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A Slap in the Face to Paramedics Everywhere?

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As some of you probably know, last weekend I went to the Fire Department Instructors’ Conference (FDIC) in Indianapolis, IN and I spent a great deal of time wandering the convention floor, looking at cool things and talking to cool people. There were plenty of great things to see and great new things to learn about and I immersed myself in doing just that. One of the things I’m always interested in is looking at the new trends in ambulance design and the manufacturers always have their coolest new vehicles on display to feed my interest. However, while walking the conference floor, I came across an ambulance that did more to tick me off than it did to promote their new vehicle design. Seriously, it was like someone slapped me in the face. Here’s the picture I took from my phone:

 Ambulance Staffed by RNs

Does anybody see anything wrong with that picture? I was immediately ticked off…  I’m talking a level 7 hissy fit. I was livid for quite a while and if you follow my twitter feed, you probably saw the three or four times I TwitPic’d it.

I mean really? They had to put “Staffed By Nurses” in six inch high script on three sides of this thing?

I blocked out the name of the service that runs the ambulance and in all fairness to the manufacturer, this truck is awesome. I would be quite happy to work in this truck although being that it has no bench seat, its usefulness as a 911 truck is hampered by its inability to carry more than one patient at a time. However, I would flatly refuse to work in this truck or for the ambulance service that puts it on the street. I happen to know the service that bought it and I’m trying to avoid naming them directly, but they serve a midsize city in Illinois.

Before you go all West Side Story, whip out your switch blade and zip gun, and prepare to have a dance fight with the nurses out there, realize that I’m not mad at them. Sure, mostly they’re well-paid and have climate controlled jobs inside of well-lit buildings, but they didn’t do this to us. My beef is with the management of this particular ambulance service.

So, let’s say that you’re the manager of this particular ambulance service. Obviously, sitting there in your office you must think that your paramedics and EMTs are contemptible morons who live simply to cause you problems. Furthering your view of the world, you probably think that the rest of the medical profession and the members of the general public in your area view them the same way and simply don’t trust them to provide medical care when it’s like *really* complicated and stuff. You probably feel that everyone would feel safer knowing that their patient or loved one is traveling via the companionship of “nurses” whom you must view as actually being like actually *Competent* and stuff.  

And that’s what this rolling billboard to your contempt of your employees and their profession says about you. It’s a slap in the face to the good men and women you have working for you and there is flatly no excuse for it.

Here’s a tip, anonymous ambulance manager person (AAMP). There isn’t a need to have your precious ambulance be “staffed by nurses” when you have sufficiently equipped and prepared paramedics working in it. Paramedics are acute care specialists. We’re also experts in mobile medicine. Our education, training, and experience prepare us for the unique environment that we create when we move patients from one place to another. Critical Care Paramedics have the intensive Care experience, training, and background needed to operate in a critical care ambulance environment, nurses do not. Sure, ICU and ER nurses are great at Critical Care. However you shouldn’t regularly staff a critical care nurse in the transport environment for the same reasons that you wouldn’t put a critical care paramedic inside of the ICU. The professions are like in a lot of ways, but they’re separate for a good reason.

And you, AAMP, don’t respect that. Perhaps it’s because you’re burnt out. Perhaps it’s because you’ve beaten the system you’ve created into such a pulp that nobody wanted to staff your new Critical Care Truck. Perhaps it’s because of a lot of reasons, but it’s certainly not because you wanted the best in patient care or to show that your employees are capable of operating your shiny new “special” ambulance. No, you wanted “nurses” to “staff” that truck… and not only did you want the medical people you’re contracting with to know this, you wanted everyone who saw the truck to know it as the 6 inch high letters stating that fact clearly show. Do you think that the public views your crews as incompetent? If so, do you think that furthering the notion by advertising that your “special” truck is “staffed by nurses” will help that situation?

