Command & Leadership

Four things to bring order to a chaotic scene. A number of people in the various social media sites fixated on the one example where I allowed the mother of an infant to accompany her child in the back of my rig while I performed CPR. The objections were predictable. We don’t have enough room. I’m trying to save a ...

May 19 will be my sixth anniversary as a Borg drone here at Southwest Hive. I’m still not fully assimilated. Likely never will be. I jokingly call my employer The Borg because of their tendency to gobble up smaller ambulance services on the fringes of their territory, relentlessly expanding their empire, like, well, The Borg. And they do have their ...

A JEMS article on the Austin-Travis County EMS System asks is Austin’s EMS system broken? Honestly, ATCEMS hasn’t been anywhere near as good as its press clippings for at least ten years. See: laurels, resting on. The article concludes: “Using the ICMA six signs as a diagnostic, one could conclude the Austin-Travis County EMS system is in distress. The EMS ...

By way of Statter 911, we get this video classic. If you're of a libertarian bent, watching this guy trying to throw his weight around under color of authority will probably make your head explode. If you're an EMT, firefighter or medic, it should just make you sad: httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kxF2PLLSyAs#! Captain Not So Smart of Miami Dade Fire Rescue proceeds to ...

I don't do this often, so listen up. Here are my endorsements for the upcoming NAEMT elections:

A few months back, I engaged in a bit of trollery on Facebook and here on the blog when I asked readers to defend or refute the following statement: "Nobody in EMS is paid what they're worth. 25% are paid far less than what they're worth, and 75% are paid far more than what they're worth." The statement was in ...

Chime in with your comments, but keep them civil or you'll eat Ban Hammer. If the most constructive statement you have to offer is calling someone a hose monkey or a stretcher fetcher, or yet another tired iteration of "private EMS cares more about money than people" or "firefighters are a bunch of testoterone addicts who suck at medical care," find another forum, please.

It's long been known that the EMS system in our nation's capitol is littered with the professional corpses of many a medical director who tried, and failed, to teach that pig to carry a tune.

… there’s a new column on EMS1. Enjoy.