EMS Today 2012 - Part 2

Yesterday was the first full day of EMS Today. My day started at 0830 for Kelly Grayson (@AmboDriver / http://ambulancedriverfiles.com/). His presentation was "EMS Blogging and Social Media: How To Do It and Keep Your Job."

Kelly's presentation was good. It wasn't anything too eye-opening, but he made a link I hadn't thought of before, and pointed out that foursquare and geotagging makes obscuring patient info much more difficult.

Next up was "Report from the Eagles" - not the football team... This is the major metropolitan medical directly group - a bunch of real winners. Topics were many, including that atropine appears to do no good in cardiac arrests, and it actually does harm in asystolic arrests. Also discussed: drug shortages and pushing drugs past the expiry dates.

Presentations from their 2012 meeting (last week) are here: http://gatheringofeagles.us/2012/2012Presentations.htm

Then it was a very interesting afternoon session put on by Doug Wolfberg and Steve Wirth of the PW&W EMS law firm (http://www.pwwemslaw.com/). They discussed the good, bad, and ugly of testifying in court and being cross examined. The class ended with an actual cross examination roleplay. They always told me there are 2 types of EMT's - those that have been to court, and those that will go to court. So while I hope I never have to - its only a matter of time, most likely. Steve and Doug are great speakers, and they lecture at a variety of local an national events. Much of their staff maintains EMS certs, and understands our field. If I ever have to go to court? I sure hope they are my lawyers.

The sessions ended with a keynote by Randolph Mantooth. Lots of "who's he" and "what did he do"?

Randolph Mantooth (Wikipedia) played Johnny Gage on Emergency! (Wikipedia). If you've never seen it, it's on Netflix. Go watch a few episodes. Emergency! did great things in advancing out profession, and the late Jim Page (the P in the PW&W law firm above) was a technical advisor to the program. Yes, it's dated, but it's a great EMS history lesson. If your service hasn't changed much since 1974, perhaps it's time to try to change things!

Actually - one more thing. Before Randy Mantooth spoke, AJ Heightman of JEMS spoke and urged everyone to support the PSOB update bills - its great to see a national publisher getting behind something so great for EMS (I'll post more about the PSOB bill once I'm home next week).

Then we hit the exhibit hall. Got to see the World Premiere of Code STEMI (http://codestemi.tv/). It's a Setla film production, and a great collaboration between PhysioControl (http://www.physio-control.com), Tom Bouthillet and the EMS 12-Lead group (http://ems12lead.com/), Ted Setla (http://setlafilms.com/), and the First Responders Network (http://firstrespondersnetwork.com/codestemi/).

It's a good start. It'll be nice to see the story continue to be told. STEMI's are something we, in EMS, can make a big difference in.

Then it was dinner and bed early - I was tired. I'm bummed I missed the MeetUp/TweetUp over at Uno's, but I needed sleep... Friday will be a long day, I'm sure

EMS Today 2012 - Part 1

I came into Baltimore Wednesday night in time for the EMS 10 awards. It was great to see Tom Bouthillet get an EMS 10 award for the EMS 12-Lead blog (http://ems12lead.com). Oh and let's not forget about the rest of his team - David Baumrind and Christopher Watford.

Congrats to Tom and the rest of the award winners, and a HUGE thank to to PhysioControl for putting on the event and inviting me.


Then it was off to Pratt Street Ale House for the EMS 2.0 reunion. Gotto see Random Ward (haven't seen him for all of 3 days), MedicSBK, Ted Setla, Chris Montera, and the rest of the gang. Also got to meet a fellow Ham Radio geek that I've known online for a few years... Good actually meeting you, James!

Looking forward my first sessions on Thursday.