Lead, Follow, or Get the Hell Out of the Way

Posted on January 23, 2019 Written by

If you’ve been following any EMS news as of late, you’ve read about the position paper that paramedics should have a minimum of a two year degree. The position paper was issued by the National Association of EMS Educators, the National EMS Management Association, and the International Association of Flight and Critical Care Paramedics. The position paper was peer reviewed and published in the academic journal Prehospital Emergency Care.  Shortly thereafter, what could charitably be called a rebuttal was issued by the International Association of Firefighters and the International Association of Fire Chiefs. Needless to say, the fire service, with some notable exceptions, has little interest in advancing EMS except as a continued source of revenue and mission creep.

So, you ask where our national “voice for EMS” was and what they had to say. Basically, what they said was that there were competing positions worthy of further study. In other words, they took no position.  Regardless of my feelings about the IAFF, the IAFC, and the fire service in general terms, the fire service took a position and they advocated for what they believe to be in the best interest of their members and their trade. I’ll give them respect for that.  And they’ve, by and large, been successful in crafting public policy to their benefit.  The NAEMT?  Not so much.  They took no position. As the famed Texas liberal populist Jim Hightower once said, “There’s nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow stripe and dead armadillos.”

One can argue that by taking no position, the NAEMT took a position in favor of the status quo, which may actually be closer to the IAFC/IAFF position which can be summed up by Pink Floyd, “We don’t need no education.” In all candor, I do think there are significant challenges and hurdles that face EMS if we advance to a degree requirement and that such challenges need to be seriously discussed, especially with higher education leaders.

But NAEMT is an enigma in the world of professional associations.  NAEMT’s primary connection to most members is its development, marketing, and delivery of a plethora of card courses, which are NAEMT’s primary revenue source. NAEMT’s lobbying efforts are primarily directed at the Federal level, while the majority of EMS regulation and legislation happens at the local and state levels. The one clearly identified national level solution, namely a change to how the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) funds EMS, doesn’t appear to be on NAEMT’s radar. For me, as an EMS provider, the main benefit that NAEMT provides me are member discounts.  NAEMT’s real challenge is that it claims to represent any and all with an EMS certification. As I’ve said before, there’s not a ton of common ground to be found between everyone in EMS.  A flight medic working in rural Nevada has very different needs and wants from their professional association than does a firefighter/EMT who maintains their EMT certification because it’s a condition of employment at their department.

Maybe it is time to realize that NAEMT doesn’t speak for EMS.  And just maybe it’s time for paramedics to demand a separate voice for the advancement of paramedics. After all, the American Bar Association doesn’t represent attorneys, paralegals, law clerks, and legal assistants. The American Bar Association represents lawyers and lawyers alone.

Anyone for a National Association of Paramedics? And the acronym also reminds me of many paramedics’ favorite pastime, me included, namely NAP.

It’s time for paramedics to be our own voice and advocate for ourselves.

Filed Under: EMS, EMS Education, EMS Politics

Election Night (Not what you think)

Posted on November 7, 2018 Written by

Election Night brings out the worst in many of us. In large part because of the 24 hour news cycle amplified by social media, we get way too invested in politics and sometimes let our mouth overload our rear. (Pro-tip for those of us who love politics and love discussing it, private groups are the way to go on Facebook.)

I saw some of the worst behavior come from my fellow members of the Bar. Many attorneys I know were posting things that I wouldn’t have expected from dispassionate professionals.  The comments (and they were from both sides of the political aisle) ranged from sour grapes, veiled passive-aggressive statements, or out and out statements that they’d be unfriending people. (Another pro-tip here.  I do know some of these people and it speaks volumes as to their professionalism and whether I might believe they have the temperament to handle a case I might refer their way.)

