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The Best of The EMT Spot 2009

2009 was an absolutely amazing year for me. When I launched The EMT Spot one year ago this month, I had big ideas and big plans, but I never imagined the people I would encounter in the blogsphere and beyond. I didn’t anticipate the interactions with readers or the volume of visitors the site would receive. I didn’t plan on the support or the encouragement or the stream of emails from individuals saying, “We love it … keep it up.”

In January of last year, the site received around 300 visitors (I wasn’t keeping official track until March.) During those early months, blogging often felt like talking to myself in an empty room. I often wondered if I should be medicated. (The question is still unresolved.)

March was the first month that we broke 1,000 unique visitors. Then things started to take off. By December we were coming ever-so-close to a mind-blowing 10,000 unique visitors per month. Sometimes, I close by eyes and picture what a room full of 10,000 people looks like. I’ve never spoken to a crowd that large and sometimes I contemplate that image while I’m spell-checking my latest post.

One thing that hasn’t changed is my motivation to keep putting out useful content and my big plans for the future. At this moment, my first e-book is being poured over by my editorial team and my graphic designer. The book will be offered right here for free and I expect to have it available by mid-month. I’m also starting work on my first feature product. A tool designed to address the single biggest problem I’m approached with here online. For more details on both of these projects, you’ll just have to be patient and watch for more.

Much of what made 2009 such an exceptional year had to do with you, my faithful readers and for that, I sincerely thank you. I am humbled by your presence here and your gracious attention.

Without further ado, here are my picks for my favorite posts of 2009. I present to you my essential guide to the year that was.

1. Connections. Sure you communicate, but do you make connections? One of my all time favorite posts.

2. Unconventional Thoughts on Emergency Service. This was a very different post for me. Instead of writing on a topic I made a list of ideas that I’d been carrying around in my head. Any one of them could have become a full post. (Some of them did.) I put more good ideas in to this single post than any other I wrote in 2009. In retrospect, it may have been a little to much.

3. You Can’t Give Away What You Don’t Have. Here’s one of those thoughts that became its own post. I first learned this lesson from Dr. Wayne Dyer and it really resonated with me. It has significant implications for people who chose our line of work.

4. Get Anyone To Go With You to The Hospital. I’ve never debated with myself about whether or not to write about something so much as I did with this topic. I debated because I know, from practice, how powerful this technique is and I could see it being abused. This technique is so powerful it could be unethical. But I wrote about it anyway and I’m glad I put it out there.

5. Six Techniques to Nail The IV Every Time. Sometimes, when you’re writing, you feel like you just have to take all of your golden eggs and just dump them out on the table. Lots of golden eggs in this one.

6. Functions of The Abdominal Organs. This post got almost no attention from the regular readership but it continues to produce about thirty hits a month from search engines. I was proud of this post because I felt that I presented a huge amount of boring and mundane (but necessary) information in a very casual, informal voice and an interesting style. I wish more text books were written like this. If you need to review the functions of the abdominal organs, you could do worse than this post.

7. What Is Blood Anyway? Another post where I felt like I started to really find my voice as a technical writer / teacher. This post is written very similar to how I sound when I teach in front of a classroom, with a little less goofing off and coffee sipping.

8. Five Big Trauma Scene Mistakes You Can Avoid. I’ve had some trauma scenes go amazingly smooth and I’ve had some go very, very bad. When they go bad, it’s usually one of these five things that caused it. Writing this post was like therapy.

9. Remembering The Glasgow Coma Score. The second most popular EMT Spot post of all time and the one people reference more than any other when they meet me.

10. The Greatest Generation. One thing I’d really like to do in 2010 is get more guest authors on the site. In this post Matthew Bergland brought a unique perspective to the caregiver role. He was right on target.

11. What is Ketosis Anyway. I liked this post because I didn’t understand the ketosis concept as well as I should have when I started researching it and I felt like I explained a fairly complex process in a fairly uncomplicated way. (It’s harder than it looks.)

12. Coping With Grief and Tragedy. I was inspired to write this piece by fellow blogger Mark Glencorse. This was one of the first times I let myself really explore some of my very personal experiences right there on the screen for the readers. While I was writing it I felt that, if I backed away from this subject, I wouldn’t be loyal to my own mission for the blog, to fill the site with information valuable to professional EMTs. If I was going to be true to the mission, I needed to write this sooner or later.

13. EMT Basic Skills Are Not Basic. One of the very first posts I wrote and still one of my favorites. It probably always will be. I wrote this post before I even went live with the site. I wanted it to be one of the first things people saw when they visited for the first time. It also explains why I named the blog The EMT Spot.

14. 6 Reasons Why You Should Be A Better EMT. I also outlined this post before I went live with the site, but this one didn’t actually make it to the readers until December. I think it was worth the wait.

15. The Ultimate EMS Protocol. I knew I would eventually outline the STAR CARE principals for the readership. I didn’t think it would take me so long to get around to it. The email response to this post was really tremendous and I made some great contacts with EMS managers and caregivers around the world. The photo I used in this post was exactly what my desktop looked like when I was writing the post. I don’t remember what I was listening to on the MP3 player. Probably Metallica or Rodrigo y Gabriella.

16. Stop Whining. Yes it was harsh, but I still like it. Maybe more than I should.

17. The Normalization of Deviance. Since I wrote this post, I’ve become so much more acutely aware of how much the concept effects us and how critical it is that we understand it. This is important to so much of what we do each day when we prepare to manage emergencies.

18. The Art of The Nasopharangeal Airway. I was initially reluctant to put a skills category on the site. I thought skills would be a difficult thing to tackle in this forum. This post demonstrates how far I’ve come. I’m still trying to perfect the right way to convey skills development online.

19. The SOAP Reporting Break Through. This was a long post, but I feel like I packed so much good content in there. It’s taken my twenty years to get my SOAP report writing to the point where I could write this post. I also thought that I found a very cool picture to go with it, thank-you-very-much.

20. 7 Flawless Physical Restraint Tips. This is a class I’ve always enjoyed teaching and this was a post I really enjoyed writing.

There you have it. 2o of my favorite posts from 2009. I hope your 2009 was as awesome as mine and  wish you well in the coming year. Thanks for being an essential part of this project. I’m glad you’re here and I hope to see you back for more in 2010.

Be well,

Steve