Early Lessons/Thoughts From COVID-19 for EMS.

Because the science is evolving on COVID-19, we know that the end lessons from this may be different.  But I’d like to throw of my early observations out early for consideration.

First and foremost, all of the EMS grants, training, and attention paid to tactical EMS, mass shootings, explosives, and weapons of mass destruction, the real test and draining of EMS has come from an unrelenting call volume brought on by a novel, pandemic respiratory virus.  None of the MOLLE gear and self-absorbed incident command classes are worth much in this.  Except for one aspect of incident command — namely logistics.

Second, we’ve once again learned that EMS has little surge capability. I’ve discussed this before. And most EMS (and fire) services that have transitioned from being rural/suburban combination organizations to small paid departments claim they can rely on mutual aid.  That’s well and good until EVERY system is facing the same demands. Then, you’re waiting for the state and federally contracted providers to deploy within the week.  Maintaining a part-time and/or volunteer program helps relieve some of the stress on the system.

Next, if there’s one key lesson to be learned from this pandemic, it’s that EMS needs better personal protective equipment (PPE) and infection control practices above and beyond parroting the buzzword “BSI.”

In that light, I’d hope that after this, every EMS system makes appropriate PPE available. And that needs to include changes of uniform. (I’ve lost count of how many EMS services think that the part time guy only needs one uniform shirt and nothing else.)

My recommendation for after this is to have an adequate supply of surgical and N95 masks on each rig along with appropriate cleaning supplies. Everyone should get at least 2 complete changes of uniform. Ideally, there should be a couple of pairs of scrubs on board the ambulance/response vehicle in the event you have to decontaminate before returning to the station.

I’d surmise that many of the logistics problems EMS faces stem from two things.  Number one, we stink at public outreach and education.  Most people don’t even think about EMS.  Second. we’re not sure if we’re healthcare or public safety.  That makes it harder for us to access those things reserved specifically for healthcare — or traditionally provided to healthcare organizations.  It took advocacy from the American Ambulance Association to make Amazon’s healthcare specific “store” open to EMS organizations. And at least anecdotally, the public health bureaucracy which administers the majority of the pandemic response often forgets about the needs of EMS. In fact, I’m not unfamiliar with disaster response from both my career in state government as well as my EMS work — and I’m still not sure what, if anything, EMS is getting from the Strategic National Stockpile.

What would I like to see happen?  I’d like to see proper preparation for the next time, because there will be one.  And I’d like to see adequate supplies of both equipment and personnel.  But being an attorney with experience in government, I’m a realist.  And considering this experience. I am cynical enough to have a good guess of what will happen. There will be a massive initial push to get all of this done. There may even be Federal grant money to make this happen. 99.9% of the Federal grant money will be awarded to departments that don’t really need the money. 99.9% of said awarded equipment will dry rot and expire in a warehouse. Some TV newscast will run a story on “a storeroom full of stuff that no one uses” and the stuff will be surplused. Then when COVID-2023 makes its debut, we’ll be right back at square one.

The other thing my cynicism has convinced me of is that the majority of the funds made available for the next pandemic will go to the various public health bureaucracies, certain hospital networks, and the politically connected fire services.  Why?  Because those are the people with the political savvy to navigate the legislative, bureaucratic, and grant processes.

EBM. Do you know what it really means?

Right now, in this time of COVID-19, there’s a lot of unknowns. There are known unknowns and unknown unknowns, to borrow a phrase from Donald Rumsfeld. Right now, many of those unknowns, both known and unknown, apply to the treatment and management of the disease.  Less than two weeks ago, very educated and skilled clinicians were treating COVID-19 patients like Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) and intubating patients early and placing them on a ventilator — often with terrible results for the patient  as well as overwhelming the critical care system. As we have increased our understanding of the disease, we’re finding it’s less a ventilation issue and much more an oxygenation issue with a breakdown of iron in the bloodstream.  We’ve gone from intubating patients to laying patients prone with high flow oxygen — not to mention seeing better results.