Late last night, a post started making its way through EMS social media showing a paramedic saying (in part), “I’ll start asking if you are a trump (sic) supporter – if you are, y’all will die in my ambulance.”  The response from EMS was swift and gave me a great deal of hope for our emerging profession.  Everyone denounced it.  Whether you wanted to “make America great again” or identified as a democratic socialist, everyone agreed that this sentiment had no place in EMS.  And they spoke up.  Not only did they speak up, they made a point to notify this guy’s employer and the various licensing entities that they didn’t want him in our profession.  At least one employer terminated their relationship with him by morning and at least one licensing agency is aware of his temperament to practice as a paramedic.

Regardless of whether the gentleman deserves to remain employed or certified as a paramedic, our profession spoke with one voice and said that we won’t tolerate such a mindset. And my other profession, the profession of law, has become so politicized and activist (on both sides) that we have, at least in some part, lost track of what we’re supposed to be doing, namely zealously representing our clients and providing them with sober counsel.

Last night, EMS stepped up and took a stand for our profession.  And for a change, we did it better than the lawyers.  Pardon me while I brag on being a paramedic. We’ve beat the other professionals at being professional and separating the personal from the professional.

Filed Under: EMS, Law, Politics

KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid

Posted on November 6, 2018 Written by

When you’re involved with EMS social media, you see a lot of stuff scrolling through.  Some of it, like FOAMfrat, does a great job of making advanced life support and critical care concepts easy to understand. Someone much smarter than me said “Smart people take difficult concepts and make them easy to understand.”

Unfortunately, you also see some material that does the opposite.  A few moments ago, I saw a proposed post for an EMS education group that I help manage.  The post was about a flowchart than an instructor developed for EMT students to assess and manage patients. Unfortunately, the flowchart was poorly laid out and looked more like a bad Microsoft Project diagram for IT project management.  I’d be surprised if the average EMT student could follow it, much less master it.  And if by some fluke they did, they’d be convinced that they had achieved some level of mastery of medicine. (Spoiler alert.  A lot of EMT training is based on the same stuff that our ancestors learned in Boy Scouts or from the green American Red Cross first aid book.)

Friends, whether you’re a new student in a first responder class or an experienced flight paramedic, EMS isn’t all that complex.  Let’s stop trying to make it complex.  For at least some of it, we make it complex so as to justify our ego and sense of self-importance.  The average EMS textbook is written at roughly a tenth-grade reading level.  That fact alone should bring you right back to Earth.

At all levels, prehospital care can be summed thus.  For trauma care: control the bleeding, protect the airway, and get the patient to an appropriate trauma facility.  For medicine: assess, diagnose, treat, and get the patient to the right hospital the first time to fix their problem.  If you can do those things, do two other things as well.  First, be nice.  Second, make the patient comfortable.  Both of these additional guidelines also apply to being nice to the patient’s family, bystanders, and other healthcare professionals.  The only variation between an entry level first responder and a flight nurse will be in the treatment options and assessment tools you have available to you.

EMS doesn’t have to be hard.  But if all of this is still too hard or complex to understand, I’ll leave you with some sage advice that I got from an experienced flight medic the day I got my paramedic certification. “If you don’t know what else to do, it’s a good idea to take the patient to the hospital.”

EMS.  No, it doesn’t have to be hard.

Filed Under: EMS, EMS Education, EMS Social Media

More on the Four Year EMS Degree

Posted on September 10, 2018 Written by
So, I’m thinking more about the push for an EMS degree. In theory, I think it’s a great idea. But here’s a couple of observations.
 
The “other countries have it” argument. Those other countries also have a national healthcare system where EMS is integrated into healthcare. We don’t have that in the United States. Additionally, some of these other countries don’t have a tradition of mid-level practitioners that the United States does like advanced practice nurses and physician assistants, so in some of these cases, paramedic providers are stepping into roles that might be filled by other healthcare professionals here.
 
As a corollary to that, much of our EMS is provided by the fire service and by large private EMS companies. The fire service does EMS because it “has to” in order to maintain some justification for its existence. It has no interest in EMS save for staffing and budget. They’re not going to be advocates for EMS. As for the privates, they want low wages and lower educational standards, since they’ve got a long history of churning through employees and needing a steady inflow of new people.
 
