After EMT Shifts, a Hospital Executive Changed Frontline Communication

Linda Matzigkeit spent six months training as an emergency medical technician (EMT), then completed 100 hours of orientation at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. She then took 8- or 12-hour shifts in the same hospital’s emergency department (ED) without additional pay.

Business Insider’s first-person as-told-to account, edited for length and clarity from a conversation, is a single-executive case study rather than a workforce study. It provides no hiring-volume estimate, broader sample size or statistical series subject to revision; its evidence is Matzigkeit’s schedule, certification and the communication changes that followed.

Why did a hospital executive go back to the frontline?

Her decision came during COVID-19, when Matzigkeit said she felt helpless as the hospital lost frontline clinical staff quickly. The turnover came as mothers pivoted to stay home with their children during remote schooling.

Long interested in healthcare because she enjoys helping people, she had never wanted to be a nurse or doctor, and had considered becoming a pharmacist. Instead, she asked several trusted colleagues the fastest route to contribute as clinical staff; the answer was unanimous: become an EMT.

With her son away at college, she had time to train—what she called being an empty nester—but she was scared she would fail. The course proved much harder than expected, requiring more work than she anticipated.

Matzigkeit attended EMT school two nights a week from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. and picked up training shifts on ambulances and in emergency rooms on weekends. About six months later, she passed her national certification.

She did not disclose that she held a leadership job because she wanted to be taken seriously, not treated as someone who might take the course and never use it. Her instructor apparently noticed something: whenever an assignment missed an A, she kept talking to him until he said, “There’s no valedictorian of the EMT course. You’re doing great.”

What did frontline work change?

Once certified, Matzigkeit joined ED shifts at the hospital where she serves as chief administrative officer. Despite that title, she had to complete 100 hours of EMT orientation, fitting the coursework around nights and weekends, which she described as tough.

On 8- or 12-hour shifts, she started intravenous lines (IVs) or catheters, held patients during procedures and cared for frightened parents. She drew on her own experience as a mother who had waited too long in the ED with a child and tried to keep things moving for families.

As a salaried hospital employee, she received no additional compensation for the ER shifts and regarded the time financially as volunteering. Those shifts affirmed how busy clinical staff was and revealed a workload her emails had not. They also imposed an unpaid second commitment alongside her executive role.

Her central conclusion was operational: leadership had to change how it communicated. Matzigkeit had sent emails and assumed staff read them; in the ED, nobody sat long enough to do so.

The hospital introduced an internal tool resembling social media, allowing staff to receive quick updates and notifications on their phones. Matzigkeit also supplied talking points for the start-of-shift huddles (brief face-to-face team briefings) that frontline staff already held. In that fast-paced setting, she found face-to-face communication more effective than email.

What does the experience mean for careers?

The account offers no universal credentialing or hiring benchmark. For an experienced worker considering frontline healthcare, it supplies a concrete test of fit: whether training permits immediate contribution, whether the schedule is sustainable and whether an employer can turn a qualification into work. For leaders, Matzigkeit’s understanding changed only after shifts exposed the communication habits clinical staff faced.

She also remained humble about her limits. Matzigkeit wanted to become faster at placing IVs and catheters but never expected to match the most skilled EMTs, especially because she does not work as an EMT as often as she would like. She aims to take one shift a month, though that target does not always happen.

When she tells the story, others say they have always wanted to become an EMT, and she urges them to pursue it. “Becoming an EMT showed me I can do anything I set my mind to,” she said.

She credits the six-month path with making a difference for clinical staff and leadership and with proving that a large ambition could become an executed plan. The source reports no measured result from either communication change.

The next test is operational, not motivational: can a once-a-month shift, phone alerts and shift huddles keep hospital leaders responsive during a 12-hour ED shift?