And like with any emerging issue in medicine, especially when there’s a dearth of known treatments, physicians will try novel treatments, including the off-label use of medications already in use. One of those is hydroxychloroquine, sometimes administered in conjunction with azithromycin. There have been some reports of success of treating COVID-19 patients with this combination, enough so that the President has become a loud cheerleader for this combination.  Whether you adulate, like, dislike, or loathe the current President, no one can deny that he’s a master showman who understands the power of the bully pulpit that being the occupant of the Oval Office gives you.

And because the treatment is being advocated by one of America’s most polarizing politicians, there’s immediate opposition to the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin.  If you’ve been around any EMS (or even any medical) discussions on social media, especially Twitter, politics routinely injects itself into medicine. There are a lot of physicians and clinicians of all types who feel a joint obligation to both medicine and being “woke.”

Right now, the woke clinicians on social media are opposing this particular treatment regimen in the name of “evidence based medicine,” believing that the double-blind study is the only acceptable evidence of the efficacy of a treatment or medication.  (I’d note that many of these people who poke fun at religion have a similarly blind faith in “science.”)

Yes, the double-blind study is the sine qua non of scientific evidence. I’d like a double-blind study to confirm everything that I do in medicine. But that can be taken to an extreme.  See also the satirical double-blind study of parachutes.

For everyone who blindly opposes new medical interventions based on their own scientific education obtained from the Twitter Institute of Advanced Studies and sharing Neal DeGrasse Tyson memes that repeat the phrase “science,” I’d submit that you don’t know where and how the phrase “evidence based medicine”comes from.  While evidence based medicine, also known as EBM, arose in the medical field for use by clinicians, it rapidly became the watchword of the managed care industry.  In 1985, Blue Cross/Blue Shield began using EBM to evaluate new treatment regimens. In 1991, Kaiser Permanente began using EBM guidelines for treatments.  In other words, the previously science-oriented concept of EBM became a cost control mechanism by implemented by managed care.

In other words, the people pushing the EBM mantra lack the understanding of what EBM is and how it differs from the scientific method.  In science, we should absolutely be pushing for the scientific method.  In an ideal world, we’d have the time, resources, and ability to do randomized double-blind studies on everything we do in medicine.  But we don’t.  And when humans are suffering, maybe sometimes we need to consider ethics in conjunction with a blind devotion to EBM or the scientific method.

Of course, the study of ethics is rarely absolute. It’s full of nuance and variations. And as I’ve discussed before, that’s something that neither EMS nor much of social media excel at. It’s almost like those “core courses” in humanities and social sciences might be a bit more relevant than the Twitter Science Brigade believes.  Neither medicine nor science should have an agenda.  But precisely because social media and the 24 hour news cycle exist, the very term “science” has taken on a political bent.  (e.g. “Science is real.”)

On a final note, while medicine is based in science, I consider medicine an applied science, much like engineering.  Medicine isn’t a pure science.  Rather, it’s the application of science and knowledge to practical problems.  It’s time that we all remember that — and that an education involves much more than science alone.  And science is more than sharing links from Twitter. Science is but one part of a well-rounded education, something which most of the medical world seems to have forgotten.

And that devotion to absolutism in the name of EBM or science is but another symptom of the divided red versus blue world that we’re currently in. Sadly, even a disease like COVID-19 has done little more than highlight the deep divisions in our country.

Thanks for reading.  And we will get through this — just as we got through the Great Depression, World War II, and 9/11.  On that note, “Let’s roll.”

On Rhode Island

Point of personal privilege here. Because I’m about to rant. And seeing as this is my blog, that’s why you’re here, right?   Sorry, not sorry, that there aren’t any Baby Yoda or cat memes here.

There’s a ton of people posting memes making fun of Rhode Island EMT-Cardiacs and their supposed inability to master advanced airway management.  Most of these memes are being posted by people who like to fashion themselves the fountains of all EMS wisdom and knowledge.  Further, some of these same types believe that their fecal material is non-odorific.

I don’t blame the average Rhode Island EMT-Cardiac for this.  (FYI, for those of you unfamiliar with the certification, the scope is somewhere between Advanced EMT and Paramedic.)  They’re working in a system that they likely didn’t develop.  And at least some, including at least one friend who I’ve literally broken bread with, are competent providers.