Volunteers. Yeah, truthfully, it’s going to be hard to require a four year degree to volunteer on the ambulance. And unfortunately, there are parts of the USA where the local authorities have chosen not to fund an EMS system or there’s not sufficient people to do it. As the old adage goes, you get the EMS system you pay for.
Clinical outcomes. Everyone talks about evidence based medicine, including me, until they don’t like what it says. Is there any evidence that a more educated paramedic provider has better clinical outcomes. Australia and Canada both have college-educated providers and that’s become the norm there. Yet, these paramedics often have a more limited scope of practice than many locations in the United States.  Is there any evidence to indicate that American paramedics with a lower educational standard and (often) a broader scope of practice have worse clinical outcomes than their more educated foreign colleagues? As a further question, would a four year degree expand the current scope of practice for American paramedics?  As a liberal arts graduate myself, I believe the real value of a four year degree comes from the critical thinking and communications skills that a core liberal arts curriculum develops, but the majority of EMS degree advocates seem to believe that only a four year EMS specific degree is going to “save” EMS.

Actual logistics. Let’s assume that we do decide to put in a degree requirement for paramedics. Let’s further assume that it’s going to be a four year degree. How many degree programs exist? Are there sufficient faculty with an “appropriate” terminal degree in the field to satisfy the higher education accreditation authorities?  And on that note, what is an appropriate terminal degree for EMS?  Would we now end up inadvertently or intentionally creating a doctorate in EMS education?  Would current EMS educators be ineligible to continue what they’re already doing? The demand for nurses and nursing education has already created a shortage of nursing educators.  What would EMS education do to meet that demand on day one?

What would happen with an actual EMS degree requirement?  The skeptic and cynic in me says that most places wouldn’t have degree-educated paramedics.  Instead, the “powers that be” will do one of two things.  They will continue the current paramedic education and call it something else.  Or they will water that down even further and create another “paramedic light” certification. See also: Rhode Island’s EMT-Cardiac, New York’s Advanced EMT-Critical Care, NREMT Intermediate-99 (thankfully being phased out), Virginia’s EMT-Intermediate, or Iowa’s “paramedic” based on the NREMT I-99 standard (the actual “full” paramedic in Iowa was called a “paramedic specialist). And I will make you a bet that the majority of large EMS operations in this country will immediately default to providing service at this “paramedic light” level.

 

If we want degree educated paramedics and believe that’s for the best, we’re going to need to answer these questions.  And we’re also going to need find the funding for this. That probably means getting the primary payer of EMS services, the Federal government, to change Medicare/Medicaid so that EMS systems are paid for treatment and services rendered rather than just transport mileage.  But to do that means that we’re going to have to be more involved in the political process rather than the occasional appearance on a designated “lobby your politician” day where you wear a uniform that looks something like a third world dictator. The truth be told, increased EMS education and increased EMS reimbursement are like the chicken and the egg.  I don’t know which comes first.

 

I’d also point out something said by a former EMS director of mine.  He said he’s paying paramedics (and EMTs) what he can afford to pay them, not what he wants to pay them.  Again, until reimbursement changes, there’s no magic source of increased paramedic compensation, even with higher education.

Before you think I oppose an EMS degree, let me say that I don’t.  I believe that a four year degree is appropriate for a medical professional. I also don’t know that all of the advocates of an EMS degree have fully thought out the impact of such a requirement, even if gradually phased in.

I believe that our current America EMS system may be like Churchill’s definition of democracy. Churchill said that “Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…”  I believe that we may find this to be equally true for American EMS if we suddenly change our educational paradigm without considering the consequences.

These concerns and this rant was brought to you by a mostly proud graduate of a certificate granting paramedic program who also had a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts followed by a graduate and a professional degree. Higher education taught me to think. Paramedic education taught me to do. And coming into a paramedic program with a college degree taught me to think and consider what I do as a paramedic.

