Dalton State College

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David Newton

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Being thrown through a windshield changed David Newton’s mind about a lot of things. “It was one of those life-changing events,” he recalls, of the day when, at age 19, he was a passenger in a wreck that left one friend clinging to life and another one shaken and badly bruised.

At the time, Newton was a Georgia Tech undergrad majoring in Computer Science. But over the next few years, Newton reevaluated his career goals and decided to go into emergency medical services - a field that he credits with saving their lives.

“I can’t remember their faces,” he says referring to the EMT/Paramedic staff that tended to them that day.

“But I remember that a helicopter came and airlifted my friend to a trauma unit.” She was almost killed, Newton says, suffering from a broken back and a collapsed lung. He escaped with minor injuries, including a chipped ankle and a collection of cuts caused by embedded glass.

“My attitude about seatbelts changed after that,” he says. “Now I wear them religiously.” Not only does he wear them religiously, but he stresses that aspect of safety with the EMT and Paramedic students he teaches at Dalton State. “I make them buckle up.”

During his training to become an emergency medical services worker, Newton had the opportunity to work at Grady Hospital’s Trauma Center in Atlanta, where knifings and gunshots were everyday events.

“One time, we had two opposing gang members shooting at each other in the waiting room,” he recalls.

Newton became an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) in 1997 and has been a certified Paramedic since 1998. Besides his “in the field” work, Newton had the opportunity to teach part-time along the way, and now works as the full-time Instructor in EMS Management/Paramedic Technology and Program Coordinator for Dalton State. A highlight of his career occurred recently when was named as the 2005 Mike Miller Memorial Georgia EMS Educator of the Year.

The state-wide honor came at an awards ceremony in Macon in May, and it followed his earlier recognition as the Northwest Georgia Region I EMT Educator of the Year. The regional award, presented in March, came easily to Newton as it was based on his students’ first-time pass rates on the National Registry Test for Paramedics. Their pass rate was 100%.

But winning the state award was more of a challenge.

“It’s based a lot of what you’ve given back to the state, committees you’ve served on, numbers of years teaching, and other factors, so it’s pretty competitive.”

Newton says that as an instructor, he has no tolerance for treating patients incorrectly, and he brings that discipline to the classroom.

“I’m not an easy instructor. It’s a hard class, but for the good of the patients our students will treat, I don’t think it should be easy.”