I do blame a toxic political culture in Rhode Island where the IAFF, fire chiefs, and politicians hold more sway over the regulation and development of the state’s arguably dated EMS system than do physicians. Rhode Island has its share of EMS issues, including an outsized influence by the fire service, fire chiefs, and fire unions and nowhere near enough involvement from EMS physicians.  Rhode Island’s limited provision of ALS care (EMT-Cardiacs aren’t paramedics.  Sorry, not sorry for that truth.) and it’s relative lack of medical dispatching place Rhode Island severely behind the times in terms of prehospital medical care.

And let’s talk about those snarky edgy social media players criticizing Rhode Island EMS.  They claim to be science-based and evidence-based.  Fine.  I’ll give them that. But what they don’t get is public policy or the political process. Nor do they truly get “just culture,” which is (rightly) supposed to be all the rage in medicine these days.  Nope.  It’s much easier to make memes and make fun of the line-level EMS providers than it is to engage in even superficial analysis and note that Rhode Island’s EMS system and the politics behind it are the problem.

I’ll give Rhode Island credit for one thing.  At least someone in Rhode Island is looking at data.  Granted, the political culture up there is doing what ossified political types do — ducking and distracting, but the data is out there.  I wonder where the data is on actual clinical performance and outcomes for some of these “smarter than you” types posting memes and claiming to be “scientists.”

In summation, for all of y’all who are poking fun at individual EMS providers, I’ll leave you with some lyrics from Ice-T.  “Don’t hate the player, hate the game.”

The Matrix

Ever seen The Matrix?  It’s one of the weirdest movies I’ve ever seen.  The folks who created the movie and that entire universe are definitely creative, if not a bit warped.  But there’s a scene in there that applies to EMS.

In the first Matrix movie, Morpheus offers the protagonist Neo a choice.  “This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember: all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.”

Reality vs Illusion | image tagged in red pill blue pill,morpheus,democrat,republican,reality | made w/ Imgflip meme maker

The allegory applies to EMS as well. At some point in your EMS career, hopefully early along, you’re offered the choice of the red pill or the blue pill.  You may not even realize you’re being offered this choice, but it’ll happen nonetheless.

For EMS, if you take the blue pill, you’ll be perfectly happy with “meets minimum standards.”  You’ll be able to juggle the inherent contradictions the average EMS provider believes that “we do everything a doctor does, but at 80 miles per hour” and “we don’t diagnose.” (By the way, that’s EXACTLY what doctors, as well as any other clinician, do — diagnose.) You’ll believe that the less than 200 clock hours of training to become an emergency medical technician (EMT) represents a significant level of professional achievement and that such a level of “achievement” qualifies you to “save” your paramedic partner regularly.  In short, you’ll become blissfully ignorant and perfectly happy working the dialysis shuffle and keeping the EMT t-shirt manufacturers in business.

OR…. you can take the red pill. You can learn evidence based medicine.  You can learn the science behind what we do.  You can begin to understand the outside factors that impact EMS — law, politics, and policy.  God forbid, you might even understand that there’s no one single bullet that will fix all of EMS’s problems.  We’ve tried EMS 2.0; we’ve tried “community paramedicine;” and now we’re on the “EMS needs degrees” kick. Truth is — we probably need all of those things to make EMS great again.  And probably some more things need to happen to truly fix EMS.  BUT, you have to be willing to accept the knowledge and education.

Pardon the change in allegory here, but when the snake offers you the forbidden fruit with the gift of knowledge and you eat it, you open your eyes.  And to add one more allegory, you might even see that the emperor has no clothes.

Somewhere along the way in my EMS career, I was fortunate enough to be around some educated and wise folks in prehospital medicine who offered me the red pill and the forbidden fruit.  I opened my eyes and realized that this is the practice of medicine and that it’s a constantly growing field whose only certainty is the growth of that which we don’t know.  I learned to embrace nuance.  I learned to embrace learning.  I think I’m better for it.  And I’d like to hope that some of my patients are better for it.