Filed Under: EMS, EMS 2.0, EMS Education

On The EMS Degree

Posted on September 6, 2018 Written by

So, because of a prominent fire chief’s article against EMS degrees, all of the usual EMS advocates are coming out for a gradual phase-in of a degree requirement. And it stands to reason that the fire service wants a low entry standard for EMS.  Most fire departments, especially the larger urban ones, see EMS solely to justify their existence.  Smaller fire departments often see taking on the EMS mission as a way to get increased funding, most of which will go toward the big red trucks and not the ambulance.  In many fire departments, the ambulance is actually called the “penalty box.”

In theory, I’m in favor of a degree requirement to be in EMS, especially at the paramedic level. More education can and should produce better paramedics. But with some experience in both consuming and regulating higher education, I know that giving power to higher education can have unexpected consequences.

So, since this train seems to be gathering some steam, let me throw out my conditional support.  I hope the advocates for EMS education and those accrediting college based EMS programs will listen before we hear about these issues arising once a degree requirement is truly and fully implemented.

  1. Grandfather current providers. I’m told that’s already in the works, but requiring everyone to back and upgrade to an EMS-specific degree would likely overwhelm each of these college based programs.  And for those who already have a bachelor’s or higher in a field outside of EMS, it would be unnecessarily repetitive.
  2. As a condition of accreditation, college-based EMS programs should be required to explicitly state how they plan to meet the needs of EMS students, especially those who are currently in the workforce. Such a commitment should address hours that the courses are offered, locations of the courses, transfer-ability of hours for non-EMS specific courses, and availability of clinical sites.  If you ask why I have a paramedic certificate instead of a paramedic degree, I’ll give you a simple answer.  The community college based program serving my area only offered the paramedic program on a full-time basis during daytime hours only.  With an outside career and already having three degrees, attending a certificate-only program was a no-brainer.
  3. Distance education is a must.  It stands to reason that those against an EMS degree will use the “poor volunteers” as a stalking horse to protect those who stand the most to benefit from poorly educated EMS providers — namely the fire service and the larger private EMS systems. Ensuring that EMS degree programs have distance learning AND nearby clinical rotation sites will ensure that rural and volunteer systems have their needs addressed — and eliminate one more argument against an EMS degree.
  4. In an ideal world, I’d like to see some sort of promise or commitment of an alternate entry degree program for those who already have a bachelor’s degree or higher. Such a program should be tailored to get people the scientific background they need for prehospital medicine (primarily anatomy and physiology) and the coursework necessary to function as a paramedic.
  5. Finally, the accrediting bodies need to ensure that these commitments and promises from higher education are kept ongoing. It will be entirely too easy to start backpedaling once the initial accreditation occurs.

I sincerely hope that those who advocate for an EMS degree take this in the spirit in which it’s meant — a reasonable way to ensure that we actually accomplish the goal of creating better educated paramedics and not solely in guaranteeing higher education a continued revenue stream. If we don’t plan now to address the needs of EMS providers and foresee unintended consequences, we are guaranteed to create even more of a shortage of providers (although some might argue that’s not an entirely bad thing) and creating a group of providers with significant student loan debt to go into a field not known for the highest wages.

We have one chance to get this right.  Let’s make sure that happens.

Filed Under: EMS, EMS 2.0, EMS Education, EMS Politics

Where To Fix EMS

Posted on September 4, 2018 Written by

We all know the problems with EMS.  Mostly they revolve around low pay, low standards, and unreliable sources of funding.  Easily fixed, right?  Well, maybe.

But there’s an ongoing problem in EMS. Most EMS systems operate under the belief that good clinical skills (or even worse, good clinical outcomes) are the primary determinants of who gets promoted.  Being a good clinician involves more than clinical skills.  And being a good clinician doesn’t mean you’re going to be a good educator or a good manager. Being a good clinician doesn’t correlate with much besides being a good clinician.

