As her questions proceeded, I realized that she was assessing my credibility and ability to provide her with meaningful support.”
“Apparently, I passed the test,” he continued. “After a pause, she told me about the call she had been on the previous week. It went OK as far as trauma calls go, but it was gut-wrenching. I was glad we had more than a half-hour drive to the hospital, because that gave her more time to talk.”
Their conversation ended at the hospital because the paramedic and her partner needed to get a patient to the emergency department.
“Riding in the ambulance, listening to her story, I had the privilege of giving her a safe place to process the activities that occur in the normal course of a job that sometimes carries a significant amount of emotional weight,” he said. “Bearing witness consists of giving and receiving empathy and support, lightening the emotional load, and may be verbal or unspoken, a ministry of presence.”
From Ohio to St. Paul
Myers, who is 68, grew up in Massillon, Ohio, an hour south of Cleveland. His family was active in their Lutheran church. He graduated with a sociology degree from The Ohio State University, interned for half a year at an inner-city Los Angeles church, and moved to Minnesota to study at Luther Seminary in St. Paul. He earned his master’s of divinity in 1985.
He met Mary Sueltz there and they married. They went on to work as co-pastors at two rural churches in Adams County, Wis., for five years.
When they moved back to St. Paul, as Myers worked on his doctorate in ministry at Luther Seminary, it included two days a week of clinical work at St. John’s Hospital in Maplewood, and that’s where he discovered chaplaincy. After a year of clinical work in chaplaincy at Hennepin County Medical Center, Myers was hired as a United Hospital chaplain in 1993.
In 2006, Myers spoke at a meeting of Allina Health executives, telling them about his United Hospital chaplaincy and offering to talk to them about developing chaplaincy programs at regional hospitals or specialty operations. Brian LaCroix, then president of Allina Health EMS, said employee wellness had long been on his mind and he asked Myers to start a program.
LaCroix was trained as a paramedic in the 1980s and said the attitude in the field then toward people doing the work was, “If the bone isn’t showing, it doesn’t hurt.”
“But that’s just not true,” LaCroix said. “This isn’t just the bad call that keeps people up at night. Most of this is cumulative stuff.”
Understanding emergency medicine
Myers started working one day a week as a chaplain at Allina Health EMS in 2007. LaCroix increased his hours the next year, which is when Myers audited an EMT class at Inver Hills Community College.
“I really had a better idea of what they are doing and a lot of appreciation,” Myers said. “Some of these are 19-, 20-year-olds that are going out on the street, taking 911 calls, on the front lines and saving people’s lives.” His two daughters were around the same age then.
Myers latched onto what he learned about the central nervous system during his EMT class.
When he talked to paramedics and EMTs, “I could tie it into, ‘This is what happens to us physically when we have a traumatic experience — our blood pressure goes up, our heart rate picks up, our blood gets diverted away from our digestive system, our bloodstream is flooded with all those stress hormones,'” Myers said.
He’d say, “Look, I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but I want you to look at it from this point of view,” emphasizing the importance of looking after their own health when they faced traumatic medical calls.
Myers continued working as a chaplain at United until 2015, when his work in the EMS division increased to 32 hours a week.
Most difficult calls involve kids
Beyond adding the chaplain role, Allina Health EMS also established a peer support team, brought in therapy dogs, and designated employee-assistance program workers for EMS.
Myers initiated a study in 2012 of how Allina Health EMS workers were coping with their jobs. In their research, they asked crews, “What are the worst types of calls you go on?” and seven of the worst eight involved children.
With that knowledge, instead of trying to find out by word of mouth about such situations, Allina Health EMS built an alert into their dispatch system. Any time crews are dispatched to a pediatric call involving an emergency transport, the chaplains and other support staff are notified.
Myers could then contact the crew who’d been on such a call and tell them: “What we know is that type of call is the hardest we go on. We’re here if you need any additional support.” He’d get a range of responses — from “I have what I need” to “I’m not doing very well. Can we meet?”
‘Why’ questions
There are overlaps between chaplaincy and counseling, but also differences. During new employee orientations, Myers would emphasize the importance of wellness — diet, exercise, relationships — and tending to their own spirituality. He’d say: “I’m not going to tell you what that needs to look like. It could be organized religion. It could be art, music, nature, whatever that is for you.”
Sometimes people brought up spirituality after traumatic calls, especially with children.
“It’s the ‘Why’ questions: Why did this happen? How could this happen?” Myers said. “Some people take comfort in saying, ‘God doesn’t give you more than you handle,’ but I don’t find it to be all that helpful. If someone says, ‘Everything happens for a reason,’ well, what was the reason? That’s the place where I could enter the conversation and say, ‘That is the struggle’ and ‘How do you process that?'”
For Myers’ own beliefs, he said he’s moved toward “the contemplative mysticism end” of Christianity. “I’m comfortable with the questions that don’t have answers,” he said.
He’s a member of Pilgrim Lutheran Church in St. Paul, where he’s drawn to the Sunday evening service — it’s dark in the church and there are many candles.
“After a really bad week, sometimes I just need to sit there and cry,” he said. Just as he took care of the caretakers, Myers also knew he needed to look after himself.
Though he’s retired now, Myers will stay active. He’s visitation pastor at Pilgrim, through which he’ll keep up his visits to seniors and nursing homes.
He loves spending time with his 12-year-old grandson and volunteering at his school; going with his wife to their Wisconsin cabin, chopping wood for the fire; and cooking, especially wild rice soup.