What would’ve happened had I chosen to take the blue pill and remain complacent, ignorant, and blissful? I’d have been “happy” riding an engine as the token EMT at a volunteer fire department that ran 1-2 calls a shift and where learning wasn’t encouraged. Ignorance would have been bliss.

But would I have truly grown?  Nope.

Do I have regrets?  I absolutely do at times. There are times when doing the right thing isn’t easy. There’s also knowing when to pick your battles.  Anyone who knows me knows that’s a continuing challenge for me. Would I take the same choice again?  Also, yes.

For each of you, there’s a choice each day you practice prehospital medicine.  I hope that you take the choice to stay in Wonderland and see how deep the rabbit hole goes.  You, your patients, and our profession will all get better.

 

Quit Operating and Start Treating

It’s time for another one of my trademarked and patented rants on what’s wrong with EMS.  And to keep with the social media crowd, I’ve been triggered.

This afternoon, I received an email from a large, national EMS conference (cough, EMS World Expo, cough) promoting a “Complex Coordinated Terrorist Attack Workshop.” The add-on course, at an added expense of course, includes managing an active shooter incident combined with a hazmat/explosive scenario.  On a similar note, an EMS organization in my neck of the woods is working on a mass casualty scenario involving hostages, improvised explosive devices, and a firefighter down — all in one scenario that’s expected to span an entire day of training.

Right now, “tactical” and “terrorism” sell seats, especially for paid training.  I get that.  I also get that we need to train for events that are unlikely to occur, but have high risk if they do occur.  But for love of Pete, can we stop already with doing training just because it sounds sexy or cool?

If we’re going to train on a mass casualty, how about training on something that’s actually likely to occur in most EMS organizations’ service areas?  A MCI involving a school bus is much more likely to happen than a dirty bomb or an active shooter.  And if you factor in getting the right patients to the right hospitals, the logistics of parental involvement, or even factoring in road closures, this MCI becomes a real (and realistic) challenge.  Besides, if we’re truly following the National Incident Management System and the Incident Command System models as required by FEMA, the type of incident shouldn’t matter.  NIMS and ICS are what we should be using for command and control of any emergency incident.

Meanwhile, EMS providers can’t perform a basic assessment or master the skills associated with their certification level, let alone understand pathophysiology or pharmacology. And we have raised a whole generation of providers who think claims of PTSD and burnout are what constitutes experience.

I get that conferences need to sell to the masses if they’re to remain a going concern. I also know that we’ve got a bigger problem with our profession (or what passes for it) and our personal standards if this is who we’re marketing for. While we have people getting excited over this stuff, we still have all levels of providers clinging to dogma.  We have people still putting patients on backboards.  We have supposed advanced providers thinking all respiratory ailments are treated with an albuterol inhaler.  And let’s not even talk about the people who think that “pasta water” (IE, saline) fixes hypovolemia and scoff at the notion of administering blood products outside the hospital.

Yes, there are public safety aspects to EMS.  I will NEVER deny that.  But we’re also engaged in the clinical practice of medicine.  We need to quit playing at being “operators” and start actually being clinicians.

And truth be told, I know a few actual “operators” in the field of prehospital medicine.  The overwhelming majority of them rarely talk about being operators. They do talk about the medicine — all the time.

Finally, if we think that some more “tacti-cool” scenarios are what’s needed to advance EMS as a profession, that alone is a statement of why EMS is where it is. Not to mention why we’re not advancing and why the salaries are so low.

Yes, you’re wrong.

Sorry for the interruption in my usual stream of consciousness blogging.  Nothing in particular has been on my mind as of late. (Although I may have to do a post in the near future about finding a potential unicorn.  Namely, a fire department that embraces both volunteers and ALS first response.)

But this morning, I saw a contrast between those who I’d call high speed EMS providers and those who, at best, deserve the title “ambulance driver.”

Example one.  Discussion about the risks and benefits of a particular prehospital intervention.  In this case, it was application of a pelvic binder.  An expert on trauma care provides their opinion and an article that includes citations. Learning and dialogue occur.

