One who instinctively or habitually doubts, questions, or disagrees with assertions or generally accepted conclusions.
The EMS Skeptic is a new column for the EMSAC Star, created to take a critical look at how we do business as EMS professionals. The EMS Skeptic is designed to be challenging, thought provoking and somewhat irreverent analysis of industry issues for the purpose of improving EMS. The EMS Skeptic is not about being scornful, disrespectful or habitually negative -- which would be the job of a cynic. EMSAC wants your comments and criticisms of EMS Skeptic features on this page. We also recognize that there is „a little EMS Skeptic in all of us,‰ so submit your column of 750 words or less to
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
, which will be published anonymously if accepted.
|
Forgive me, but The Skeptic is, well, skeptical of the term. If every call was for abused and severely injured children, or dealing with starvation, squalor and the like, I might buy it. Since we don’t, I don’t. Completely, that is. I’m not saying that “burnout” is not a legitimate phenomenon, but rather that the term itself has morphed into something other than what it was intended to describe. When I hear the term “burnout” in EMS nowadays,
|
The EMS skeptic is wondering whatever became of Basic Life Support (BLS) care by Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs). While The Skeptic wasn’t there, I understand that in the early 1970s a bunch of smart people got together, figured out what nasty life events cause people to call ambulances, and built an 80 hour course to teach a new breed of folks called EMTs. Over the years, the name of this level has changed from
|
Recently, the Denver Post referred to a “mortuary provider.” Is that the
builder of a mortuary building, commonly referred to as a general
contractor? Or is that a mortician? Does the Denver Post have an editor
that might know?
I recently saw a big, specialized truck that had “Your Value Provider”
painted on it. It looked to me like one of those trucks that just delivers
concrete to construction sites,
|
|
|
Do you know what Coca Cola is? Do you know what a pilot does? Do you know what a doctor, police officer or firefighter do? Do you know what an Emergency Medical Technician – Basic with IV does? Well, you might because you are reading this magazine, but I bet if you are reading this in an airport or doctor’s office, the people around you might not. EMS is an industry plagued with an identity problem. We don’t have a brand or an identity that is easy to describe. Even EMS is hard to explain. What is EMS, my family will ask. Emergency Medical Services does not
|
The EMS Skeptic thinks we use response time performance as a bad crutch.
First of all, everybody measures it wrong.
Some people start counting at the time a call is received, some use the time a call is dispatched, when a unit is assigned a call or when a unit from somewhere starts driving. These are all lousy measures. The only measure we should use is from when someone realizes they need EMS until when trained help shows up at their side. Of course measuring like that would be hard, and it would be customer-focused instead of
|
|
|
|
|
|
EMS Skeptic
