The Idea... Part 3

The next day in the series of that week (Parts 1 and 2 covered the second day of a whirlwind week) was Wednesday, September 19th, 2012... Why is this week standing out to me? It is just neccesary to explore as it is at it's core the time frame that moved me to begin sharing things on this level.

That particular week was one of the busiest of my life and definitely held some significant distances travelled as part of it... not to mention a whole new level of exhaustion... and as you can imagine it created a backlog of work at my primary job as I was only in my office for one day the entire week.

Back to the 19th... I had taken a PTO day so that I could attend and present at the first annual Deaconess EMS Symposium at home in Evansville. Deaconess, through the efforts of Peter Stevenson, MD, Kevin Hendrickson and Lu Weil, set off to make a local educational offering that would mirror and present some of the more important points of the U.S. Metropolitan Medical Director Consortium State of the Sciences EMS Conference that is held in Dallas, TX in late February each year. Dr. Paul Pepe and an entourage of EMS medical directors put on that Conference each year with about 700 people in attendance. It is two solid days of 10-15 minute, data/results driven presentations. The real nuts and bolts of on the edge, just less than scientific, robust presentations. It is the harbinger of the evidence-based prehospital medicine to come.

Stevenson et al wanted to bring home the major information and flavor of that conference. The info is extremely valuable to anyone who wants to affect EMS practice and do the best things for their patients.

Dr. Ed Racht

They lined up the ER docs from Deaconess to present that material... with two exceptions. The first being Dr. Ed Racht, who is the national Chief Medical Officer of my primary employer and myself (yeah... I know... way out of my league and I tend to get very nervous about that issue). All you have to do to learn just how much of a player Dr. Racht is in this country is just Google his name. What I will tell you is that above all, he is a gem of a person. From a paramedics perspective, I can tell you that he gets it. He understands the prehospital side of emergency medicine. He has been a medical director in a response vehicle out making calls.

I almost hated the fact that I had to go to Vegas earlier in the week as I wanted to be in town when Dr. Racht presented at my employer as well. That was not to be. I got to count cities in the dark from 35,000 feet instead. But Wednesday arrived and I got to rub elbows with Dr. Racht and doctors Stevenson, Huhnke, etc... I guess I really do hope to learn more through elbow rubbing osmosis (ERO?).

The day was great. Dr. Racht launched the whole thing talking about the big game changer topics that are coming in EMS. The various docs spoke on the many topics. The Symposium was a sell out and much information was delivered. I closed the conference with my data on response times, which shows a distinct lack of response time impact on the real time physiologic status of the patient. The data does not measure outcomes, but does look at whether patients become more unstable over time waiting for an ambulance.

Good job guys... the Symposium was a success and I did not puke from nervousness on stage. I never do, but I always feel like it.

We adjourned from there to a "meet and greet" for our employees with Dr. Racht.

After that, there was a scheduled dinner for the managers at work with their spouses and also including Dr. Racht, Dr. Stevenson and Dr. Fouts. It was a great setting (looking out over downtown Evansviile from a high vantage point), good food, stories and people. We talked of stories that in many cases were over 20 years old. Stories that framed our EMS experience and had helped make us who we are.

At one point, I noticed my boss standing up with his hand behind his back...

I don't think I have mentioned this before, but this is my 30th year in EMS. In two days, it would be my 25th anniversary with my primary employer.

He brought out THE BOX. I knew the box. It was the box that our anniversary certificates come in.
I instantly wanted to crawl under the table. I knew he would bring this out sometime soon, but from past occurrences, I never thought it would be two days before the anniversary. I usually embarrass very easily with any type of recognition... so...

He thanked me for 25 years of service in a very generous verbal salute. I countered by saying, "Let's now recognize Peter Stevenson for his 32 years of service." Which is very true, but anything at that point to take the spotlight off of me.

25 years at one job. All eight months of that in the same management position I hold today. It is in ways a lifetime.

I have responded to three tornadoes, a C-130 crash, fires with victims, shootings, stabbings (and bears... oh my!), cardiac arrests, choking... I can't even begin to keep it all from running together. On the management side it has mainly been quality improvement and in the last decade trying to sort through mounds of data.

Years of writing protocols, troubleshooting problems and building engineering controls to help keep people from making mistakes.

Teaching everything under the sun related to EMS except for communications and OB/GYN... I don't touch those on a bet. Not that I can't... I just don't enjoy teaching those topics.

Anyway... I suppose it was a wonderful way to have it happen with my wonderful wife there, Dr. Racht, Dr. Stevenson, Dr. Fouts and my cohorts in management.

The night ended all to soon. I took Dr. Racht back to his hotel. It probably meant the most to me that he verbalized that he noticed the extreme efforts we make here in Evansville not only to do good care, but to do evidence-based care and share what we do.

Many things ran through my head that night and I found it hard to sleep. Thursday would be my only day in the office and another trip was coming on Friday that was another new step for me.

We can discuss those in Part 4. We will get into some opinions there for sure!

Namaste