Fear, trauma, pain, blood and shock – it’s what a paramedic on the front lines deals with on a daily basis and it’s not the dream career for your average teenager.
But 18-year-old Isabelle “Izzy” Meeks is not your average teenager. She embraces the adrenaline rush that comes with flickering ambulance lights and sirens and the idea of heading into the unknown to help people through the worst moments of their lives.
“The potential for saving lives, making lives better, and just impacting people positively, is something that I kind of fell in love with,” Meeks says. “There are so many amazing people who could really use just that extra help. That’s the kind of paramedic I want to be. I want to be the person who patients can cry to, they can laugh to and feel supported and not judged. Overall, I want to be an amazing paramedic and an amazing health care provider. That, that’s my goal.”
Meeks is studying paramedicine at the Seven Generations Education Institute and is already working in logistics support for paramedics while she finishes her studies.
Donna O’Sullivan, a community paramedic and a mentor to Meeks, praises her remarkable ability to handle trauma, her kind and willing demeanour when interacting with patients, and her initiative. O’Sullivan is immensely confident in Meeks’ future career as a paramedic and believes she will achieve all her goals.
“The biggest thing is, she is actually a ball of life,” O’Sullivan says. “She’s very lighthearted and just so easygoing and upbeat. It’s just really nice for us as paramedics. We see a lot of trauma, obviously, and to have somebody who’s just so full of life and so joyful and so upbeat about stuff, she’s a hoot.”
Not only is Meeks easy-going and upbeat in her demeanour, ironically, she is anything but meek, O’Sullivan says.
“She’s very bold and very straightforward. For our job, because we are all up in people’s business all the time, it’s a huge asset to not be afraid of who you are and not be afraid to take that step forward. Even as a high school student, she just really took charge and fit in really well.”
Meeks did have some doubts about her chosen career path while completing her co-op program at Seven Gens but all that changed once she saw critical care paramedics in action.
“Last year was my Grade 12 year of high school, and I was trying to look for a co-op that would give me lots of hands-on experience,” Meeks. “I started hearing word about a paramedic co-op opening up, and I started talking to my teachers about it. We got set up, and I started co-op with the [paramedic] service. I did lots of 911 ride-outs and also worked with the community paramedic program.”
Then came a call for critical and advanced care paramedics to assist patient whose case was considered critical. “After seeing that patient and what those paramedics could do for these patients, and obviously, transport them from our hospital to bigger ones with more services, I kind of started to realize how much I talk positively about my co-op,” Meeks says.
“It’s funny, because it was my little sister who actually said it. When I would drive her home, she told me one day, ‘You know, every day you come home from co-op, you constantly have just amazing things to say, and you’re so enthusiastic about the things you’re talking about!'”
Throughout high school, Meeks had pondered a number of post-secondary options, maybe a university program finishing with medical school. In the end, she was driven to choose one of the most unexpected options.
“College never really crossed my mind.” Meeks says. “[Regarding] becoming a paramedic, I was interested in kind of seeing the field and doing medical things and being able to work firsthand, but paramedic wasn’t necessarily something that I was looking at.”
She spoke with her parents and later O’Sullivan and applied to a number of different colleges, all of which offered her acceptance, but finally chose to stay close to home. “I decided to choose Seven Gens so that I could stay in the district and I could serve my district. It’s given me so much, and I want to give back to all those people who have done so much for me. I’m dedicated to our district and to the communities that lie in it.”
Of all the things she loves about the job, Meeks says the best part is meeting people. “It’s so hard to pick one thing that’s my favourite – there’s so much to choose from. But honestly, at the end of the day, it all comes back to the people we care for and the people who need us most.”
“When you’re responding to calls, you’re getting called out to people’s most vulnerable moments. People are scared, and they need somebody who, like I said, will support them. I think being able to be that person, that light in a very dark tunnel, that’s the kind of medic I want to be. I want people to feel supported when I’m caring for them, and I want them to be able to talk to me and communicate with me. I want to do things to really help them and provide them with as many services as I possibly can.”
While she isn’t on call just yet, Meeks is keeping busy until her graduation in April of 2027 by doing logistics support for paramedics in the district on call.
“I’m working logistics support while I’m in school. I’m supporting our frontline workers in regards to stocking the ambulances, making sure that item counts are good, bringing things to all the different bases, a lot like across the district, doing counts for those things, doing checks on all the different equipment and bags and making sure that everything is ready and up to date.”
O’Sullivan praises Meeks as a bundle of joy who helps the team deal with the stresses of the job. “I find a lot of our young people coming in, they don’t touch a patient or are afraid to interact and converse with them,” she says. “Izzy’s just a very bold girl, and she was all in right away, and even as a high school student, had no problem with what she was seeing, what was expected of her, and stepping up to the bar.”
In addition to her boldness, O’Sullivan admires Meeks’ drive and tenacity.
“She is driven, and we have to be a certain Type-A personality, a take-charge person, because it might be that person’s emergency that we are going to respond to, but it is our emergency that we are commanding, and we are in charge in that instance. Police, fire, all of those things might be involved in our emergency, but that is our call, and she has no problem putting on the big girl panties and the bitch boots when it’s necessary; she can step up and take charge, and it’s just a lovely thing to see,” O’Sullivan says.
Meeks consistently goes above and beyond the call of duty, O’Sullivan adds. “Izzy exceeded her co-op hours by doubling or tripling them. I can’t even remember how much, but not even with the hours, she went so far as to start a program with some of our isolated elderly in Flinders Place, one of our manors in the town, and asked the caretaker there for the eight most isolated people. She started engaging them in social activity to bring them out of their shells more and to see if it decreased their depression by being sociable, and actually got funding from the health unit for it. Like, wow. Like, what [then] 17-year-old does that?”
So, O’Sullivan thinks Meeks is a changemaker, a mover and a shaker to watch for.
“I see amazing things for her in her future with this, because I don’t think there’s anything that would hold her back. If she can continue to grow and be so driven and so smart at such a young age, knowing what she wants, I think we’re going to see amazing things from her,” said O’Sullivan.
“In our job, that type of driven personality is the ones who start new programs, who sees the disparity in our community for health care. To step up at a 17-year-old age and realize that there are people slipping through the cracks, and to start her own program, that’s just massive! I couldn’t even begin to say how proud I am of her. She’s already in college, doing what we would expect to see in a second-year level. She is so driven, and she’s going to do such great things. I’m hugely proud of her; she hears it from me all the time.”