If your protocols are so draconian that even critical care certified paramedics cannot be allowed to staff that truck, then your protocol system is in the Stone Age. If your educational system isn’t up to the challenge of preparing your most experienced medics to staff it, then fix that problem. I know that there are great medic/nurse combos out there and I know that flight nurses have garnered quite a bit of respect out there in the world… and heck, I’m not knocking them for doing it. However, this is the time for Paramedics to step up and claim our turf. This ambulance clinched it for me. AAMP, your shortsightedness has caused me to lead a revolution of sorts here. You’re contempt for your staff has indicated to me that now is the time for paramedics and EMTs, such as the ones that work for you, to stand up and start claiming what is rightfully ours. Frankly, AAMP, your ambulance and your attitude is ridiculous and thinking like that must be stamped out right now by the good medics among us.

And I should also say this to the nurses in the audience before you start skewering me for knocking you: Have you looked at the debates in your circles concerning the use of paramedics in the ER and in other hospital units? Have you ever seen the term “Unlicensed Assistive Personnel”? Well I have, and it’s what the upper nursing echelon calls me and my professional colleagues.  It’s offensive, but hey… our jobs are different. You have the hospitals and the fixed facilities. That’s what you do. We have the field. It’s what we do. There’s a line, respect it. If you want to do EMS, go through a real paramedic program. If we want to do nursing, we should go to nursing school. Really, it’s that simple. The transport environment is difficult and requires the use of specialized personnel… which we have, they’re called paramedics. The medical care we provide is close to the care that you provide, except we have autonomy that you do not and we are use to working independently in the environment in which we operate. Your focus is different than mine.  You may be the best transport nurse out there, but even though you personally may be awesome, my profession needs to have people as awesome as you working on our side. That’s what this is about, not to knock your transport nursing skills, but to kick us paramedics in the shorts and get us to step up and maintain ownership of what we should own.

The responses I got back on Twitter show me that there are a lot of like minded individuals out there. Perhaps some of them might work for you, AAMP. You better take that into consideration because if I have my way the paramedics are going to get the notion that we’re not just a bunch of contemptible morons and we’re soon going to take control of our own profession. On that day, managers like you will be obsolete. Perhaps you can get a job managing nurses.

Here is my personal ‘thumbs down’ for the graffiti against my profession that you had someone slather on your shiny new truck, AAMP. My advice? Take it off and reconsider your staffing patterns. What you’re doing is bad for my profession. It affects me negatively, it affects my profession negatively, and it shall not go unanswered.

What do you think?

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Be sure to check out the follow-up to this post “A Slap in the Face? How about a Wake-Up Call?”

Also, for more of my thoughts on the state of EMS in the State of Illinois, check out “Dear Illinois EMS”

Posted by Ckemtp on April 26, 2010 • Filed under: 911 fail, Administration & Leadership, Ambulance, Ambulance Driver, Command & Leadership, EMS, EMS Management, EMS Motivation, EMS Topics, EMS rant, EMS training, Emergency Medical Services, Emergency Nurse, Paramedic, Scope of Practice, Vehicle Operation & Ambulances, ckemtp rants, ems 2.0, paramedic education, politics, potential, pride, profession, professionalism

Red Lights to the Left of them, Blue to the right! – Coloring Emergency Lighting

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So you’re driving down the road in an unfamiliar state, let’s say that it’s Iowa or Wisconsin, when in your rear-view mirror you see flashing red lights on a big utility truck coming your way. You can’t really make out what kind of truck it is, but you see red lights flashing so you pull over to let it go by. When it does, you realize that you’ve just pulled over for a tow-truck.

Or how’s this? The same thing happens, but it’s a flashing blue light in Colorado. When you pull over, you realize that you just got pulled over by a snow-plow.

I live in Illinois and work between IL and Wisconsin and there’s quite a bit of a difference between the different lighting colors and upon who can use what color light for what purpose. As a volunteer paramedic/Firefighter in Illinois I run a blue light with no siren in my personal vehicle. Even though I rarely turn it on, I have it in case I get stuck behind a 20mph Grandma on my way to the Big One. Interestingly, the blue light gives me no legal authority or any legal leeway on traffic laws and I must obey all traffic laws even while running the light. I Wisconsin, however, volunteer firefighters and EMS people may use red lights and sirens in their personal vehicles. They have the same legal status as governmental emergency vehicles when they’re driving with their lights activated.

