Well, night number 1 is in the books, and it wasn’t really a night, it was more of a full day. I was up early today, and on the road at 8am.I picked up my copilot, Patrick, and we were on our way toBaltimore.It was bitter sweet, it was the first time I traveled without a certain special someone, but she’s moved on from my life, and I’m doing the same. Five and a half hours later, we were in Baltimoreand checked into the Days Inn down at the InnerHarbor.We met up with a few Twitter friends for a late lunch, and then it was back to the Hotel to get dressed and ready for the EMS 10 Awards dinner at the M & T Bank Stadium. The EMS 10 Awards was created to recognize ten innovative EMS professionals whose “efforts are an inspiration and a challenge to the rest of theEMScommunity.”I was invited to the dinner as a representative of the Blogging and Social Media community.The more I thought about this, the more I was humbled that I was thought of as someone who was influential enough to be a guest at such an event.I haven’t been at this blogging thing very long, and it makes me happy to know that people are taking notice and enjoying what they read. This was an excellent way to start off the night.Physio Control put on a great event.The accomplishments of those selected for the awards were inspiring, and as RJ Stine commented, “who knows?Any one of us could be up there in the coming years.”A special congratulation goes out to two members of our Social Media community: Greg Friese and Chris Montera who were award recipients this year.We are making waves, and people starting to sit up and listen! From there, we headed over to the Pratt St Ale House for the Zoll sponsored Meetup to kickoff EMS Today. If you’ve been watching the Twitter Feed at all over the last week or so, chances are you saw the #PrattStTweetup hashtag scroll by. The turn out was great.It was tough to get a true head count, but we took over the entire second floor of...

2010 was a year of change for me, and a year of growth.EMSin the New Decade wasn’t my first attempt at blogging, but it’s the first time I’ve actually stuck with it.I was able to find my voice, and thanks to some help from some great people, I was able to get my voice out there to a much larger portion of our community. It all started with blogging for me, and after my experiences with some of the great friends I have made through the Social Media Community, that love of blogging expanded to Podcasting, which has become quite the addiction for me.What it all comes down to is if it wasn’t for people like RJ Stine, Kyle David Bates, Chris Montera, Natalie Quebodeaux and the whole Generation Medicine team, no one would have heard me. I created a simple pin, a symbol that has become a frequently displayed image on the internet, and has become associated with a great cause: EMS 2.0 and Chronicles of EMS.Thanks to Justin, Ted, and Mark for letting me play a little role as part of their team! Above everything else though, I’ve made some terrific friends.I could take up pages and pages naming them here.Through Tweets, text messages, Skype calls and blog comments, I’ve shared some great times and great moments with some incredible people.It’s an honor to know each and every one of you and I can’t wait to see what this year has to offer us. I have realized though that as 2011 opens, I still have a long way to go.While I have found my “voice” I am still growing comfortable with it.Very few people that I work with know about this blog.Slowly, I’ve become more comfortable with sharing it with some people, but that hasn’t been easy for me.I want more people to read it, but I also want more people to understand it, and learn from what I have said here, and the messages I plan on sharing in the future. While I was at EMS Expo in Dallas, I was sitting at the bar in the Sheraton with Steve Whitehead sharing a beer, while we waited for the rest of...

“The Genisis for change is Awareness.” – Michael Angier That quote was shared with me by a colleague of mine the other day, and it inspired me to write this blog. . . There has been lots of talk about what needs to change about EMS for EMS 2.0 to take effect, and be accepted. Ideas have to change, Medical Directors have to adapt to different ways of thinking. I think that what we need first is we need to develop strategies for the movement at the street level. More people need to be aware of the ideas and thoughts that are out there. I’ve taken it upon myself to take some steps to help make that happen. As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, some of us here in my company have started putting a bug in people’s ears at the earliest stage: when the new EMT walks through our doors. Level Zero: The Movie has become an official part of our New Employee Academy. The instructor that showed the movie and the class loved it. Along with the movie, a series of handouts were put together by our Lead Supervisor (who is also an EMS 2.0 advocate) that revolved around professionalism, and how to handle one’s self. I’ve taken that a step further. As I’ve found different blog posts and articles that I like, I’ve printed them out, and left a stack in our Deployment Office for people to take and read. Additionally, I usually carry some of them with me as well, and I’ll hand them out to interested folks when I run into them on the street. One prime example of this was an article written by Chris Kaiser of Life Under the Lights last week called “What Difference Does EMS Make? Choose Your Own Ending.” The article itself had a profound effect on me. Chris a terrific writer, and the message he conveys about how our job effects those around us, and the personal pride that we should take to “become the best EMS Provider (we) can” played over and over again in my head. I handed out this article to one employee in particular who seemed very interested in...

