The E-Book is Coming!

OK, I can’t keep this to myself any longer. It’s time for the big announcement. With the final draft still in the mail from my editorial team and the final design still lacking a few details, it would probably be best to just keep this under wraps for a few more weeks, but I can’t wait.

My first E-book is scheduled for release on January 21st, one week from today. The e-book will be free and it will be available right here at The Spot.

The Book is called The Non-Conformists Guide to EMS Success. This book is the culmination of two decades of EMS experiences, mistakes, failures, trials, and errors that lead to my ultimate success. My goal was to write something that would be useful to EMTs at any stage in their career. And I didn’t hold anything back. This is my road map to finding true success and fulfilment in EMS work.

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Staked Down With a Twig

Circus elephants present a containment problem. It’s hard to keep a big elephant cage around wherever you go. So when baby circus elephants are trained, they are staked down to a pole with a chain. The young elephants pull and struggle against the chain for a while and then learn the limitations of the situation.

Soon the elephant can be staked down with a wooden stick. The elephant could easily break the confinement but it doesn’t try. It’s already learned what it can and can’t do. To add further insult to the awesome, unrecognized power of the beast, by adulthood many of the elephants can be training to pull up their own stake and move it on command and then remain in the spot that they re-staked themselves too.

I think about the circus elephant staking itself down often. Mostly when I hear my colleagues and friends talk about the obstacles that prevent them from recognizing their goals. You know what I’m talking about. All that stuff we’re waiting for before we can start really moving toward our vision for our life.

When I look at the awesome human potential that we carry around within us and then I consider the little, insignificant things we chose to see as barriers, I think about the elephant.

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Ten Things You Can’t Learn About EMS

                                        From Your Computer

As you might imagine, I’m a big fan of E-learning. I also have a soft spot for the social media craze. But there are still a few things that you just can’t learn staring at a computer screen. OK, there are a LOT of things you can’t learn staring at a computer screen. Here are ten:

1.) You can’t learn pattern recognition.

If you’ve ever wondered about how experienced EMTs and medics can figure out exactly what’s wrong with the patient two steps inside the front door, it’s not magic. It’s pattern recognition. When you’ve seen what CHF looks like a hundred times, you can pick out the pattern almost instantaneously. Watch a hundred people have cardiac chest pain and you’ll be able to see it from across the room. But it doesn’t matter how many times you read those chapters in your books. You need to see it.

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Coping With Grief and Tragedy

Mark, an EMS blogger friend over at Medic999 wrote an outstanding piece last month on his struggles coping with a recent call. I have great admiration for writers who are willing to put themselves out there in very real ways. Mark and I are similar people. We’re both in our thirties with wives and children. And we both tend to have a positive outlook on our careers.

We also have the similar experience of feeling moments of grief at very random times. I know exactly what Mark is talking about when he explains the experience of driving along in his car and tearing up and not understanding why.

When I was a young twenty-something paramedic, I had an older paramedic tell me about a similar thing happening to him. He would just be doing something completely inconsequential and he’d have these moments of grief just wash over him. His doctor even discussed putting him on a SSRI medication. (He declined.)

When he told me about it I remember thinking he was a bit whacked. I just couldn’t relate. Until I turned 34 or 35 … and it started happening to me. I’d be playing with my kids, listening to a song or driving my car and suddenly I’d just feel overwhelmingly sad.

I don’t subscribe to the idea that feelings build up inside of you and need to be released. I don’t think there is any overstocked warehouse of grief or sadness somewhere within me and some internal supply manager is yelling, ‘We need to offload some of this stored up grief in here!” I don’t buy it. I do believe that we develop triggers to certain feelings. We may or may not be aware of them. It makes sense to me that when we work this close to human tragedy and grief we develop neuro-associative triggers and when we experience those same stimuli later on we produce similar feelings.

I wasn’t sure how to cope with this at first. I’ve given it a lot of thought over the past few years. This how I have chosen to frame the experience. If your dealing with something similar, you may find this helpful.

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