What does EMS lack?  And more importantly, what do most so-called EMS “Leaders” lack?  They lack the “soft skills” besides how to read an EKG, intubate, or start an IV. They may have a professional network, but they don’t know how to use it.  They rarely understand politics at any level — from the local government who decides how to fund and provide EMS to the state officials who regulate EMS to the federal officials who determine how Medicare and Medicaid reimburse EMS. They don’t understand the value of public relations.  They rarely understand budget and finance.

Ok, so you get the picture. So what is EMS doing about it?  Well, we’re doing the same thing as always.  We’re promoting folks on their clinical skills at best and most often based on who they know or how much management likes them. We’ve created a system where most EMS employers don’t have much of a career track.  And we continue to tell our best and brightest to move into another medical field, whether nursing, medicine, or physician assistant.

What should we be doing?  Simple.  Let’s actually grow our own EMS leaders and not just the usual gang of experts/idiots who speak at every conference simply because they’re loudly exclaiming they’re leaders.  Let’s encourage the best and brightest to remain in EMS and further their education.  They already know how to be EMTs or paramedics.  What they don’t know is what to do next.  Let’s get people degrees in adult education to become clinical educators.  Let’s get people degrees in business management or public administration so they can effectively manage and lead an EMS organization.  Let’s get people educated in finance to figure out how to keep the crews paid and fuel in the trucks. And maybe even get a few of us into law school and admitted to the Bar.  After all, we’re in healthcare, one of the most heavily regulated fields in the marketplace.  Having someone who knows how to navigate the legal, regulatory, and political landscape might just help advance EMS a bit more than just another guy who says “Narcan” at the right time. And since EMS is a business, maybe having someone with some marketing or public relations skills might help the public (and the politicians) understand that not all EMS is created equally and that, like anything else, you do indeed get the EMS system you choose to pay for.

Or…. we can keep doing what we’ve been doing.  The current results speak for themselves.

Filed Under: EMS, EMS 2.0, EMS Politics

The Social Media Medic

Posted on July 9, 2018 Written by

Social media is a wonderful thing.  It truly is.  For me, as both a paramedic and an attorney, it has been a godsend.  I’ve made a lot of friends that I’d have never known otherwise.  And, especially for medicine, it’s exposed me to a lot of new topics that enable me to give the best possible care to my patients.  The discussions in both law and medicine (and the combination of the two at times) make me think and grow in both professions.

However, there’s an old adage that applies. Caveat Emptor.  That’s Latin for “Let the buyer beware.” Like I said, social media is often a good thing, especially in EMS. But while it gives everyone a voice, its downside is that it gives everyone a voice, including those that might not be the best to listen to.

There’s a category of people I call the “Social Media Medic.” They’re the first to jump into a discussion with absolute certainty and moral clarity as to how you should be practicing medicine and what kind of person you should be. They protect their brand by saying all the right things because, often, their brand is the only thing they have and that’s how you get to make it on the EMS conference circuit. The “Social Media Medic” is often full of buzzwords and hashtags about EMS and medicine.  They’re often posting studies and blogs that promote them and/or their agenda. Sometimes, some of these people don’t even understand the study that they’re sharing. On social media, these people say all the right things.  They have the right hashtags.  They have the message down.  They might even be right.  But we rarely have a way to confirm that the loudest voice is the most correct voice.  Heck, on more than one occasion, I’ve found that some of the loudest voices who are the most insistent that they are right about medicine are those who are virtually unemployable in their field, often because their social media personality is a reflection of their actual personality of being an insufferably arrogant buffoon.  In other words, what the Greeks used to call sophmoric, literally a “wise fool.”

I’ll admit that I’ve been active on social media.  Some might even say I’m too active. They might be right. The truth is that I’m far from God’s gift to EMS.  I make mistakes daily and I don’t get enough time to do as much medicine as I’d like to be truly proficient. After all, as Clint Eastwood said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” Hence, I rarely post about actual clinical issues in EMS.  It’s just not something I feel that I have the expertise or status to comment on with any authority. Now, legal issues, politics, volunteering, or professionalism are areas I feel qualified to comment on, so I do such.

