JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – This week Americans celebrated first responders during National Ems Week from May 18-22. They provide life-changing and saving care every single day.
“love interacting with patients,” said Brian Sousa, an EMT with AmeriPro Health in Jacksonville. “Getting out to the community and having some sort of an impact on people’s lives.”
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“If you enjoy what you do, you never have to work a day in your life,” said Jansen Lokietek, who is an EMT with the same agency.
News4Jax got the chance to do a ride along with them on may 22 to get a real-time look at how just seconds can make a difference.
The day started by watching Sousa and Lokietek do a check of the ambulance to make sure it was equipped to respond to calls. It was a process that took 10 minutes.
Both of them work for AmeriPro Health in Jacksonville, which is a privately owned emergency services agency that serves Florida, Georgia and eight other states.
Sousa says a personal experience he had in 2025 confirmed this is the job he needs to do.
“I came home from work and I found that my partner had taken her own life,” he said. “The reality is that the first person I instinctively called and the first people who were there for me when I needed was AmeriPro. That is something that has stuck with me significantly because in moments like that you see and remember the people who were there for you in the moment, and the people who are still there for you.”
The first call of the shift was to UF Health Jacksonville to take a patient from the hospital to a rehabilitation facility on the city’s westside.
Lokietek and Sousa say each call has a different challenge and presents a lesson to learn.
“One of the very first serious calls that I ran was an ICU 10-year-old with meningitis that had a tube down his throat and could not breathe,” Lokietek said. “I did nothing. I literally sat on the wall and watched everybody else work around me. I said I will never feel this small again. I am going to know absolutely everything that I can because of how much I hated that feeling.”
Sousa shared a story about one woman he helped during a non-emergency.
“That patient just wanted to spend time with me and hold my hand and talk to me,” he said. “The impact that was left not only that the patient felt like she was heard, and she was truly cared for, but the impact made on myself.”
About 90 minutes into the shirt, an urgent call came in.
We had to heading to Green Cove Springs with sirens raging and lights flashing to take a patient from a rehab center to a hospital for a needed procedure.
Lokietek and Sousa understand their jobs come with a lot of stress and pressure.
They do not take that lightly.
“There have been many instances where we would be doing a call just like this and then all of a sudden, she would stop talking to me,” Lokietek said. “Just pass out and she is not breathing, or the heart is not beating, or something like that. That’s when I have to start calling for help and be like, ‘Hey, this got really serious really quick.’”
“For me I like to spend time with my family,” Sousa said of how he deals with stress. “I have a dog that I like to spend a lot of time with. She is wonderful. Her name is Stella. She is an all white boxer that is my entire world. Everybody should be in some type of therapy as well. I go to therapy weekly myself. Those things altogether helped me manage things without myself specifically.”
According to an annual study from the American Ambulance Association, 1 in 3 new EMS hires do not make it through their first year because of burnout and stress.
In a similar survey conducted last year by EMS1 and Fitch & Associates, at least 3 in 4 EMS professionals report burnout as a critical issue in their profession.