An employee walked up to my window this morning to pick up his gear before going on the road. We engaged in some small talk, and before he left, this was the exchange that we had: Employee: “Hey, EMS 2.0!” Me: “Where did you hear about that?” Employee: “(My partner) told me about it.” Me: “Wow! Who told her?” Employee: “Its out there, man. People are talking about it.” Our conversation shifted briefly to some of the movement’s origins, and then he was off to start his day. For those of you who know me, you’ll realize that rendering me speechless is not an easy task. This employee was almost able to do it. All it takes is telling one person a day about what EMS 2.0 is, and what it means. They will take care of the rest. People are talking. People are taking notice. People want to listen. People want to...

As you remember from my last post, recently, I have seen an increased interest in a lot of the blog posts and articles that I’ve been sharing with some of my coworkers. Now, here I was on a Sunday evening with our Training Coordinator sitting in front of my computer. I went straight to http://www.levelzeromovie.com Ever since Ted Setla released his documentary about Alameda County EMS, I’ve been trying to find some way to work it into sharing it with as many employees as I could. He paints the providers in the movie as true professionals who love their jobs. Their messages and words of wisdom are so powerful and should be heard and understood by anyone who is trying to get into this field. After showing him the Level Zero trailer, I told Dave that I thought that this would be a great way to spend 20 minutes of our New Employee Academy. He liked what he saw, and liked what he had heard, and told me that if I could get him access to it and permission from Ted to use it, he’d be happy to include it. Well, 20 minutes later, after a brief conversation with Ted, I had everything lined up and ready to go for the premier of Level Zero at my company. Monday morning, I was still handing out a few copies of Steve Whitehead’s Blog Posts. People were reading them and saying, “Wow, yeah, that makes sense.” Or “that’s the exact problem that we’re having here!” Eyes were starting to open. At 9am, I walked into our daily management meeting, laptop in hand. After we had gone through the regular business, I looked at a few other members of the management team. “Can I borrow you guys for 20 minutes?” Three of them agreed to stick around, and I fired up my Netbook, and started streaming Level Zero for them. To say that the reactions that I got from them were positive would be an understatement. Not only were they impressed with the quality of the production, but they loved the message behind it all. They loved how the providers were portrayed not only as EMTs and...

Earlier this year, Steve Whitehead and Natalie Quebuedeaux coined the phrase “Make your own Thunder.” It has quickly become one of my favorite phrases. Here’s my story, broken down into two parts, about the rumbles that I’ve created over the last week. . . For the last couple of years, I’ve been a member of the National EMS Management Association (NEMSMA) List Serv through Google. It’s a hotbed of conversation and information about the industry, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in furthering their career in EMS. Quite often, I would find posts or articles that seemed very relevant to the issues faced within my company, so I would copy and paste like mad to some of my colleagues, hoping that it would have some impact. This practice increased ten fold this past February when I became involved in the Social Media movement in EMS. As I have read more blogs, I’ve grown more and more excited about the information that had been right under my nose. Who would have thought that there were so many people out there with the same ideas and motivations that I had? Quite often, I would send the copied and pasted articles and links out, and I wouldn’t really hear back from anyone. I knew a few people read them, but I never really got much feedback about what they were reading. In the last week, that changed. It all started last Wednesday when I got an email from one of my main “targets” of all of my forwards, our Operations Manager. It asked a simple question: “Can you send me the links to what you read and listen to?” I was really excited, and I got right to work. I started going through my bookmarks, sharing every podcast, blog, and publication that I frequent. While he is a very open minded guy, and thinks along the same track that I do, here was my chance to really open up his eyes to what was out there. By Friday, I had already received a number of links from him pointing out articles and posts that he really liked. By Sunday, he had sent out an email...

I’ve had a lot of blog ideas for this week’s edition of EMS in the New Decade kicking around my head: Health Care and EMS, the ongoing Massachusetts EMT scandal, and a few others, but I feel it more appropriate for right now to put those on the backburner and say goodbye to a colleague, and a pioneer who has played a huge part in the movement to make my job better: As many of you know, Mark Glencorse has decided to close down his 999 Medic blog.I understand and sympathize with him for his main reason for doing this: family comes first, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to miss his posts. When it comes to Blogging Age, I’m still a young’n.My blogging career didn’t get started until March, which is nothing compared to Mark’s 18 months and more than 450 posts.Heck, I remember my first night on Twitter when I got to join Justin and Ted on their limo ride intoBaltimorevia UStream, and later reading about Mark’s experiences at EMS Today. That gradually evolved to where I had my plane tickets on standby to fly toDenverjust to spend the evening with the poor guy and share a beer or two because of some silly volcano that had stranded him state-side. This is my chance to say thank you, Mark.Thank you for everything that you have done.Thank you for being a leader in the Chronicles of EMS movement.Thanks for pointing us in a positive direction to help fix our struggling nationalEMSsystem.Thanks for your fun comments on all of our blogs, and thanks for all of your posts over the last 18 months.Most of all, Thanks for being willing to take time away from your family to come and share your knowledge with us.I can only imagine what a huge sacrifice it must have been for you and it means more to many of us than you could imagine. Now it is time for the rest of us to carry the torch, and pick up where Mark is leaving off.I’m sure there will be many occasions when we will all say “remember what Mark said?”And share all of those words of wisdom.The wisdom...

