Hospitals too busy to train Minnesota paramedic students, exacerbating shortage

From Gazette Xtra:

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Twin Cities hospitals have cut training opportunities for paramedic students, delaying their education because they can't graduate without observing medical situations such as childbirths, strokes, drug overdoses and asthma attacks. Hospital leaders said they have lost the manpower to supervise these students on a voluntary basis, but college instructors countered that they are contributing to Minnesota's worsening shortage of ambulance crews.

"It seems like paramedic students have been pushed to the side," said Benjamin Feldkamp, an emergency medical services instructor at Inver Hills Community College. "Places that were open to us no longer wanted to make room for us."