In Iowa, volunteer firefighters may run blue lights in their personal vehicles with no legal authority granted them, and EMS volunteers may run clear (white) lights in their personal vehicles. Volunteers for fire and EMS combination agencies may run a mixture of both, however if a person volunteers for both a separate Fire department and a separate EMS agency, they must be careful to run the clear light for EMS responses and the Blue light for fire responses.

Of course, that’s just for personal vehicles right? Allowing emergency lights in the personal vehicles of emergency volunteers is a debatable issue in some circles. I argue for responsible control of their use and think that they are needed in some communities and not needed in others. Out of the 400-500 volunteer runs I respond to annually, I probably turn on my blue light for less than ten percent of the runs. I use it judiciously, but I know others that I can say did not.

However, this isn’t a post about volunteer emergency lighting and the pros and cons of it. It’s about the messed up spectrum of colors that we use on emergency vehicles in this country. Sure, we have the same stock colors pretty much everywhere. Red, blue, amber (yellow), green, clear (white), and in some states purple (Yes! Purple!). In the southern states, blue lights are for law-enforcement only and red is for fire only. In Wisconsin, law enforcement runs red and blue lights and fire and EMS is red only. In Iowa, up until a few years ago everyone ran red lights except for volunteer firefighters. They changed the law and now allow blue on the Passenger side only. In the City of Chicago, the Chicago Police Department runs blue only and the Fire department runs Red and Green. Downstate Illinois (Read: Outside of the City of Chicago City Limts) runs red and blue for all “Authorized Emergency Vehicles” and blue lights for the volunteers. Green lights are only permitted on stationary vehicles for command lights but can also be used for private security officers. As I mentioned before, in Iowa and Wisconsin, tow trucks run red lights. In Colorado, snow plows run blue. In some states, funeral processions run purple.

Confused?  I sure as heck am.

Consider this: Different lighting colors exist because different members of the driving public see different wavelengths of light in the spectrum (i.e. “Colors”) better or worse in differing ambient light conditions. Also, different colors penetrate different atmospheric and/or ambient light conditions better than others. You can see blue forever at night or in the fog, but not so much in the bright light. Red washes out to amber in the day light but is still fairly visible. Clear lights penetrate for a very long way but can be confused with light reflecting off of a surface almost the same as amber lights. We need a diverse spectrum of colors emanating from our response vehicles in order to ensure that the highest amount of drivers out there are able to see the lights. If someone’s color blind to the particular light color that we choose, they’re not going to see us all that well, are they?

The arguments that I hear for the use of lighting colors don’t hold much weight with me. Who cares if the public is able to see that an approaching emergency vehicle is Fire, EMS, Law Enforcement, ASPCA, Haz-Mat, Tech-Rescue, Volunteer, or miscellaneous. They just need to pull over and get out of the way. One color lighting schemes may give the agency a sense of personality or whatnot, but they’re certainly not the safest way to be seen. An emergency vehicle needs to throw out a lot of light across the spectrum of visible colors in order to help ensure the safest response possible.

So why are we having this hodgepodge of warning light colors? Why do people think they’re a good idea? I can think of a few advantages of having “law enforcement only” colors, as in reducing false traffic stops from people impersonating police officers, but having one color and one color only simply makes it easier for a criminal to get a hold of that one color of light. Why fire would only need red lights is a question that I can’t come up with a good reason for.

So good luck driving out there! If you see me, I’ll be on the side of the road letting a tow-truck go by. Then I’ll run my blue light in Wisconsin because we got a house fire in my district that touches the WI state line and I’ll get arrested for impersonating a police officer. Then I’ll be at work getting into a crash because someone driving out there was color blind to the color red.

Anyone want to add to the confusion? What colors do your state or country use? Is anybody else in favor of a national standard?

