Behind Every Great EMT…

Call it a curiosity. I wanted to know how the EMT Spot readers would finish the sentence, “Behind every great EMT…” So I asked.

I asked on twitter. I asked on Facebook. I even asked right here at the blog. And the answers poured in. Your responses represented the full spectrum of personalities that inhabit our workplace. There were poignant responses, cynical responses and a bunch of funny ones. The responses made me smile and frown and think.

Within this list of answers you’ll find feedback from 30+ year EMS veterans and newbies just getting their EMS feet wet. Everyone is represented. And the responses are telling.

I’m rather proud of how this little experiment turned out. I hope you find these responses as enjoyable and thought provoking as I did. Thanks for all your contributions. Aside from categorizing these contributions, I’ve made no further editorial additions. This post will become part of the guest posts category, because it was written by you.

Complete the sentence, “Behind every great EMT…”

Continue Reading…

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.

Continue Reading…

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.

Continue Reading…

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.

Continue Reading…

What Makes A Good EMT?

I get a bunch of E-mails from people just starting their EMT education who want advice on how to excel in their programs. “How should I prepare? What books do you recommend?” The questions vary but their is always the familiar flavor of enthusiasm and the same basic question, “How do I do this well?”

Success in this field is fairly predictable. Use the right recipe and you’ll get there. I think the hierarchy of EMS success looks like this:

1.) Attitude

2.) Motivation

3.) Tolerance for repetition

4.) Goal orientation

5.) Strategy and tactics

6.) Performance

Continue Reading…

The Normalization of Deviance

In the span of a generation, NASA has lost two spacecraft and 14 pilots in the collective disasters of the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia. Can you tell me why? Trust me, it’s worth exploring.

The space buffs in the crowed might recall that faulty O-rings in the Challenger’s solid rocket boosters failed and allowed supper heated gasses to escape. The result was a catastrophic explosion and a sullen announcement from my school principal in the middle of sophomore science class. In his quiet monotone, we learned that the mighty Challenger, moments before, had been destroyed and the crew was lost.

Our teacher didn’t know quite what to say, and in the silence that followed, my sixteen year old world got a little smaller.

More of you might recall that Challenger’s sister ship, Columbia, burned up on reentry returning from a mission in 2003. The Columbia’s heat tiles were damaged when a piece of foam insulation dislodged during takeoff and struck the tiles on the wing. Those tiles later failed under the heat of reentry and the craft burned up over the mid-west. Interesting right? But what does all this have to do with EMS? Follow me on this next part.

Continue Reading…

Be Remakable

I’m going to ask you to try something out for me. And then come back and tell me what you did and how it went. I want you to go to your next shift with this idea:

Be Remarkable

That’s it.

What would it look like? How would you do it? Those are valid questions. They also might be resistance to the idea of being remarkable.

You may have grown accustomed to the idea of laying low, going with the crowd and being rather unremarkable. Here are some ideas.

1.) When little kids and grown adults are inspired by you, you’re remarkable.

2.) When you walk on to a scene and the energy you bring with you changes the mood for the better, you’re remarkable.

Continue Reading…

Six Techniques To Nail The IV Every Time

Did you get the IV?

Sometimes it seems like your performance on the whole call can be reduced to the success or failure of the IV start. Rarely does the successful treatment of the patient hinge on a successful IV placement but sometimes it can certainly feel that way.

The best way to ensure that you’re ready when that make or break it IV start does come your way is to start a lot of them when the pressure is not on. If you wait until game day to practice, you’re a whole lot more likely to fail.

The single biggest factor that separates the IV virtuoso from the weekend hacker is practice and experience, so when the patient could use an IV, jump in there. The patient’s a kid. … Get in there. The patient is a frail, elderly woman on Coumadin. … Get in there. IVs are nothing to fear. Start practicing these six IV start tips. Before you know it, you’ll be an IV starting superstar.

Continue Reading…

Beware of “Almost Good Enough”

This article was written in partnership with Greg Friese at Everyday EMS Tips. Greg and I decided to both write on the topic, “You don’t have to settle.” You can find Greg’s contribution here. If you’re an EMS blogger we’d like to invite you to write your own post on this topic. Send me an e-mail an we’ll add your link as well.

What makes you afraid?

When we were kids we were afraid of things like the boogie man, monsters in our closets and thunder storms. As we become adults we got over most of those fears. We recognized them for the irrational and false beliefs that they were and we grow up. You might even say that letting go of these irrational fears is a part of becoming an adult.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that our fears went away. It also doesn’t mean that our big people, grown-up fears are any more rational than our childhood fears were. Just as certainly as kids will be afraid of thunder and dark closets at night, the grown-up boogie man is failure.

Adults fear failure. We take comfort in the security and predictability of success. As a result, we tend to look toward endeavors where success is a near certainty. Playing the game well within the boundaries of our ability is a great way of warding off the fear monster. We get to chose our goals and our challenges. Out on the outer edges of our abilities lies the dark closet where the possibility of failure lies in wait.

I know what you’re thinking. OK, now Steve is going to give us the old, “Let go of your fears and aim for high goals” speech. We’ll not quite. Yes, I think there’s great benefit in letting go of the fear of failure. But I’d like to go a step farther. I think that there is a much scarier boogie man than failure. I’d like to give you something even more worrisome to fear. A monster that is responsible for far more human grief, failed ambitions and shattered dreams than failure. If you’re going to walk around with a gut full of irrational fear, fear this:

Fear almost good enough.

Continue Reading…

Stop Whining

Yes, I’m talking about you.

We are talking about you being more satisfied with your work right? We’re talking about you being better at what you do and accomplishing more and getting more of the stuff you want and less of the stuff you don’t want in your career right?

Perhaps I should have mentioned this earlier. There is one little essential detail to the whole equation. You have to stop that annoying habit of whining about stuff. How do I know you’re a whiner? Because, for the most part, we’re all whiners. We all do it. Sure there are different degrees of whiners. Some folks are world class, champion whiners and some folks are merely amateur whiners who only dabble in the complaining arts on the side.

I’m looking out for you here when I say this, really. It’s time to stop. Why, you ask, should you give up your beloved complaining? Well, there are a whole bunch for reasons. Here’s the big one. You’re never going to reach your real potential as long as you’re stuck in the destructive habit of whining about stuff. It puts you in the totally wrong mindset.

Here are a few of the reasons you need to put a pacifier in it.

Continue Reading…