Category: Professional Pride
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The Seat Doesn’t Remember You
Thinking back on time spent at my current agency, and the replaceable nature of EMS positions and the care and effort we take to make sure we are able to move on to other jobs while the wheels keep turning behind us.
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A Mental Health Odyssey – Still Here
A follow-up on A Mental Health Odyssey, revisiting mental health themes, and exploring where I am now, and where I’m headed from here.
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A Mental Health Odyssey
The author shares his journey through major depressive disorder, anxiety, and social phobia while working as an EMS provider. Despite having effective treatment for years, he experiences a decline in mental health in late 2023, prompting medication changes and the need for a temporary leave of absence. The narrative includes personal challenges, medication adjustments, struggles…
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McClain, Paramedics, Qualified Immunity, Other Thoughts
Elijah McClain, Paramedics, Qualified Immunity, and Other Thoughts on Professionalism
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EMS Week 2020!
It’s EMS WEEK 2020! It sure doesn’t feel like it, though. Usually as we are approaching this week, we’re talking about crew breakfasts, the EMS week banquet, service recognition events, team-building, and other fun events. Instead, our discussions are focused on things like PPE utilization, COVID alert rates, disease spread, and community fatality rates. Much…
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Connecting with a Drug Overdose Patient
She’s only 20 years old*. 15 years younger than me. Laid out on the ground in front of the house. It’s 40 degrees outside at 1am here in Texas. Her boyfriend woke up and found her not breathing and did CPR on her while waiting for us to show up. The police showed up first…
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Musings on a decade in EMS
You know that song by Faces, Ooh La La, that has the chorus that goes “I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger“? That’s how I feel about some parts of my career in EMS. I realized today that I’m about 12 years into my EMS career, and about 7…
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The Socially Awkward Medic
I’m awkward. I’m introverted. I struggle sometimes with depression and anxiety. I’ve been, at one time or another, diagnosed with clinical depression, major depression, social anxiety, social phobia, and an anger disorder. You might be reading this paragraph and wondering aloud, “how the hell does he function as a paramedic?” – and you’re not alone.…
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Like my own Gramma
We were dispatched for trouble breathing. It had been a busy night, back-to-back calls, all kinds of patients. The day had felt rather hurried and frantic. My partner and I were both a few PCRs behind. We arrived on scene at a single family home and a woman waiting out front for us. “It’s my…
Ventricular Escape Beats 