Example two. Discussion of prehospital ultrasound on a popular EMS social media page.  Truth be told, I’m still a skeptic on prehospital ultrasound.  I’m not sure what ultrasound can show me that a good patient assessment can AND change my course of care in the prehospital setting. But another EMS provider (and I won’t use the word professional) stated in said discussion, ” I guess when you’re burn out like me, it doesn’t matter any more and you just want to dump the pt in the er. However that’s mine own opinion.”  He then “doubles down on dumb” and goes on to state, “nope it’s my opinion, not ignorance. I jill just don’t care about those devices out in the field. Waste of time and money.”  When he’s challenged on his ignorance, he states, “It’s not an excuse, it’s just how I feel about being burn out. I believe we have differences in opinions and I respect that. I guess opinions are wrong to use. People have different opinions and has nothing to do with education.”

The truth is simple. You can have an opinion. But when your opinion is based upon bad information and beliefs and you refuse to change when given new information, then you are absolutely wrong. And if you’re basing your medicine on bad opinions, then you’re a bad provider.

So long as EMS tolerates those people who refuse to practice good medicine based on current evidence based practice because they “have a different opinion,” we’re going to remain the ambulance drivers.  We won’t be taken as a profession.  And until we step up the standards to be a clinician, regardless of what EMS does for educational standards (which may or may not fix things), we don’t deserve to be called a profession.

You’re entitled to an opinion.  You can be wrong.  But you’re not entitled to harm a patient because you choose to be wrong.  If you are still doing that, that’s why the legal profession exists.

Why Doesn’t EMS Grow Up?

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.

Cleared To Practice, AKA: The License To Kill

I booted up the computer fully intending to write a long screed, aka rant, on the issues currently facing Austin/Travis County EMS, its medical direction, and their relationship with the multiple county first responder agencies and their ability to provide EMT-Intermediate, oops Advanced EMT (showing my age) and paramedic level care.  I’ll still comment on that, but in terms of ATCEMS’s model being an example of one of two extremes of the EMS field training or credentialing process.

This cartoon/meme has been making its way around EMS social media and has popped up on my Facebook feed more than once already today.

Having been in EMS for roughly 14 years now, I’ve seen a variety of methods of providing field training.  They run the gamut from “here’s the keys” to “you’re repeating your paramedic clinicals with us for the next six months.”  As with anything in EMS, we run between two extremes and rarely find the “Goldilocks” point of being just right.

In some EMS systems, the FTO and credentialing process exists in name only.  At one unnamed EMS service, my official FTO process consisted of one ride with a field training officer for twelve hours.  Since I’d been off the truck for a while before starting there, I asked for more time before I even got that.  I got a shift before that where I was officially riding as a third crew member, until the paramedic FTO didn’t show up. Combine that with a chest pain call and the EMS director showing up on scene and asking if I was comfortable with taking the patient 40 miles and my field training process existed primarily on paper.  Of course, when you’re at a rural service that’s already short on staff, much less advanced providers, a field training process seems like a luxury that you can’t afford.  In my opinion, that’s a risk management nightmare.  When a clinical (or operational) failure happens — and it will, the discovery process that a lawyer will engage in will expose these shortcomings and present them to a jury of twelve citizens who couldn’t figure out how to get out of jury duty.

Then, there’s the other extreme.  Let’s take a large, unnamed third service EMS system that’s had an extensive process for bringing on new paramedics.  For many years, that process consisted of several months of a new hire academy then a field training process of several more months.  In short, the process to become a paramedic in this system became a virtual repeat of paramedic clinicals. Then a different medical director came in and decided that there were “too many paramedics” and required new hires to function at a modified EMT level for one to two years before being eligible to “promote” to paramedic.  Let’s now throw in the dozen or so fire departments in the county that provide EMS first response. Ever since before I got into EMS, this EMS system was unwilling to credential first responders above the EMT level. That’s their prerogative. But don’t say you’ll allow it and then make a process that’s so obtuse and arbitrary that it’s a virtual impossibility to credential. The previous medical directors and the department’s clinical management created this mess and they’ve now given the fire departments the rationale to create their own EMS programs. In fact, said county (cough, Travis County, cough) just created its own medical direction to give the county fire departments the ability to run their own paramedic first response program.  And that doesn’t even include two of the fire departments that have created their own paramedic-level ambulance service.