Hello, everyone! The time has come to get a hold of your EMS 2.0 Pin! Wear it with pride, and let those around you see that you support the movement. If just two people asks each of us what it means, and they buy in to the movement, and then they tell two people…. well… you see where I’m going with this! This first batch of pins is going for a very special price of $7. After the first 100 pins are gone, I will be figuring out how many more I need to order. After this first batch, the price will be going up to $10 a pin but that will just be to cover my expenses for shipping. As of right now, ALL PURCHASES will be done through Paypal. Please just make sure your shipping address is correct. Also, please bare with me. I’m doing all of the shipping and organizing myself. I will be sending them out in the order they were received. ALL Proceeds from the sale of these pins will be going to Justin, Ted, Mark, and the entire Chronicles of EMS Team! This is a great way to show that you believe in the EMS 2.0 Movement, and an easy way to display it professionally on your uniform. Come on, people! Lets get the word out, and get people talking! For a picture of the Pin, and a Link to purchase one, go to http://medicsbk.tripod.com Finally, I am looking for some help from anyone who might be good at working with Websites. Drop me an email or a message on Twitter if you’re...

Up until about five months ago, I found myself in a real down period in my career. I wasn’t really sure where I wanted to go, or where I wanted to end up. All I knew was I needed to freshen things up a little bit. Then, one afternoon, I got that call with the offer to do some time in Alameda County. As I had previously mentioned here, it was a great experience, and that is where I learned about Chronicles of EMS. In the months since, I’ve imersed myself in the Chronicles, and I’ve begun exploring the Social Media aspect of the choice I made for my career: Emergency Medical Services. This has included reading up on some great blogs, spending quite a bit of time making friends on Twitter, and most importantly, my discovery of the EMS 2.0 movement. Recently, I got thinking, what can I do to support and spread the word? For me, it has started with the word of mouth. I’ve told some of my colleagues where I work about it, and steered as many people as I can in that direction. I’ve cornered Paramedic and EMT Instructors at my place of employment, and made efforts to contact my old college professors, all in an attempt to let them know about this great thing I’ve found, in hopes that they will share it with their students. Last week, another idea came to mind. I was trying to think of a way to bring the EMS 2.0 agenda to those around me, and hopefully spark some questions and interest in this new movement that I was becoming so proud of. I loved the t-shirts, but I wanted something I could wear to work, since that’s where I spend my time with the people who this should matter to most, and that’s when it hit me: a pin. The idea I came up with is simple, really. The half blue and half red Star of Life signifies the first obstacle that EMS 2.0 must overcome: the unification of EMS. Maybe if I’m lucky, two people will come up to me and ask “hey, what’s that pin about?” And they will...

When the movie Level Zero came out last year, I was extremely excited. I think everyone who operates in this medium and in our field can agree that there is a complete and total lacking of positive press, and realistic examples of what we do as a profession. It did not take me long at all to email the Level Zero Link to everyone that I knew, whether they were in the field or not. I loved the viewpoints of those featured in the movie, and thought that they had a lot to say about what we did. Little did I know, but a little more than a year later, I would have a chance to experience the streets featured in Level Zero first hand. I got a call at the beginning of December from a colleague of mine who needed my assistance. There were some computer systems out in Alameda County that needed some tweaking, and some additional education that went with it. I was offered an all expenses paid trip out to ALCO, where I would get to spend 40 hours or there about riding along on the streets of Oakland and its surrounding communities. How could I say no? I had a great experience that week. It was really eye opening. Every truck I got on had a crew that welcomed me, was willing to answer questions about their system, and had plenty of questions about my system and where I came from. I’ll be honest, this trip was more than just a “Help the company” opportunity for me. I walked away with many ideas about system design, system status management, and crew attitude and motivation that I could take back with me to where I worked and improve the quality of my service. I feel like I sound like a broken record sometimes. The words “when I was in California” come out of my mouth more times than I can count. The topic of Level Zero the Movie came up with one of the crews I was with, and they were quick to explain to me the concept of Chronicles of EMS. Could it be? A chance to view more...