Eric Dunphy

Vice President-Principal | Vital Emergency Medical Services

From his childhood home in Great Brook Valley, Eric Dunphy announced his intention to enter nursing school after attending Burncoat High School.

In 1976, Eric began the initial phase of his journey when he graduated in the first male enrolled class from the Registered Nursing program at Hahnemann Hospital. With no experience in the field, he applied for and landed a job as the first Director of Worcester City Hospital Ambulance. There was just one catch – he needed to be a certified emergency medical technician (EMT).

Nineteen seventy-seven found Eric at Quinsigamond Community College, where he earned an EMT certificate and then spent the next four years recruiting EMTs and helping coordinate the area’s first paramedic training program.

Eric joined the U.S. Army Reserves in 1989 at the age of 37. While in the service, Eric held a series of healthcare positions, as Director of Marketing for Worcester Himmer Ambulance, then as an admissions coordinator at Oriol Health Care in Holden, and lastly at UMass Medical School/Commonwealth Medicine as the Client Relations Manager for the EOHHS/ Division of Medical Assistance.

In 2006, all of his previous educational and practical experiences culminated in the founding, with his partners, of Vital Emergency Medical Services, a successful medical transportation and emergency medical delivery system with some 50+ vehicles and a service area that includes Central, South, North and MetroWest Massachusetts.

If you ask Eric, he’ll credit QCC for "moving him along the path of his chosen endeavor." In the mid-1990s, he delivered the keynote address to the LPN graduates and also serves on the QCC Foundation. He said, "Quinsigamond is your first degree of education. It tandems nicely with the guardians."