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Skip Kirkwood

Skip Kirkwood's Blog (6)

Situational Awareness, Scene Safety, and Prayers for Comrades

What a week. Friday a mass shooting in Binghamton, NY, and today three police officers killed in Pittsburgh, PA. Following the week when 8 were murdered in a nursing home in Carthage, NC. Please keep the families of the fallen officers, and our EMS colleagues who had to respond to thesescenes, in our thoughts and prayers. So - how do we help to prepare ourselves situations like this? And how do we keep ourselves from becoming victims? We probably need to spend some time, with our colleagues, o… Continue

Added by Skip Kirkwood on April 4, 2009 at 6:29pm — 5 Comments

Embracing the "public safety" aspects - Steve Berry's closing keynote

In his closing keynote at EMS TODAY, Steve Berry (addressing public perception of EMS) urged listeners to adopt some of the professionalism of our public safety counterparts-- fire, law enforcement and the military. He believes we’re a mix of medical and public safety, but that in order to cement an image of EMS in the public’s mind, we should accept that the public affiliates us more with public safety than the medical profession, and we should work with that perception rather than against it.… Continue

Added by Skip Kirkwood on March 28, 2009 at 5:00pm — 51 Comments

The EMS Labor Movement - or Lack Thereof? What's the story?

Many of the posts on this network site, and others, bemoan the plight of poor, overworked, underpaid, and under-respected EMS providers. Yet, the EMS community does not seem to have an active labor movement working to improve this environment. I must confess that I'm not a union guy - I'm a chief in a right-to-work, no collective bargaining for public employees state. So the situation probably works to my advantage - maybe. But I am curious. It seems that much of the economic and political su… Continue

Added by Skip Kirkwood on February 14, 2009 at 12:39pm — 13 Comments

What research would help us do EMS better?

I was reading the March 2009 issue of Prehospital Emergency Care (for those who don't read it, it is the major peer-review journal devoted to EMS in the US). I was excited to see, buried amongst the clinical and pseudo-clinical research abstracts, a few studies that might help us run our services better. One was a before and after study of the impact of implementing power stretchers in a large county EMS agency. We've gt a ton of clinical research going on - the physicians see to that. But how… Continue

Added by Skip Kirkwood on February 7, 2009 at 10:48am — 39 Comments

Creating a "culture of safety" in the EMS community

Hate is a strong word. I HATE hearing about medics getting injured, disabled, killed in the line of duty. Since I play the bagpipes and I'm a public safety guy, I go to more than my fair share of public safety funerals. It is distressing to see the impact of these mostly-unnecessary, mostly-preventable deaths on friends, families, agencies, and communities. It's hardened me a good bit over the years - to the point where I don't feel at all bad about dropping the disciplinary hammer on a medic… Continue

Added by Skip Kirkwood on February 4, 2009 at 8:16pm — 29 Comments

The Wrong People for the Job?

First, you have to read the story: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article5420921.ece On one hand, you have to ask, what was wrong with these guys, that they were even having these thoughts, never mind expressing them? On the other hand, I wonder if there is a charge such as described in the article, in England or in the U.S. It sounds kind of like "criminal thinking out loud" or "felonious bad heart" or something. In any case, what a nightmare for the EMS agency! I can't imag… Continue

Added by Skip Kirkwood on January 4, 2009 at 5:38pm — No Comments

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Skip, When the vast majority of the former fire/police combination departments no longer exist, it's a little difficult to study them. It doesn't take peer-reviewed research to understand that when virtually all of the attempts to combine those ...
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Since it's obvious to all of us that patient-centered, data driven, evidence based, and clinically excellent EMS is worth striving for, regardless of who provides it, maybe we could work together and come up with a thread entitled "characteristics...
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If you could demonstrate a cause-effect relationship, I might buy it, but you can't. There mere fact that a body politic votes one way or the other is not proof of anything (except perhaps a successful lobbying effort). It's long been a scientific...
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