When Brian Goldberg and Sam Shuman met as first-year students at Rush University Medical College in 2021, they quickly discovered a shared passion for medicine—and a strikingly similar professional background.
Prior to enrolling at Rush, both had jobs as first responders—Goldberg as a paramedic in New York City and Shuman as an emergency medical technician in Texas. As first responders, they had seen firsthand how critical bystander intervention could be in a medical emergency—and how often it didn’t happen.
Having witnessed the heartbreaking realities on the ground, Goldberg and Shuman wanted to take action to improve community health. Their shared vision became Rush 9-1-1, a student-led initiative that provides free, on-site training in CPR, bleeding control and overdose response to communities across Chicago.
"Bystander CPR rarely happened, unfortunately. Our goal is just to bridge that gap between that 911 call and the arrival of that ambulance," said Goldberg, an AMA member who is finishing his fourth year at Rush University Medical College. The Chicago medical school is part of the Rush University System for Health, which is a member of the AMA Health System Program that provides enterprise solutions to equip leadership, physicians and care teams with resources to help drive the future of medicine.
Turning vision into action
The formal medical school curriculum trains medical students to become physicians, but not every skill to succeed in the profession comes from a textbook, lecture or clinical encounter.
For Goldberg and Shuman, building Rush 9-1-1 from the ground up required more than medical knowledge. It meant organizing volunteers, forging partnerships with community organizations and securing institutional support. It was an informal exercise in leadership development.
"It started with Sam and I, just the two of us, going out with a couple of CPR mannequins and a makeshift stop-the-bleed kit that we had put together," Goldberg said. "As we grew the program we started, attracting additional medical students. We started bringing in M1s and M2s, and we were able to step back from the hands-on teaching of every single class, to help build relationships with community organizations."
The workload involved in the project’s early days presented a challenge for both Shuman and Goldberg.
“When you're really passionate about something, you will find the time to do it no matter what," Shuman said. “No matter how busy our schedules got in our M1 and M2 years, when we were first getting off the ground, Brian and I always found a way to make at least a weekend one-hour slot work."
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Power in collaboration
The goal of a Rush 9-1-1 clinic isn’t a paper certification, it’s empowerment. Shuman and Goldberg want participants to gain skills and feel confident enough to apply them should an emergent situation arise.
Since September 2022, Rush 9-1-1 has conducted 45 community clinics that have offered instruction to more than 1,150 people. Those classes were taught by 44 different instructors, the vast majority of whom were medical students—nurses and resident physicians as served as instructors.
The group prioritizes economically and socially marginalized areas, particularly those on the city’s West and South Sides where emergency response inequities contribute to worse health outcomes. Using publicly available health data, Rush 9-1-1 is strategic about where classes take place and what they emphasize.
While the data is one side of serving the community, another key for medical students trying to lead in a public health arena is collaboration.
"Listen to the community," Goldberg said. "The community will tell you what it needs. If your instinct isn't to listen, then you're probably not helping the community."
While Rush 9-1-1 is medical student-driven, its success is made possible by the institution’s commitment to community engagement and student leadership. The program’s growth was aided in by faculty advisors such as Nicholas Cozzi, MD—an AMA member—offering guidance.
Rush 9-1-1’s success can also be attributed to an enthusiastic response from other medical students.
"Rush as a hospital and a community is very service-oriented," said Shuman who hopes to do his residency training in anesthesiology with a focus on critical care. "Just by the nature of that, it attracts those kinds of medical students."
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Lessons in leadership
For medical students looking to create their own community initiatives, the first step is exploring the landscape.
"If you have an idea for something, find somebody," Goldberg said. "Go out and talk to your school, talk to the community. There's probably a need for it."
Shuman summed up their approach in one sentence: "Start small, think big," he said.
Their hope is that Rush 9-1-1 will continue long after they graduate, inspiring the next generation of medical students to take action in their communities.
"Ten years from now, I’d love to come back and see this program running even stronger," Goldberg said. "More funding, more volunteers, more classes—that would be an amazing legacy."
For medical students looking to hone their leadership skills, the AMA offers the chance to distinguish yourself through more than 1,000 leadership opportunities and skill building through online training modules, project-based learning and more.