There’s a saying in the law that those who seek equitable relief must come to the table with “clean hands.”  In this case, I have to say that neither party have clean hands.  The EMS system wanted to be the sole provider of advanced life support in the name of “patient safety” and other benevolent sounding reasons for turf protection.  The various county fire departments want paramedic first response and in some cases, transport, to justify their budget and existence and to satisfy the various firefighter union locals that want their members to be an “all hazards department.” In short, to quote Mel Brooks as the governor in Blazing Saddles, “Sheriff murdered! Innocent women and children blown to bits! We’ve got to protect our phony-baloney jobs, gentlemen.” Fire codes have dramatically reduced the number of fires out there.  In Texas, many of the fire districts are funded by property taxes. Also in Texas, there’s a healthy skepticism of government and taxes.  Without EMS call volume, many citizens would wonder what they’re paying a fire department for.  Personally, I’d have much less heartache about the county’s decision to provide its own medical direction for the fire departments if this outcry for separate medical direction had been occurring for years, rather than over the last couple of years that have also been associated with the virtual elimination of volunteer response in the county and the addition of a second tax district in some of these fire districts to “support EMS.” If I feel for anyone, it’s the current medical direction of the EMS system.  They’re passionate about good medicine and supporting the practice of good prehospital medicine.  They’re also in the unenviable position of fixing a system that believed its own public relations for too long and had frayed, if not outright violated the trust of its supposed “partner” first response agencies.

So, what is the happy medium for field training and bringing on new people?  I don’t have studies or statistics to support my general concept of what works.  What I know doesn’t work is handing someone the keys to the controlled substances and saying “Good luck.”  But I’d also question the value of a lengthy process that is a virtual repeat of paramedic clinicals.  In theory, the certification exam for initial certification should provide some assurances of entry level competence. (That in itself is an argument for another day.)  In my ideal world, I’d argue for a field training and credentialing process that is competence based, rather than based on calendar days, clock hours, or getting a certain magic number of certain patient populations.  And in some cases, we’re rarely going to see certain patients in the field.  That means access to a skills lab and/or simulations and scenarios. The process should focus heavily on the unique clinical aspects of that particular EMS system, whether in regards to airway management, medications, or other uncommonly encountered interventions. The process also needs to focus on the operational aspects of being a provider in that system. How many of us haven’t been taught which channels/talkgroups are on our radios?  That, along with resupply, fueling, and documentation requirements often get overlooked in the FTO process. As much as we need to ensure clinical competence, we also need to ensure that a new medic (at any certification level) in the system knows what’s supposed to happen to make good patient care happen.  And let’s not even discuss transport destination determination, which is regularly overlooked.  Getting the right patients to the right hospitals is a core function of EMS and neither initial EMS education nor the processes to bring a new provider into an organization usually address this.  As a result, we routinely end up taking critically ill patients to hospitals incapable of caring for them.

I’ve ranted for a while and I appreciate the indulgence.  The short version is that, like much of EMS, field training and bringing new providers on board a system is a collection of bad practices and extremes. We can do better.  Both our profession and our patients (aka: customers) deserve it.

Thoughts From The Sidelines

After EMS Today last week and dealing with some family medical issues, I have a few thoughts to consider.

  1. EMS is the practice of medicine.  It always has been and always will.  As such, we owe it to our profession and our patients to focus not only what’s cool, trendy, and “sexy,” but that which benefits our patients.  Unless you’re really working in the appropriate setting, put down the Tactical Medicine book and pick up something to learn about lab values, airway management, or sepsis.  Your patients will benefit.
  2. EMS systems used to advertise that EMS is  “more than just a ride to the hospital.”  It’s time to remember that and start treating patients early in the field, if they will benefit from or need that treatment.  The idea of “we’re just five minutes from the ER” is malarkey  (I initially put something stronger in here, by the way).  Except in patients near death, it’s going to be a bit before the emergency department begins treatment.  Things like fluids (where appropriate) and pain management are often quite a ways down the road, even when the ER is five minutes down the road.  Treat your patient.
  3. The old saying “It’s not my emergency” remains true.  But an old piece of advice that I got from a San Marcos police officer still applies.  “To the person who called 911, this is the most important thing that’s happened to them today.”  Respect that as well.
  4. If you’re burnt out, step away.  Whether it’s cutting down on overtime, taking a vacation, or finding a different way to rejuvenate yourself, being burnt out doesn’t serve yourself, your patients, or our profession.