In short, the loudest voice isn’t always the voice we need to be listening to.  And that especially rings true in EMS social media.

Filed Under: EMS, EMS 2.0

Why Doesn’t EMS Grow Up?

Posted on June 4, 2018 Written by

Social media is always full of EMS providers committing social media assisted career suicide (SMACS).  The latest was a perceived HIPAA violation where a medic was perceived to make fun of a cardiac arrest in a chicken coop, along with the associated chicken “byproducts.”  EMS Week always brings out the memes where the least bright and engaged of us in EMS demand to be thanked for our service, whether with free gifts or attention. We’re heroes, dangit. And EMS social media is always full of posts complaining about “misuse” and “abuse” of EMS and the emergency department of hospitals.

Of course, EMS and emergency department “misuse” and “abuse” are very subjective things. The general public doesn’t have the same definition of emergency that the average EMS provider has. Try to do the right thing and call your doctor after hours and you get a recording saying “If you’re having an emergency, hang up and call 911.” The problem is that no one defines emergency. Try to find after hours or unscheduled care for any sudden issue and you find that same or next day appointments are few and far between.  Urgent care hours often aren’t significantly better than many large clinics and that’s assuming that they even accept your insurance.  And if you do get in to see your doctor at their office, you can expect multiple follow-up visits for labs, imaging, and specialists for all but the most minor complaints.  Each of these are a separate absence from work and a separate insurance copay.  Is it any wonder that people go to a hospital emergency department where no appointment is needed and there’s virtually instant access to labs, imaging, and specialists.  As I like to say, the problem isn’t EMS or emergency department abuse, it’s that primary care has turned us into their after hours call coverage.

But that’s not the real point here.  The point here is that EMS seems to continue to remain in a teenager phase of not wanting to listen to the “adults” in the room who talk about educational standards and professionalism.  We continue to want to be “heroes” rather than caregivers and we demand attention and increased salaries while not doing anything to show why we deserve to be treated as a respected healthcare profession.  Why?

It’s simple.  The average career lifespan of an EMS provider, according to my quick Google search, is five years.  That’s right.  Five years.  It takes more than five years to be good at almost any career.  Like almost all of us, as a new EMT, then a new paramedic, I was full of all of the wrong answers.  I was full of dogma, misinformation, and the tendency to be way too eager about EMS. Fortunately, I was able to volunteer in some really first-rate EMS systems where I learned about medicine.  Also, the Internet and social media exposed me to some really smart people who actually cared about EMS and the medicine behind it.

However, the reality is this.  Many of the best and brightest in EMS leave for other careers in healthcare. And who can blame them? The opportunities in EMS pale in comparison to nursing, medicine, or as a PA, NP, or CRNA. With EMS’s short career half-life combined with our abysmal EMS education (Here, let me read the PowerPoints that the textbook publisher provides and I’ll throw in a war story on occasion.), we’ve created a revolving door of new providers who believe the dogma and misinformation.  They believe they’re going to be heroes and they’re disappointed when they’re providing geriatric primary care as opposed to “exciting and cool” trauma calls where they might “save a life.” (Spoiler alert:  Most of us in EMS don’t get the experience of being able to point to a specific life they’ve saved.  But if you do this right, you’ll get a lot of people to the right definitive medical care they needed to begin with.) And with our low barriers to entry, there’s little incentive to stick it out in EMS and make EMS great again. And while this revolving door continues, you continue to see EMS fail to progress and you see the same tired memes and complaints where we mock patients and our careers.  And when most are called to account for this behavior, they give the same tired excuses of how “you don’t know what it’s really like on the streets.”  Mind you, some of the worst offenders on EMS social media are virtually unemployable in EMS and don’t even work in an emergency setting.

To me, the heroes of EMS are the ones who’ve stuck it out; kept trying to improve EMS, even if it’s just their own EMS employer; and tried to teach good medicine to those coming in behind them.  If you actually took the time to take care of a sick person who’s septic and weak as opposed to bitching and moaning, you’re exactly who we need to stay in EMS.

