I’ve been doing some thinking over the last couple of days about how I wanted to share my experiences at EMS Expo 2010 with everyone. Do I take it hour by hour and class by class? Do I just give a brief overview? All of the bloggers that I spent time with in Dallas had different solutions. Well, I think I’ve found something that is going to work best for me. I’ve decided to break my experiences at EMS Expo 2010 in Dallas into three categories: The Events, The Education, and The People. The Events Needless to say, there were plenty of these, both of the official and the unofficial nature. If you read the Blog last week, you’ve already seen what we did on Tuesday night for what is now known as “Expo Eve.” Wednesday was just as much fun. After doing a Podcast with the Generation Medicine team, and finishing up the day with a couple of classes, it was off to the JEMS Blogger Meetup at the Rooftop bar of the Gator Croc and Roc. The food was good, and the conversation was even better. I was able to meet many influential people like AJ Heightman, Editor-in-Chief of JEMS, and Rick Kendrick, the inventor of the Kendrick Extrication Device or KED for short. Anyone who has been through EMT or Paramedic school has used this great piece of equipment, and most likely has had to test out on it as part of their certification. Rick had a lot to say about his product, and at one point was holding court with seven or eight of us surrounding him and listening intently, as he described concepts like Pounds per Square Inch and padding. From there, it was off to the One Eyed Penguin for a Darts Tournament. I’ll spare you the messy details of the match, and just tell you that Kyle David Bates and I, better known as Team First Few Moments, beat Team EMS Garage, Chris Montera and Annie Robinson. Lots of beer was had, and lots of great conversations and laughs were shared. Thursday morning marked what might have been the highlight of my trip to Dallas. Details of...

Expo Eve has come and gone, and boy was it a great experience. The trip out was a long one, I was up by 3am (I don’t even know how I slept) and in the air to Detroit by about 6am. The Captain told us it was going to be an hour and twenty minute fly time, but I swear it took closer to two hours. With ETAs like that, they should just go into the ambulance business. I kid, of course. I was off the plane and into the terminal by 8:10, and made an OJ Simpson-Like run to my next connecting flight at 8:25 (thanks, Joel Nied for that Hertz Commercial Reference) and I was able to get there just in time, ready to make the trip to Dallas. I was greeted on the plane by my good friend April from Pink, Warm and Dry, and her preceptor Dave who had missed their earlier flight and would be joining me on this flight, which after delays for a broken GPS and the apparent necessity to jump start out plane, we were off. The flight was smooth, and we were on the ground in just over two hours. I spent the day wandering around Dallas with April, Dave, and RJ Stine who is better known as Hybridmedic on Twitter, and in the Blog world. We made it down to Dealy Plaza, which was quite the site to see. We all commented on how much smaller it looked than what we had perceived it to be from all the pictures and TV shows we’d seen. After checking in at Expo, it was time to head over to the House of Blues for some dinner and drinks. RJ and I had planned on getting a small group of people together for some food and drinks. That quickly grew to 15-20 people who took over the outdoor porch. Our server, Luis, was kept on his toes, but he did a great job. If anyone is ever in Dallas, I highly recommend the House of Blues for food, drinks, or music. When Charlotte from Zoll arrived, we found out that they had booked a room that night,...