Posted by Ckemtp on April 7, 2010 • Filed under: 911 fail, Administration & Leadership, Ambulance, Ambulance Driver, Ambulance maintenance, Command & Leadership, EMS, EMS Health & Safety, EMS Management, EMS Topics, EMS rant, EMS safety, Emergency Medical Services, Fire Rescue Topics, In the Line of Duty, Iowa, Iowa EMS, Line of Duty, Management, Technology & Communications, Vehicle Operation & Ambulances, Vehicle Operations & Apparatus, accident, ckemtp rants, code-3, drive fast, lights and sirens, politics, technology-communications-ems-topics, volunteer fire department, volunteer firefighter

EMS 2.0 – What are our Core Beliefs?

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Building a foundation.

A comment I got on my last post – EMS 2.0 – Momentum Building – from Timothy Clemans has inspired me to write this post. He stated that EMS should develop our set of core beliefs. Click over to go read it, and then please come back because this is a participatory event.

Second Edit: I didn’t finish writing this as soon as I wanted to, and Ambulance Driver got out a post I want to answer, but yesterday and most of today have been blogging days off. So expect my answers to the issues raised by our respected friend AD

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What should we state are the core beliefs of the “EMS 2.0 Movement” as it’s being called now on Twitter, Google Groups, and as I’m sure by the time I get this finished, all over the interwebs? What are our core beliefs, the truths we hold to be self evident? What are our virtues and our rallying cry to fend off the slings and arrows that are sure to be launched at our group as we sally forth to set right what we see wrong in EMS today?

Here’s the deal, I’m from the country. I love country music (Yea? So?) and one of the songs I like is from INSERT NAME OF ARTIST HERE. In it, the HE sings “You’ve got to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything”. I believe in that. It actually shapes my political beliefs quite a bit. Here’s why, there is so much happening out there that one single human being cannot possibly keep up with it and form a coherent opinion on everything. Even if you tried, you’d still be basing some opinions on some shoddy reasoning and incomplete information. This is why I pay more attention to what I believe as a person. I have tried to develop my sense of right and wrong, and use that as a filter to determine whether a belief is good or bad.

That’s what we should do with EMS 2.0, in my opinion as someone who writes about it as a concept and yearns for change in my profession. We should develop our core beliefs and possibly a statement of our mission and use them as a filter to determine our stance and actions to take as we move forward. They must be general, universally acceptable, and applicable to a broad range of circumstance.

They should be the ethical standards that guide our progress.

And no, they cannot come directly from me and they will not be easy to implement. They must be collaborative and engaging to as many people as possible in order to have broad appeal and effectiveness.

So here’s what I’m going to do:

I’m going to write my thoughts on them, and my recommendations on what I think they should be. I ask you to comment on what I’ve written and add your own thoughts. If you have a blog, please link to any posts you’ve posted. Please join the Google Groups and follow EMS2Movement, (and ME too!) on Twitter. Participate and grow this. If we can harness the thoughts, feelings, and ideas of the multitude of EMS people out there from across the nation and the world, we’ve really got something here.

EMS is truly on the brink of something very exciting. Yes, I know you’ve heard that before and you have your doubts about whether anyone can actually do anything to fix what you see as being wrong with the profession. I say that EMS has never had what it has now, we have never had the EMS blogosphere and online communities bringing forth cooperative and collaborative voices in such a powerful way as now. Through our efforts we can bring positive change. We can set the tone and the direction for our profession to follow and set forth to improve emergency care for everyone.

It will be a long road, but through cooperation and collaboration, we can start the journey together.

And that’s powerful stuff.

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Proposed Mission Statement for EMS 2.0 – By: Chris Kaiser (Ckemtp)

“EMS 2.0 is the common name for a group of interested professionals within the Emergency Medical Services that strive for excellent and ever improving patient care within our communities. We will work to establish guidelines for EMS professional education, common licensure and certification standards, evidenced based medical care protocols, and professional ownership of EMS by paramedics and Emergency Medical Technicians. We will establish strategies for improving compensation and working conditions for our fellow professionals as well as strategies for increasing our service level to individual communities in the face of dwindling resources and revenue by developing new services and revenue streams for our industry. Our focus will be intentionally broad and collaborative and will serve to encompass the spectrum of well thought and tested ideas through research, communication, and self-regulation of our profession.”

