Ericka Bryce <i>set/production medic</i>
Current assignments: “Bewitched,” “Wedding Crashers,” “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Lucky You.”
Previous credits: “XXX: State of the Union,” “Daredevil,” “13 Going on 30,” “Christmas With the Kranks.”
Rx: “Basically every day, you treat everything from head colds to sinus problems to occasional trauma — abdominal trauma, fractures, heart attacks. You name it, we’ve had to deal with it. It is a hazardous industry at times. When people are working long hours and making a lot of company moves, there are a lot of injuries, like people falling down trailer stairs when they get tired; there are moving and lifting injuries, stunt injuries.”
Location, location, location: “If you are working in a desert-type location where it’s hot, you are going to have a lot of heat-related injuries and illnesses — heat stroke, heat exhaustion. You have to keep a really good eye on your crew as far as that is concerned. If you are working in an area where there is a lot of hilly terrain or working nights, you are going to have a lack of light and you will have trip-and-fall injuries.”
Pre-production: “It is always better to be a proactive medic than a reactive medic. It is good to see what the problems are going to be. And as the safety person on the set, we also get involved with the safety people at the studio to try and make sure all the fire extinguishers are current, the exits and the fire lanes are open, and know where the fire exits are even when you are on the stage, so you can get the crew out calmly and collectively. I was on a show a couple of years ago up in Mammoth and we were working up at 11,000 feet. I had a memo attached to the call sheet telling people how to prepare, what to expect. I even had a top 10 list of what to expect, what kind of clothing to bring. I made up packets for everybody of electrolytes and ChapStick, and to notify me if they had diabetes or heart problems or previous injuries that might be a factor.”
Triage: “If I am on a stunt movie like ‘XXX,’ I will get to know the stunt coordinator and let them know the way I will operate and work with them, so I am not in the way but we can quickly and concisely deal with the injuries that will happen and get things taken care of. I will have an access plan if it’s a big stunt for an ambulance to get in.
“If you have a stunt where people are going through glass, you will already have the tools that you need for the injuries that would normally be sustained with that type of stunt. You will need compressed air to get the glass out of their hair, you will need gauze when they get the face lacerations.”
The medicine chest: “I have one of the larger kits. There are a few medics, maybe 20, that have really large and extensive kits. I have two Radio Flyer wagons — one is a complete trauma kit with a couple of tanks of oxygen and the other kit is all the over-the-counter meds, all the basics you possibly could want. I also have vitamins and herbal medicines and teas that are all over-the-counter things.”
From stuntwoman to medic: “My whole family has a history of basketball players. When I got into doing production and stunt work, I had already been riding horses since I was about 10. I was athletic.
“There were a few other medics who were also stunt people, so in my early years of being in this business I watched what the medics did and the stunt people did. I had already worked for a physical therapist after my knee reconstruction — I had an injury playing college basketball. I always loved medicine and I loved the movie business, and I tried to find a way to marry the two.
“When I came in as a stuntwoman I would hook people up with physical therapists and chiropractors and people I knew from my experience. Even though I loved stunt work, it’s very sporadic work and I really missed medicine and felt I had a gift for it. I made the segue in 1995 to medic.”
Training: “It only took about a year or two — in addition to what I already had — to get my Emergency Medical Technician-1 certification. You have to be a paramedic, an EMT-1, a nurse or a doctor [to be a set medic].”
Union or guild: IATSE, local 767.
Age: 35
Resides: Manhattan Beach
Salary: “People can definitely make a good living doing this. You can make competitively what nurses and some beginning doctors in the field might earn.”
Mentor: “There have been a lot of people over the years that I have learned from — whether it be makeup people or producers or directors or actors/actresses. It’s all a learning process. I try to take a little bit from everybody.”
— Susan King