Think back, if you will, to the first EMT class you ever took. It might have been a few months ago, or for some folks, it might have been 20-30 years ago. Now, think about what they taught you about your own safety, and what is most important when you hit the streets. Lets take it a step further. Think now about any EMT Practical exam that you’ve taken, whether it be for your EMT-Basic certification right on up to your Paramedic. Lets take the Assessment station. You walk into the station, stethoscope around your neck, with a State or National evaluator sizing you up and staring you down. You look over your station, and indicate you are ready. Your evaluator looks at their sheet of paper, and begins reading the same scenario that the person before you most likely just heard. It could be a car accident, a shooting, or something as routine as a fall, abdominal pain or a chest pain call. Regardless of what the nature of the “call” is, you take the information in, and start your station the same way. “Scene safety, BSI, number of patients.” You might use different terms depending on where you’re at, but the intention is always the same: Is the scene safe for my partner and I to enter? Do I have the necessary protective equipment on? Do I have the resources I need initially to handle this incident? Now, keep that in mind, and read this article that has made its way around the internet: http://www.wlbt.com/Global/story.asp?S=13191657 Take a moment to compose yourself, pick your jaw up off the floor and stop screaming at your computer. I’m sure you’ve already asked out loud, “What is this guy’s problem?” AMR has not written a policy that needs to be changed, the responding crew followed their training perfectly, and did the right thing by not putting themselves in a dangerous situation. If any other Ambulance service, Private, 3rd Service, or Fire based told their crew to just rush in there, I’d question their devotion to their Field Employees. Tim Noonan over at RogueMedic.com has said it better than I could have. The blame here has been...

Most EMS Professionals are asked to act on their own, and be responsible for their actions and decisions. In a system such as the one I work in, there’s a chance that the EMT’s contact with their direct Supervisor will be limited to twenty minutes at the start of their 8 to 12 hour day, and twenty minutes at the end of their shift. For the rest of the day, they are essentially their own boss. In order for them to achieve the goal of working so independently, we ask them to take inventory of their personal values and remember the goal and mission statement of the organization when making decisions that might not be clinical in nature, but that could have a profound impact on themselves and those around them. That is a lot of responsibility for some people to handle, but we expect them to be able to do it because not only do we ask them to watch out for their own personal well being, we also put the lives of others in their hands. EMS can be an exhausting job. We’ve all been there: we’ll go an entire day without a bite to eat, and barely a bathroom break. We encounter overworked nurses, patients who may or may not appreciate our presence in their lives, and (dare I say) fellow EMS workers who might not possess the same work ethic and goals as we do. Add to that sleep deprivation and you could say that you have a recipe for disaster. As each moment ticks by, that filter between our internal dialogue and our external one grows more and more thin, and the chance that those inappropriate words or actions could slip out increases. Lately, I’ve been on a quest to find articles, tips, and tricks to pass on to my colleagues here in my system that will help them to walk the straight and narrow, and do the right thing, not only for themselves, but also for their coworkers and their patients. With the words, blogs, and tweets that many of you have shared with all of us over the last seven months, I’ve acquired some great tools, and...

The last seven months of my life have been surrounded by a whirlwind of activity. Twitter, Chronicles of EMS, and the EMS 2.0 movement have breathed new life and motivation into me, and one week from today, all of that will come together as I’ll get to share four days with some of the greatest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of speaking with. It wasn’t always like this for me though. If you had asked me one year ago where I thought that I would be today, gearing up to go to Dallas and EMS Expo would not have been my answer. Truth be told, I was in a rut. The roadblocks I was encountering in my system were immense, and seemed almost impossible to overcome. I would come into work and just go through the motion watching the clock waiting for quittin’ time so I could head home. Day in and day out, I felt like I was running in place, or just spinning my wheels. I’ve spoken many times in this blog about that fateful trip to the “left coast” and my week in Alameda County. It all comes back to that for me. It was eye opening. I had a chance to work with people I had never met before who were friendly, welcoming, hard working, and had a completely different outlook from anything that I had seen in my east coast home. They possessed the qualities that I wanted to see in my service. I remember writing their boss at the end of my trip, singing praise after praise about each and every person that I had encountered. My trip was great, and it was hard for me to get on a plane and fly back to my East Coast home, but I had to do it. I brought some souvenirs back with me though. No, I didn’t get any “I Love Oakland” coffee cups or Athletics hats. I brought with me new ideas and a new outlook on EMS. For the next couple of months, I sounded like a broken record: “Well, out in California, they do it THIS way.” Or “Maybe we can try this thing I...