Proposed “Core Beliefs” for EMS 2.0 – By Chris Kaiser (Ckemtp)

  • Emergency Medical Care is a right, not a privilege for those members of our society truly experiencing a life threatening emergency. Communities must fund EMS as they would fund any other essential public service.  
  • EMTs and Paramedics are members of a profession serving the most basic of human needs and the most diverse of all patient populations. We must attain the tools necessary to serve our mission through education and flexibility.
  • EMS providers must seek out new educational opportunities and work within regulatory systems to allow new knowledge to be translated to our care.

I’ll add more later. What are your ideas?

Posted by Ckemtp on October 24, 2009 • Filed under: Ambulance Driver, EMS, EMS Blog, EMS Topics, EMS ethics, Emergency Medical Services, Paramedic, blogosphere, ems 2.0, ems education, new perspective, paramedic education

The Medics are Revolting

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Howdy everyone! This pre-script note is my apology for starting off my first post on my new blog site with a rant. Yes… I am indeed ranting here.

“Do you hear the people sing? Singing the songs of Angry Men. It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again! When the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums, there is a life about to start when the morrow comes.

Will you join in my crusade? Who will be strong and stand with me? Beyond the barricade there is a world you long to see? Then join in the fight that will give you the right to be free!”

- Jean Valjean, Les Miserables

< rant>

“You’re just a dumb EMT/Paramedic. Know your place. Shut up and take it. Don’t make waves. Don’t question the system. You’re a cog in the wheel. The system is in place for reasons you don’t understand. Stay in your lane. You don’t have to understand, just obey. Don’t overstep your boundaries. Shut up and do your job. Don’t be a “problem child”.”

All of my professional life I have heard the above. All of my professional life there has been the chorus of the negative. The naysayers have been winning and the apathetic have been in control. The dreamers are troublemakers and the innovators are punished for breaking the rules. They must control us, they must hold us within our role and not allow their status quo and their version of where we are, who we are, and the direction that we should be heading to be challenged. They set the rules and we are to follow them without all but the most superficial of questions.

All of my professional life I have seen patients suffer for it. All of my professional life I have felt my peers and myself suffer for it. Patients suffer from poor, outdated care borne from outdated thinking and EMS people suffer from it through pitiful wages, laughable working conditions, and no professional respect. The ones that conform to the status quo are rewarded for their compliance through slightly better wages and working conditions, but their patients still suffer the same. Every service delivery model has it’s problems. There is no unified voice. Every system has it’s limitations and those who seek to limit it.

And I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.

EMS is suffering from apathy. We’re suffering from a distinct lack of the pioneering spirit held by those that came before us. They saw that the lack of a system was causing suffering in their communities and built a system to care for those persons emergently sick and injured. Through their trials, tribulations, work, and sacrifice a system was put into place that we currently function within. Amazingly, our system is functioning well in it’s adolescence and I am proud to carry on under the banner of the Emergency Medical Services. Our blessing and our curse is that we are the ones whom our society has burdened with the responsibility of responding to our fellow humans in their time of need. It is an awesome responsibility and one that we are honored to hold a place within.

But are we honoring the work of those pioneers who came before us? Are we truly accepting the burden of our responsibility to those we’re sworn to care for?

Sadly, no. We’re not.

Here’s the deal. As a profession, we have some decisions to make and some lines to draw in the sand. First off: We all have to care about the right things. Yes, in some cases, it’s debatable what the “right things” are… but here are some that I think everyone can agree on.

  1. Every patient deserves our best
  2. Every patient deserves our advocacy
  3. Every patient deserves the best medical care we can give them
  4. No patient risk harm due to petty political games or power struggles
  5. No patient should risk harm due to ego
  6. Every EMS provider is responsible to ensure the best care possible for patients in their charge

That all sounds simple, right? Unfortunately, you all know that it doesn’t work like that every time. Systems fall through the cracks, mediocre providers coast along providing mediocre care, ego trips by the various health professions engage in endless power struggles using patients, jurisdictions, and policy as pawns in the game. “Uppity” paramedics who question their role are shamed into submission. Patient advocates who stand up for the rights of their patient against apathy and whatever requires the least effort are chastised. We’re called troublemakers. We’re vilified for our pursuit of improvement in the system or our pursuit of the best possible care for every patient, every time.

