Staying Focused on the Road Ahead

At the Eagles Conference being held this week in Dallas, a friend of mine who was at the recent JEMS EMS Today Conference asked me about my keynote talk about pride and professionalism in what we do in public safety. We chatted for a long time, and I told him that I wanted the audience to feel the great pride I had in our profession—but also I wanted the audience to recognize our many shortcomings as a result of being somewhat nearsighted as young EMS pioneers. We were so worried about perfecting our new clinical skills and focused primarily on the clinical tasks and obstacles that were immediately ahead of us, that we failed to develop an awareness of the cost and complexity of our new profession. We failed to educate and orient the public and, worse yet, the elected officials or others who should have stepped up and paid us at a level deserving of our new medical specialty. As a result, we were assimilated into a subcategory of either the “fire” or “ambulance” service, and we never established an identity to define our profession. We’ve been climbing and clawing to be recognized for our true role and clinical capabilities ever since. We have to keep our eyes—and minds—focused ahead of us if we are to succeed, particularly with the opportunities offered to us by CMS recently allowing us to treat and release, as well as transport to alternative facilities.  We have to prepare to master new telemedicine and operational methods to stay alive—to “re-inve...
Source: JEMS Administration and Leadership - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Columns Exclusive Articles Administration and Leadership Source Type: news