Filed Under: EMS, Rants

What does the patient/client want?

Posted on May 11, 2018 Written by
I’m trying to put some complex and jumbled thoughts into words here, so bear with me. As some of you may know, I’ve dealt a ton with health issues for various family members over the years, especially over the last few months. One thing that I’ve seemed to notice is that too many people in healthcare think they’re helping when they’re substituting their own wishes and priorities for that of the patient and their loved ones. Further, many professionals in both medicine and law forget that the patient/client and their families have a life outside of and in addition to the matter currently being addressed. The outside world rarely pauses and often refuses to pause so that a patient/client or their family can reschedule the outside world at a moment’s notice all because someone feels that their little niche or agenda has to be addressed right this minute.

As a result, the patient and their family feel that the providers of all kinds, whether physician, nurse, therapist, or case manager, are dictating to them rather than caring for them. It can easily make the patient and family feel as if they have no control over matters relating to their care. Example: “You have to be here for a very meeting. Today.” Reality: Here’s the same discharge plan that we’ve been discussing for several weeks. 
 
People often feel an absolute loss of control of their care and their wishes. And when people feel they’ve lost control of their own affairs and that their wishes aren’t being heard, they’ll find another way to ensure they’re heard, whether in court or in filing a complaint with a regulatory agency. The nature of our healthcare and legal systems being what it is, the courtroom or administrative complaint is the only way that some clients/patients and their families feel that they will be heard.  (Free legal advice: it takes a lot less time and money to be nice up front and explain things early than it does to answer a lawsuit or an administrative complaint.)
 
Part of being a professional is in recognizing that the patient/client still maintains autonomy – the right to make their own decisions. Your job is, within the confines of the law and ethics, to help that patient meet their stated needs and goals. Being a professional means giving a patient/client the services and all of the information they need to make a good decision, then abiding by that decision and putting the patient/client first.  Heck, even as a lawyer, clients go against advice all of the time. Look how many criminal defendants insist on testifying in their own defense.  Look how many DWI suspects agree to take field sobriety tests and take the breathalyzer, even though they’re basically giving the evidence to convict themselves.  As I like to remind professionals of all sorts, people have the right to make bad decisions.  Fundamentally though, as a professional, we exist to provide services to our patients/clients in accordance with their wishes. 
 
This should ring true whether it’s medicine or law. And it’s a good prescription for limiting your involvement with lawyers to represent you. As another EMS colleague of mine says, “We can suggest, but forcing patients to do what they don’t want buys lawyers nice cars.”
Filed Under: EMS, EMS Legal, Law

“Dr. Dunning, I presume?” said Mr. Kruger.

Posted on April 23, 2018 Written by

An ongoing topic of discussion on EMS social media is the Dunning-Kruger Effect.  Wikipedia defines the Dunning-Kruger Effect as “a cognitive bias wherein people of low ability have illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their cognitive ability as greater than it is.”  Over the past few days, I’ve seen some great examples of EMS’s collective Dunning-Kruger Effect.  I also call these moments “not knowing what you don’t know” or “doubling down on dumb.”

The greatest exhibit that I can present to illustrate EMS’s exhibition of the Dunning-Kruger Effect comes from a self-promotion post by a critical care transport educator.  This educator, while promoting a post from JEMS about a Texas EMS system’s decision to adapt their protocols to prevent ventilator-induced injuries, breathlessly exclaims “ICU care begins in the STREETS! i expect my medics to be BETTER than EM and ICU attendings. ALWAYS. Period.” (Note: capitalization error was taken directly from the posting.) In the spirit of self-promotion that afflicts so many EMS “celebrity educators,” the post goes on to promote his recent conference appearances where he discussed using ultrasound to identify lung injuries and adjust ventilator settings.