It’s a hell of an honor for the public to trust us to walk into their most private spaces at their most vulnerable moments and trust us to care for them.  Too many of us have forgotten the public trust and care aspects of our profession.  If you have to ask if this applies to you, well, maybe it just does.

Part of being a clinician

Today, I heard from a good friend of mine who happens to be a good paramedic out of state.  They were telling me about issues with a family member who’s in the hospital and in poor condition.  Part of this involved the communication from the hospitalist who asked if the family member had a do not resuscitate order because the family member in question is “very sick” and without a DNR order, the patient’s ribs would be broken during CPR and “her insides would be messed up.”

I’ve dealt with similar conversations before both as a medical provider and as a family member.  Without going into my rant against hospitalists (who don’t know the patient outside of the hospital, rarely have an idea as to the patient’s baseline, and are often the bottom of barrel clinically and academically), this is completely unacceptable.

However, I will say that this is how people in medicine get sued. Not because their medicine hurt or helped. But because they have zero idea how to communicate with people. There are way too many physicians who have a pure science background and see patients as lab values on paper. They see patients and their families as a distraction. Likewise, there are way too many in EMS who are bitter because they were promised a chance to race the reaper and save lives and taking care of sick people isn’t “what they signed up for.” I am far from religious and definitely not Christian, but the verse from the Gospel of Matthew says it all. “I was sick and you visited me.” Ultimately, that’s what being a clinician is about. Taking care of sick people. Not flashing lights or even geeking out over lab values. And caring (and dare I say ministering) for the sick means caring for their family too.

I see way too many physicians who have a gift for the sciences and not a gift for communication.  I see way too many in EMS who can improvise a solution to make MacGyver proud but who make Chuck Norris look sensitive and compassionate. Medicine is not a pure science, no matter what anyone says.  It’s a profession.  Whether you’re a brand new EMT or a tenured medical school professor with subspecialty certification, you’re a professional using your scientific knowledge to solve human problems.  And human problems require interacting with humans.  Part of that interaction means communicating with other people, not all of whom you may like or who you may think are as smart as you are or even worth your time.

And the human factor in any profession, especially including medicine, is why professions aren’t mere sciences.  Yes, there’s a ton of science in medicine.  It is the foundation for much of what we do.  But we apply this knowledge to help others.  And helping others goes significantly beyond acid-base balances, covalent bonds, thermodynamics, or gas laws. It’s about demonstrating a bit of compassion and empathy.

You don’t necessarily learn those things in a science lab.  You learn them from interacting with others.  You learn these things in a liberal arts classroom where your views about the world are challenged, where you learn to defend your views, where you learn to maybe change your views, and most importantly, where you learn to communicate and get along with others.

Medicine — at any level — is ultimately a people profession.  If you’re not comfortable with people, you’re not likely to succeed.  It’s why EMS clinical evaluations are supposed to include an “affective domain” aspect.  And this is why I think that the constant drumbeat for more “science” classes in EMS also needs to be tempered with more classes in English, psychology, sociology, history, geography, and management.  In other words, being a solid clinician requires understanding people as much as it does the science.

And to add in my legal advice, people rarely know if you’re good at what you do.  They do know whether or not you’re nice to them.  And many of these cases of being “not nice” often involve poor or failed communications with the patient and/or their family.  Learning how to talk to others, whether to get information or to persuade, was a significant part of my education as a legal professional.  It needs to be a significant part of our EMS education as well — and that means more than rapidly brushing through the mnemonics of “SAMPLE” and “OPQRST.”  It means active listening and then incorporating that information with your scientific knowledge to actually care for your patient.

That’s what being a professional is about. That’s what being a clinician is about.  It’s not about the flashing lights.  It’s not about the lab values.  It’s not about an obscure EKG finding.  It is about caring for others.  Period.