As 2012 wraps up, I spent a little time looking back at my posts from this year.  It was a turbulent year for me, and although real life tore me away from the blog a bit more than I wanted it to, I still did my best to keep it active, and I think I had some great posts in there. This was a year of change for me.  The working environment that I was in changed drastically, life changed drastically, and I decided that in order to best respond to that I needed to find a new place to call home, and a service that was a bit more in line with what I believed in as a paramedic and more importantly, as a person.  While certain aspects of my life are still working themselves out, I still feel that mission was successful.  Anyway, on to the posts. “Bad Publicity and Saving Face” – No post that I made in 2012 stirred things up more than this one.  I saw more than 6,000 visits to my page as a result of it, and got a number of comments both on the blog and over on Facebook.  It is all about a controversial article that, of all places, was written in a college newspaper.  It is a gut check for everyone out there who has ever told someone what being an EMT is all about, and it is a reminder that our profession follows us into each and every social circle that we put ourselves in.  Check it out, and see what everyone had to say about it.  Then, read the follow up to the article here. “What Would You Do?” – Sparked by a conversation that we had in the office at my part time job, this post was about a sticky situation involving a DNR, and a patient who did not want to be around anymore.  Legally, morally, and ethically, each opinion might differ from the one before it.  There are some great comments in this post. “Officer Gene Cassidy” – Everyday, police officers, fire fighters and paramedics make sacrifices.  This past June, an officer in the city I used to work...

If anyone ever asked me what the internet was, I would tell them that it is a series of fads.  Ideas, popular websites, and social media networks come and go sometimes at the blink of an eye.  Does anyone remember Myspace?  I didn’t think so. . . There is one fad though that has come about in the last three years that needs to be recognized, and people need to be reminded that it is still there.  While some might say it is not for them, the EMS 2.0 movement actually lives in all of us.  Any EMT or paramedic who has ever said “I think I have a better way to do this” deep down shares his or her beliefs with Justin Schorr, Chris Kaiser, and everyone else who had input into that initial manifesto. I was reminded the other day that although it might be quieter than it was a few years ago, people are still talking and sharing about EMS 2.0.  I was in a uniform shop in a remote town getting fitted for my new threads, and there, in a cabinet with about forty or fifty patches from police departments and fire departments from the surrounding states was an EMS 2.0 patch.  I do not know how it got there, but I do know that it was not from Justin, Setla, Random or myself.  Someone walked into that uniform shop, and said “hey, I’ve got a patch for you.”  And knowing the people that carry those patches and pins around with them, that was followed with “Let me tell you a bit about it.” Currently, the blueprint for the rebooting and redesign of EMS is a simple one.  All we need to do is find what works for our particular system.  Start with something simple.  Explore alternate treatment options, or rethink staffing and response.  Realistically, it could be anything. There are questions to be answered about the future of our profession, and it is our responsibility as the current crop of prehospital providers to decide for ourselves where we want to be in the next ten or fifteen years because in ten to fifteen years, we are going to be...

It’s been quite the week.  I moved into my new apartment about 24 hours before I was due at my first day on the job, and due to circumstances beyond my control, I had no internet access!  Well, a week later, the problem was solved and the interwebs are once again pulsing through the lines in my apartment allowing me to share with you another reflection of what I have experienced over the last twelve years at my “old” job. While having a conversation a few years ago about dealing with low morale, I was told “there is not much that I can do about morale.  It depends on the individual.  It is an internal thing.”  While it might be true that a paramedic’s happiness might be guided by what he or she wants out of a service as an individual, leaders still play a major role in steering and guiding the values of those who work for them.  Simply showing value is the easiest way of doing this. In a field that has been described both internally and externally as having “inexcusably low pay” it is up to “the brass” to get together and find ways other than adding zeroes to someone’s paycheck to let them know that they are an important piece of the team.  Putting forth an attitude of “I give you a paycheck, what more do you want from me?” will do nothing but give a service a good reason to remove their bay doors and replace them with revolving ones because they will see people leave as quickly as they walk in the door. This is a thankless job, and frankly, the statement of “it’s your job” does carry some merit.  We do have a job to do, and we do have people to serve.  “Routine” emergencies happen, and even serious ones that will slip past medical directors, bosses and peers and go completely unnoticed, but it’s not the individual call that people deserve recognition for it is the individual doing the call.  It is the overall performance that deserves to be recognized.  It is the fact that someone is always there to answer the call, 24 hours a...

My career at AMR in Springfield came to an end this past Monday night.  I was going to put up a post about my last shift, trying to take all of you through my night step by step, but it was a pretty “ordinary” night for the most part.  There were a few goodbyes sent, a few coffees shared, but all in all, the only thing that made it memorable for me was the fact that it was my “swan song.”  My twelve year career came to a close at 6:30am when I punched out for the last time, took a deep breath, and walked out the door. The rest of my week was spent catching up with friends both new and old to say one last goodbye.  I was humbled and overwhelmed by the turnout at our local watering hole of people who showed up to say one last goodbye and share a beer or two.  Or three.  Or maybe four. I have to say that if anyone is ever in Western Massachusetts and you’re looking to enjoy a beer, O’Brien’s Corner in Springfield is the only place to go.  I’ve had many a beer, a lot of breakfasts and some great memories that were created just by pulling up a stool to the bar. Thursday night was my time to say “see you soon” to some folks from my part time job.  They gave me this great picture as a going away present.  I don’t normally work through the fall so I have not been present for many of the group pictures that they’ve taken from year to year.  Their response was to photoshop me into the picture.  Well done guys! The house was completely loaded into a UHaul Thursday night, and Friday I made the move south to my new “headquarters.”  The unpacking was done, a stop was made in New Jersey, and right now I am in my dad’s car typing away as we roll across the Tapanzee Bridge about two hours away from Springfield.  I’ll make one last stop there, pick up some precious cargo (the cat) and head back south for my four hour trek.  Monday I start...

Nov 26, 2012

Someone can have the ability to make command decisions that steer an organization whether it be large or small but that person is not a leader until they find someone who is willing to follow them.  In the last year and a half, I have written about a few of the incidents that I have been part of, mainly the tornado that hit Springfield on June 1 and the ice storm that we had last year around Halloween.  Just the other day though, I added another one to my list. In the downtown area of my city, we had what started out as a simple gas leak.  That all changed when four miles away, sitting in our office, I heard a loud bang.  The building with the leak exploded with two of my crews only a short distance away.  Thankfully, they were okay, but we were called to action to organize and take care of close to twenty people who were injured.  Everyone involved is still counting our blessings that no one was killed. In moments, the people that I had in the streets started to mobilize.  Crews cleared the hospital.  People in their homes, not 100% sure what had just occurred started to put their uniforms on and head to work.  I took the new supervisor I was training to take my spot and started a ride that felt like it took an eternity down to the scene.  It took about twenty minutes to get organized, get a staging area setup, and to really start getting a grasp on what we were dealing with but once we did, we were ready for whatever would be thrown at us.  The response from the EMS community was amazing.  At peek, we had more than twenty ambulances in our staging area ready to do whatever it took to make sure every patient got out of there.  The unsung heroes though were the fifteen people who showed up at the office who were not even scheduled to be in that day ready to jump on ambulances and go wherever they were needed.  With all of the trucks that we had assigned to the explosion, we were able...