EMS 2.0 is the maturing of EMS out of the adolescent trade phase into a grown-up profession. EMS people need to take a stand together, casting off our petty differences and realize that we are here for the same reasons. Our awesome responsibility is to the patients who depend on us. It’s something that we can no longer take lightly. We can no longer allow the various outside forces to dictate our educational standards, our standard of care, and our “place” in the medical hierarchy.

I know “my place”, and it’s not where the ER nurses want me to be. I’m not “unlicensed assistive personnel”. It’s not where the fire unions want me to be, I’m not “a firefighter who works on the ambulance”. It’s not where the private companies want me to be, I’m not a “Pulse and an EMT card”. As a professional paramedic, “my place” is dictated by the professional competence and responsibilities earned by the members of my profession as supported by science and as allowed by law.

That’s just it. A true “profession” meets the following criteria, as can be found on our friend Wikipedia:

The main milestones which mark an occupation being identified as a profession are:

  1. It became a full-time occupation;
  2. The first training school was established;
  3. The first university school was established;
  4. The first local association was established;
  5. The first national association was established;
  6. The codes of professional ethics were introduced;
  7. State licensing laws were established.[2]

So does EMS meet the above criteria? Yes, and no. I think that we are indeed a full-time occupation. Even volunteers must put in full-time hours to maintain proficiency. We have multiple training schools that are loosely based on the National Standard Curriculum, but even with that standard there’s a ton of variation throughout states and regions. For example, somewhere on this site you’re going to see a Google ad for a “Guaranteed Pass” online EMT class. My wife, Gkemtp(it), is going for almost 15 months. Is there a University school? Yes, go ask Firegeezer about George Washington University’s EMS degree program. While there really aren’t any degrees above the bachelor level that I know of, at least it’s something. There’s local and national EMS associations, like the Wisconsin State EMS Association and the NAEMT. There’s the EMS Professional Code of Ethics and every state has licensing laws.

So why aren’t we a respected profession? We meet the 7 standards, don’t we? Mostly anyway.

I’ll answer for you, it’s because we’re not united… yet.

Welcome to Life Under the Lights. Welcome to my little piece on the web. I believe that we can unite under free exchange of impassioned ideas about the profession we believe in. I invite you to dig in, saddle up, and help our profession achieve the greatness we know that it can.

< /rant>

Posted by Ckemtp on October 15, 2009 • Filed under: Ambulance Driver, EMS, EMS Blog, EMS Topics, EMS ethics, Emergency Medical Services, Paramedic, change, edemse, ems 2.0, everyday ems ethics • Tagged: , ,

Oh no you didn’t…

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Really? Did you just?? Oh come on now… you don’t really think??

Seriously…

Did you really just call me an “Ambulance Driver”?

An Ambulance Driver? Oh come on… Four years of college level classes, hundreds upon hundreds of hours of continuing educations, a veritable alphabet soup of certification acronyms behind my name, and this nifty Star of Life disco ball patch on my arm and you STILL just called me an Ambulance Driver? Really? Oh come now, do you know that calling me an ambulance driver is like calling a High School Teacher a “Nanny”, or calling a Police Officer a “Police Car Driver” or calling a Nurse a “Bedpan Jockey”, or calling a Firefighter a “Fire Truck Driver”, or calling a scientist a “Microscope Looker-Inner” or calling a Congressman a “Pork spewing bloviator” (I could go on, but I won’t… although that last one might be right)

EMS is an acronym for “Emergency Medical Services”. EMT stands for “Emergency Medical Technician”. Nationally, there are three levels of EMS professionals. Each level signifies to the public that the person holding the Title and the requisite license or certification has met stringent educational and training standards that allow them to take care of people. These levels are EMT-Basic, EMT-Intermediate, and EMT-Paramedic. Some of the states have expanded on this by offering additional levels of certifications between the levels, such as the EMT-IV Tech in Wisconsin (an EMT-Basic that can start IVs and give some limited IV meds), or the EMT-Paramedic Specialist in Iowa that is above the NREMT-P a bit but still below their Critical Care paramedic.

