There were few things that I have been more proud of than when I passed my EMT and paramedic exams.  For the former, I was a 16 year old high school kid.  I was taking my EMT class two nights a week while going to high school during the day.  My parents had to drive me to my exam, and to the post office daily so I could check the mail hoping and praying that the right envelope would be shipped to me by the State of New Jersey.  When I was in college, passing the paramedic exam was arguably the whole reason that I was there.  That card would let me get my foot in the door, and my management education would give me the opportunity to climb the ladder when the chance arose.  Medic school was not easy, but I did it. Coming out of medic school, I still had a lot to learn.  I have talked about before here, but it took me a good couple of years to really feel comfortable in my skin.  Colleagues who I got my medic with, and some who got their medics after me passed me by in a lot of ways, but eventually I caught up.  The streets were a great place to hone my skills, and Springfield offered a lot of opportunity to do just that.  It was busy, aggressive, and when I got in over my head, I was close to a hospital.  A lot of people will say that EMS is generally like riding a bike.  In the years that I was promoted, I still practiced medicine, but not nearly as much as I used to.  When I moved exclusively back to the field it took me a little time to shake the rust off, but I got back to where I was relatively smoothly.  I had practiced medicine before I got promoted, so when i got back to it, I had already laid the groundwork for my care. There are some out there who think that simply holding an EMT card in one’s pocket makes them an EMT, and I call bull on that.  The things that one learns in...

Jun 5, 2017

Any time I peruse the pages of EMS related articles I will inevitably come across some service that is trying to take over another service’s area.  Diving deeper into those articles usually reveals the same usual arguments.  Imagine my surprise when I clicked on an article about the East Longmeadow Fire Department’s move to take over EMS response in the town of East Longmeadow. I should first point out that what I am about to write is meant to represent my own personal views on the state of the industry.  I have not inquired about anything having to do with the current staffing of ambulances and volume.  What I am reflecting on is the article and just the article coupled with my years of experience in the greater Springfield area. Just to give a little bit of background here, I used to have a dog in this fight.  As many of you know, I was a 12-year employee of American Medical Response, the last seven of which as a supervisor.  I participated in contract bids for the town, and saw service improve as the requirements of those contracts increased.  AMR currently provides EMS service to the towns of East Longmeadow and Hamden free of charge.  The service is paid for by those who use it.  They respond to more than 2,000 calls a year, and AMR or its predecessor companies have served the town for more than two decades. The East Longmeadow Fire Department is currently a part time department covering daytime hours only, with off hours supported by call staff and volunteers.  Their Chief, Paul Morrissette, has spent his entire career in East Longmeadow.   The East Longmeadow Fire Department does not provide EMS first response in town and even if they did, the ambulance would most likely beat them to virtually every call because they are deployed from street corner posting, quite often from the same area where the fire department is located.  To put it briefly, neither Chief Morrissette nor the department currently have any experience operating an EMS service. In an article recently posted in The Reminder, a regional online publication, Chief Morrissette is quoted as saying, “AMR isn’t always familiar...

On an almost daily basis, an irrational, irritating debate seems to break out within the online EMS community.  Typically it has to do with one of two topics, arming EMT and paramedics, and the debate on the ethical use of Narcan.  While I would love to open two cans of worms today, there is only so much ranting that I would be willing to subject you, the reader to, so we are going to stick with the discussion on Narcan today. It is no secret that we are giving Narcan to patients at an alarmingly high rate.  Compound that with the amount that the public themselves is using, and the number gets even higher.  But there are some things that the EMS community needs to concede and understand about Narcan use, addicts, and ethics when it comes to administering the medication. Giving Narcan kills more people than it saves A few years ago, there was somebody who I will classify at this point as an “online EMS personality” who shared his thoughts on the use of Narcan, feeling that bringing addicts back over and over again would result in them pushing themselves closer to the edge because they knew that we were going to be there to save them.  I shared my thoughts on that topic then, and my feelings have no changed because the evidence has not changed.  There are a lot of things that are making the opiate addiction problem in this country worse, and EMS giving patients Narcan still is not one of them.  Narcan is nothing new.  It has been in our toolboxes for a lot longer than most of us have been in the field.  And its not going away. “All that we are doing by making Narcan available to these people is enabling them to use heroin” This argument always leaves me scratching my head.  Recently, I gave D50 to the same patient for the 5th time in two weeks.  Once conscious, I asked them “did you go see your doctor like you said that you were last week?”  Their response was, “I was going to but I did not have time.”  I asked if they had plans...

In my defense, there are two videos posted below. These are the first two EMS Week videos created by a department that is very near and dear to my heart. Watch....

May 21, 2017

EMS Week 2017 is upon us and as always there are a lot of positives that need to be pointed out.  Its a time to recognize the little things that people do, and more importantly the people behind the uniform.  It is the week of the year that should be about us, because the other 51 weeks out of the year should be about the patients that we serve.  With taking all of that into consideration though, this is not going to be one of those positive posts. Last week, there was a call for articles and posts related to the tagline “EMS Strong: Always in Service” for this week’s message to providers.  It asked for people to talk about what it means to them.  Well, here you go. I grew up in a heavily volunteer driven community.  When I started EMS, every BLS unit on the street was staffed by people dedicating their time.  Much like myself, many went through their day to day activities with a Minitor II pager strapped to their hip, waiting to hear that rhythmic beeping that still gives me palpitations more than 20 years later.  Day or night, weekend or weekday, on school vacations or snow days, it did not matter.  I was always in service. At the time, I was a young, naive teenage EMT.  I was happier on the ambulance than I was on the high school basketball court.  I did not care if I got home from my summer job at 2am, if the pager went off at 3, I was going.  I did not have a care in the world.  EMS was what mattered to me.  I was always in service. In college, I sacrificed many Friday or Saturday nights where my college friends would be out drinking and partying to throw on a uniform, turn on the radio and go trucking out of my dorm to take care of the sick, vomiting, and ETOH students of Springfield College.  I cleaned vomit off of my boots.  I cared for people that I might see in my economics class come Monday morning.  I was ready to go at a second’s notice.  I was always in...