This is no place for a woman, were the first words Patrice (Patty) Perinchief heard on her first day on the job as Bermuda’s first female emergency medical technician (EMT).Ms Perinchief has spent the last 15 years proving those words wrong.This year she retired from ambulance duty to take an office job in the hospital. She leaves the excitement of her first job with some regret, but with the satisfaction that there are now seven female EMTs out of a total of 21.We recently spoke to Ms Perinchief and the other female EMTs during Emergency Medical Services (EMS) week at the hospital.Thirty years ago, Patrice (Patty) Perinchief was working as a ward clerk at King Edward VII Memorial, when her life took one of those unexpected turns.A patient who had just come through reception suddenly lost consciousness. Thanks to first aid training with St John Ambulance Brigade, she began to apply cardio pulmonary resuscitation (CPR).A nurse was sent to assist, but in her haste, tripped and hit her head. Ms Perinchief calmly continued with CPR until the doctor arrived.The incident unleashed a desire in Ms Perinchief to work in the EMS department, but at that time the ambulances were manned (literally) by orderlies. None were female.She didn’t meet so much as a glass ceiling as a brick wall of institutionalised sexism.“I kept trying to get into the EMT course here,” she said. “I knew the orderlies would do their EMT course through the Bermuda Hospitals Board (BHB).“They said we only have orderlies in the course, so I went and applied to be an orderly. They said we don’t have any female orderlies. I said, well, can I be a nursing assistant? They said: no nursing assistant takes the EMT course.”On it went until the 1990s, with Ms Perinchief refusing to give up.“For three years straight I went on the list (for a job as an orderly),” she said. “So they said I needed to sign up with St John Ambulance Brigade and be a volunteer. I did that. Every time I looked they were putting up obstacles.”In 1994, she took an EMT course in Dallas, Texas, and then returned to Bermuda.Then she was told she needed an intermediate truck driver’s licence and an advanced driver’s licence in order to drive the ambulance, so she obtained them.“I did all those courses and passed them,” she said. “There was a job advertised and they needed three EMTs. I applied.“I had all the qualifications that I needed, and I was successful. I started on January 26, 1996.“Then they said I needed to lift 450lbs. I was like ‘gosh, that sounds like a bit much’, but I went to the gym and five days out of the week I trained.“In reality, it takes two people to lift a patient and you would probably never lift more than 250lbs.”But after getting the job, as the first female EMT she still found challenges.The male EMTs at the time were none too pleased to welcome her. She was barred from the EMT break room and had to use a locker in a room assigned to nurses in another part of the hospital.Unfortunately, after three months she had to take a two month leave of absence because her then husband wanted the family to move to the Cayman Islands.“I was back after two months,” said Ms Perinchief. “I said no, Bermuda was my life and I came back. Prior to me leaving I had no locker in the EMT room.“They had put me in the nurses’ room. I would go to my locker and would run out to the ambulance. The 911 bell was in the EMT room.“When I came back after my two month leave of absence getting ready to go to the nurses’ room to my locker, they said ‘No, Patty we have a locker right there for you in the EMT room’.”Ms Perinchief was finally accepted. She is now an EMT intermediate or EMTI which is the highest level of EMT in Bermuda.“It means she is qualified to set up intravenous lines and administer medications to patients. Several of the other female and male EMTs also have this level of training.The first woman to follow in her footsteps was Shirlene Furbert. She had been a nursery schoolteacher, but became interested in emergency medicine when her father died.“There was no one in the area who knew CPR,” said Ms Furbert. “That got me started, and I found out where I could do CPR. I went to St John Ambulance Brigade and learned it.“My current shift partner invited me to join St John, so I joined. From there I went into the EMT class.”She encountered much of the same attitude that Ms Perinchief had experienced.Instead of getting a job with the ambulance, she volunteered with St John Ambulance for ten years. Then she went to work for what is now the Mid Atlantic Wellness Institute.As times changed, she was invited to apply for a job as an EMT. Her previous experience with MWI has proven invaluable to the hospital and she is often called out on emergency cases involving people with mental illnesses.It’s true that the female EMTs sometimes struggle with lifting, but they have found ways around the problem.They try not to be partnered with other women, although it still happens sometimes and they make the best of it. They also try to stay as fit as possible.They were all pleased to see 21-year-old Khamani Fox become one of the youngest females to take the EMT exam in Bermuda.So far her experience has been a lot more positive than that of her older female co-workers.“I became a student volunteer and I was working in the Intensive Care Unit,” she said. “And that was not as interesting or exciting as I expected, so I volunteered in emergency as well. I volunteered for six years.“When the course became available I wasn’t supposed to take it because I was under 21. But because I had been here for six years they allowed me to take it at 17 years old. I finished it in May 2009.”She received a scholarship to study nursing with Barry University in Miami, Florida.She decided to study nursing because otherwise she would have had to take a paramedics course, and Bermuda does not yet have paramedics.She plans to get some experience working in emergency rooms in Miami and then return to Bermuda to work.The women admitted that it can be a challenge raising a family and working as an EMT as the job can be physically and emotionally stressful.One EMT, Rickeisha Burgess, is currently expecting a baby. She has taken herself off working on the ambulance until the baby is born to avoid the heavy lifting involved.Veronica Mello has five children, two grandchildren and one grandchild on the way.“It can be hard doing this and being a mom,” she said. “You come home tired, but they still need your attention. And they want to sign you up for everything at school. But you manage.”Ms Perinchief believed that having women EMTs only strengthened the team as it added balance.She thought women tended to handle aggressive patients better, and also calls involving childbirth and children.“With aggressive patients we have all seen that they tend to quiet right down when there is a woman around,” said Ms Mello. “Sometimes if they are swearing they apologise to us.”Added Veronica DeSilva: “In general, the men like to drive the ambulance and the women like to deal with the patients. We all do both, but I think it is like that.”