Here’s the thing.  I don’t know how good or relevant his presentation is. And we all have to make a buck. And if you don’t promote yourself, no one else will.  But there’s probably not a single paramedic out there who’s better than an attending emergency medicine or critical care physician/intensivist.  Having said that and having my own experiences to guide my opinions, I will say that there are many paramedics who can assess a patient and rapidly treat a critically ill patient better than a physician without emergency medicine or critical care education.  Heck, that’s the  primary purpose of critical care/retrieval/flight paramedicine. When a patient is critically ill in a remote setting or an outlying hospital without specialist resources, that’s why you have critical care transport capabilities.

And yes, a critical care medic is probably better than an EM/ICU attending at certain technical skills.  Notice I said skills.  Most physicians don’t deal with vent settings.  Why?  Because in an ICU setting, there are others to help with such things. The physician has their eye on the big picture.  General Patton might not have been the tank driver than an individual sergeant was.  He didn’t have to be.  He did have to know exactly how to rout the enemy on the battlefield and accomplish large objectives.  Similarly, a HVAC technician probably knows more about fixing a faulty air conditioner than does a mechanical engineer. But I can almost guarantee you that the mechanical engineer knows more about how a HVAC system works and fits into a larger picture than a technician does. Likewise, I have a good friend who’s a state trooper.  I can assure you that he’s better than me, a lawyer, at knowing the intricacies of DWI law.  But he’s probably going to have a harder time putting all of the law together to get a complete picture.  Technicians, like many of us in EMS, excel at particular technical skills, hence why they’re technicians.  Professionals excel at the big picture, synthesizing multiple sources of information, acting on said information, and leading a team to solve that problem, almost like a conductor leading a symphony orchestra. (Heck, in the emergency room, look at how a resuscitation is run.  The leader, usually a physician, is rarely performing skills, but rather leading others in what needs to happen.)

Yep.  EMS often illustrates the Dunning-Kruger Effect with our belief in our own expertise.  But I can’t completely blame us.  Over the past few days, I’ve also seen ham-handed attempts by EMS educational programs to engage in education on EMS social media that illustrate President George W. Bush’s infamous question, “Is our children learning?” One community college based EMS education program shared a viral news video of a police officer being administered Narcan for an “exposure.”  Unfortunately, the initial posting by the educational program was posted without context and showed a breathing police officer being administered Narcan for a possible exposure to a stimulant, most likely methamphetamine. As even the lay public is learning, administration of Narcan is indicated for respiratory depression secondary to an overdose of an opiate/narcotic.  In other words, a conscious, breathing patient doesn’t need Narcan.  And an EMS educational program should definitely know better.

But that may not be the worst.  Late last week, a nationally known bachelor’s degree program in paramedicine shared a guest blog post from one of their students. The article was about the controversy of allowing paramedics to intubate.  Well and good.  The topic is definitely worthy of further discussion, especially considering the limited access that many EMS education programs have to clinical sites for live intubation practice. Yet, the article soon disappeared from that college’s social media.  Namely, many EMS providers pointed out multiple misspellings in the post along with dated studies cited (the most recent was over ten years old) and the lack of mention of high-fidelity simulation or more recent science supporting safe intubations through delayed sequence intubation by EMS providers.  Presumably, this blog post was reviewed and approved by the college’s faculty prior to going live. Sadly, when this kind of writing is presented by an educational institution, the writing serves only to reinforce negative perceptions of EMS by the rest of the healthcare community and remind them that the “ambulance drivers” aren’t yet at the same level.

The truth is that EMS does a good job at its core mission.  We excel at providing urgent and emergency care in the out of hospital setting and using a public safety skill set to do such. Our knowledge of the medical field is an inch wide (unscheduled out of hospital care) and a mile deep in that field.  Let’s own that field for ourselves and quit trying to prove how smart we are.  Inevitably, when we stray too far afield and when we keep calling attention to ourselves, we too often illustrate the Dunning-Kruger Effect.  These moments don’t advance EMS.  On the contrary, they remind us why everyone except for EMS providers get to make decisions about what happens to and for EMS.

 

Filed Under: EMS, EMS Education
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