On February 18th, 1985, I was 6 years old.  It was Washington’s Birthday, and I was off from school so my dad took me out to go bowling for the afternoon.  It wasn’t something that we did very often, so it was nice for a change. Back in the early to mid-1970s, my dad was an active member on the Island Heights First Aid Squad.  When I came along in 1978, family became the priority.  He took a break from the “EMS thing” for a while, but always kept a blue metal first aid kit in his trunk, just in case he ever needed it for our family or someone else in need. As we drove home on Route 37 in Toms River that evening, an intoxicated elderly woman left a bar somewhere along the route.  Route 37 is a six lane road in most parts, with an often ignored speed limit of 50 MPH, and a large median separating the east and west travel lanes.  She got on the wrong side, and started traveling east bound in the west bound lane.  Our local fire chief from Island Heights saw this happening, and despite his frantic calls over the radio, there was nothing anyone could do.  She slammed head on into an oncoming car ejecting the driver, a younger woman, who was obviously unbelted. As we came up to the scene on our way home, my dad felt compelled to stop and help.  I sat impatiently in the car, just wanting to go home at this point, a six year old not really understanding or comprehending exactly what happened.  Eventually, after the ambulance and paramedics had gotten there and taken her away, my dad cleaned himself up along with the other good Samaritans who had stopped, and we took the short trip the rest of the way home.  We still talk about it sometimes, but it’s really just another story in the long list we’ve accumulated over the years. Twenty seven years later, my dad is now a nineteen year member of the Island Heights First Aid Squad, serving his second tour as the squad’s captain.  A month ago, he was driving his...

“Couple Claims Ambulance Took Too Long“ I stumbled across this story on the JEMS website the other day. Click on the link, check it out and come on back to read what I have to say about it.  Okay, ready?  Another tax paying citizen is upset that it took too long for an ambulance to get them to the hospital. An elderly woman “felt ill” so her husband called 9-1-1. Tippecanoe County EMS responded to her aide in a timely manner and loaded her up for transport. Her husband and neighbor left the scene and rushed to the hospital. When they got there, the ambulance wasn’t there yet, and they had to wait for her to arrive. According to the husband stated it took an hour. The patient even made a statement to the report that she “wondered if she was going to make it.” The service director stated to the media that according to their records, the truck took 18 minutes to get to the hospital, and that she was transported without lights and sirens. Some people might shake their heads because of the job done by the reporters, but I feel it’s a failure of the service and their public information officer (or lack of one). When an ambulance transports to the hospital without lights and sirens, it tells me a lot about the condition of the patient. The crew did not rush the patient urgently to the hospital seemingly because there was no need to. When we transport without lights and sirens, it’s for the comfort of the patient and the safety of the crew. EMS professionals might not do a good job determining who should and shouldn’t go to the hospital, but in my experience they do a great job of determining how fast you need to get there. The chief didn’t do a bad job considering his HIPAA handcuffs. The family and the patient were so vague about what happened that there really isn’t a clear picture painted, and he appropriately didn’t add to that patient care picture at all. What he failed to do was take a great educational opportunity for the media and the public to let...

EMS seems to have this chronic problem of not putting their people out there enough and recognizing them for the vital role they play in their community each day.  Sure, there are organizations out there such as the American Ambulance Association which takes great EMS providers and puts them in front of members of congress as examples of what an EMS provider should be, but it seems to me that those instances are few and far between. It should be noted that if someone gets into this field looking for ticker tape parades and medals to be pinned on their chests, they’ve definitely gotten into the wrong field.  EMS is 90% routine, and 10% action.  Sadly though, it is that 10% action that seems to be recognized 1% of the time.  The public isn’t going to care that Pat the Paramedic took care of thirty chest pain patients last month, but they should care that when Pat walks in the door of their home, they are going to have a caring, and compassionate provider standing in front of them. There are a few things that I feel hold us back from really getting our people out there, and they’re all internal: 1.  The “It’s your job” mentality — Some leaders in EMS overlook consistent performance, citing that the person is doing what they are supposed to do.  While that statement might be accurate, reward and praise for consistency is a must.  Chances are, if this person meets the expectations set for them every day, they are frequently exceeding them, so praising them might actually go a long way.  If it seems like you have a number of people that are failing to meet the standards you are setting from them, take a good look at how they are being relayed to your people.  Chances are, they aren’t out there enough, or aren’t fully understood. 2.  Not enough eyes — In larger services, it’s not always easy to see and understand everything that is going on in the field.  Patient interactions can frequently go overlooked, and great employees can be overshadowed by that 5% of the employee base that takes up 90% of your time. ...

Over the last week I’ve been giving a lot of thought as to how I would relate my experiences after a tornado hit my city.  I could give you all a play by play of where I was when everything happened, and what I did, but the truth is, my role  in the response from a provider stand point was pretty small. That isn’t to say that I didn’t do a lot, but for the first time in a long time, it was a “gloves off “situation for me.  In the first 72 hours of the tornado response, which were arguably the most crucial, I touched only two patients, put two pair of gloves on, and never actually made it to an emergency room.  That was by far the strangest part of the entire experience for me. I’ve always enjoyed being in the field, and have always been a hands on provider, but this time around, that wasn’t my job.  That was the responsibility of the great field employees I had working with me, and they did a hell of a job.  Instead, I was running staging locations, organizing the next 48-72 hours of our response, and keeping track of where my people were.  I had to do some of that “big picture” thinking that I talked about a few posts ago.  It wasn’t as large as what would affect my service for the distant future that EMS managers have to tackle, but it was more than the “next 24 hours” thinking that I do in my day-to-day supervisory role, and a lot more than the call-to-call problem solving that I did in my years before I was promoted. The success of our endeavors over those first four or five days was a team effort.  I really feel that I am blessed with a great group of EMTs and paramedics that work for me, and I can’t say enough about them, and the job that they did.  They made the “personnel management” part of my job very easy.  Our schedule was overflowing with people willing to help, trucks were stocked, cleaned and ready to go, and whether people were on their 4th or 24th...

I’ve sat through many tornado watches and warnings in my time, but I had never seen one before in my life.  When I was four, a small tornado ripped through a nearby elderly community in New Jersey, but I was too young to truly realize what happened.  After I had overcome my terror of the watches, I always just shrugged them off and waited them out, always saying “It’ll never happen.” This past week, that all changed. Wednesday was like any other day for me.  I had worked Tuesday night, which meant I spent most of the first part of it sleeping.  When I woke up in the afternoon, I heard about the Tornado Watch that had been issued in the area.  I did my usual shrug, and went about my business.  I my neighbor was even nice enough to stop by and make sure I had heard about it, and hadn’t been sleeping all day.  I sat down at my computer, and checked out the radar feed, which raised an eyebrow.  From the looks of it, much of the Pioneer Valley was about to be hit with a sizeable storm, the worst of which looked like it was far to the north of us. I flipped on my scanner (because yes, I have one) and made sure my uniform was ready to go, but I was still planning on just waiting out what I expected to be a bad thunderstorm until I went in for my overnight shift at 6:30pm. The Springfield Police Department called out the funnel cloud as it descended into the Connecticut River at 4:30, and I fully expected it to either lift, or proceed down the Connecticut River as a water spout, and be done.  I thought that we would have a fun story to tell over beers about that tornado that almost hit us.  Boy, was I wrong. The funnel cloud quickly turned and headed through the downtown area of Springfield, and swung straight up through the center of the city.  It cut a path through Springfield, and made its way east into some of the towns east of us.  Thankfully, the damage done was the worst of...