Gresham’s Law and EMS Social Media

In economics, there’s a concept called Gresham’s Law.  Gresham’s Law states that bad money drives out good.

Sadly, the same is often true in EMS social media.  Bad discussion, particularly in some forums, drives away good discussion.  Most EMS pages on Facebook in particular are dominated by the loudest voices in the forum – most often poorly educated providers who repeat dogma, dated information, and flat out incorrect information. Combine that with some who want everyone to be “supportive” and not discourage people and you have a forum where bad information drives out good information.  Many of my intelligent colleagues in EMS and medicine have tired of trying to educate the unwilling.

And then, there’s another factor at play as well.  People in many of these forums want to discuss unlikely or arcane scenarios to the detriment of mastering the basics of good medical care.  Random medical-legal scenarios involving revocation of care, bizarre EKG cases, and random trauma pictures flood EMS social media.  Yet, there’s still a significant chunk of EMS providers who think that you can reverse a cardiac arrest with dextrose or naloxone (Hint: You can’t.) or that a long spine board is mandatory for every patient (Hint: The National Association of EMS Physicians and all of the current science says no.) And let’s not even talk about the number of providers at all levels who think that all respiratory difficulty gets treated with a nebulizer full of albuterol.

Bad information from bad participants drives out good information from the people who might know something. There are too many EMS social media participants who are constantly analyzing zebras when they can’t recognize the herd of horses coming towards them.

I don’t have a solution.  As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink.  While I try to educate when and where I can, I find I’d rather work with those who want to learn and want to improve themselves and their practice of medicine.  When you find those people, it makes it all worthwhile.  Until then, don’t forget the over the counter pain medicine of your choice from banging your head against your desk.

Comments

  1. Gene Gandy says

    Well spoken. Perhaps the most important word in EMS is “why.” When folks come up with ideas that are contrary to good medicine, “why” is the word that shuts them down. “Why did you give albuterol to that patient with cardiogenic pulmonary edema?” Silence usually follows.