A paramedic these days has a college level education, takes over 1000 hours of didactic (classroom) time and can spend anywhere from 6 months to a year in clinical rotations. We can poke, prod, cut, inject, bandage, stabilize, evacuate, and care for you sixteen ways from Sunday. In my ambulance I carry 48 different emergency medications that I have to know how to use REALLY well or I can kill you. (I do know how to use them really well, trust me, so do my peers). I can intubate your trachea so you can breathe, reinflate your collapsed lung with a needle, surgically open your airway if I need to in order to save your life, and do a whole host of other things that you wish that you never ever need. My ambulance is a critical care unit on wheels that can be at your curbside in under 8minutes flat twenty four hours a day seven days a week. Today’s ambulances bring the emergency room right to you and begin advanced medical care right away. This care saves lives and improves your medical outcome greatly for a whole host of medical complaints.

And you, Joe public, still call me an “Ambulance Driver”. Which, if you hadn’t noticed, somehow irks me a bit.

Unfortunately for me, and for the members of my profession, it’s not your fault that you call me that, dear Joe Public. It’s my fault. It’s the fault of each and every EMS professional out there that you know so little about our profession and our industry that you resort to calling us that detestable term. It is our responsibility to get the word out. It is our responsibility to educate you about our life saving services, and our responsibility to let you know just how and when to use us properly. If we don’t do it, and therefore let the responsibility fall to others, we EMS people aren’t going to be happy with the job they do. We’re not going to be happy with the popular representations of paramedics in the popular media. We’re not going to be happy with the results of our public health education campaigns.

The American Heart Association has recently released a campaign entitled “Mission: Lifeline”. It’s a marketing campaign aimed at increasing public awareness of heart attack symptoms so that Joe Public calls us first when they start having the big one. If you’ve been reading this, you know that my all time biggest pet-peeve is when the people having conditions where they need us and need us now but aren’t dramatic like a car accident or cardiac arrest don’t call us. I can’t make a direct quote, but I read a study once where like 60% of people call a friend or family member first when they think they’re having symptoms of a heart attack. Calling EMS for these 60% or so of potential patients whose lives may very well depend on the early interventions we can provide them seems to be an afterthought. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve transported from small hospitals to big hospitals that were having the big one and DROVE THEMSELVES INTO THE ER without calling us.

Please, Joe Public, know that the VERY FIRST CALL you should make when you have pains in your chest is 911. Do NOT hesitate. Do NOT worry about the cost. JUST CALL US!! Do you know that approximately 1% of cardiac muscle tissue DIES AND CANNOT BE SAVED per MINUTE in a bad heart attack (myocardial infarction)? The difference is simple. You call 911 and usually (depending on where you are located) an ambulance arrives within 10minutes and starts lifesaving interventions and gives you medications to help slow or stop the damage in progress and salvage heart tissue that is being damaged. Please remember that “Time is Muscle” and that the extra expense of an ambulance is more than covered by the quality of life that we’re keeping for you. Really. Please call. Don’t wait. You can call your family AFTER you call 911. Please, I’m begging.

I’m also telling you EMS people out there to get the word out. Go market yourselves! If you want people to know what we do, it is YOUR PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY to tell them. Go, do it now. If you want my help to write something, e-mail me and I’ll help. For free even. It’s that important.

Ambulance driver….. Seriously.

Posted by Ckemtp on March 31, 2009 • Filed under: AHA, Ambulance, Ambulance Driver, American Heart Association, Command & Leadership, EKG, EMS, EMS Humor, EMS Management, EMS Topics, EMS ethics, EMS rant, EMT, Emergency Medical Services, Ethics, Mission Lifeline, Paramedic, Public relations, STEMI, ckemtp rants, edemse, ems 2.0, everyday ems ethics, funny, grumblemedics, inside the mind of a paramedic, new perspective, rant, technology-communications-ems-topics