It can begin as simply as asking our patient or their family what they feel we could have done better at the end of an encounter. Or asking other EMS providers, ED staff, or that guy who was standing there on the side of the road watching everything what they thought of everything that happened. When was the last time you connected with a patient or their family? There is nothing strictly clinical about it but it is as important a part of what we do as our clinical care. I take hugs, tears, thank yous, complaints, occasionally yelling, and everyone gets the silly calling card because good, bad or indifferent we can't get better unless we know our strengths and weaknesses.
Even on the larger scale:
- Have we pushed our leaders to move EMS into the next generation of evidence-based medicine?
- Do we have a strong injury and illness prevention program?
- Do we really need so many paramedics?
- Is the old adage of "BLS before ALS" working to the advantage of the patients, providers, the emergency department, and healthcare-at-large?
- Does a community medicine approach have a place in EMS?
These are questions we talk about all the time on an anecdotal basis or as a small group, but isn't it time we started to move our own conversation and shape the system to provide our communities with a greater level of appropriate service. This is the basis of the EMS 2.0 concept as started by a group of EMS providers who established the Chronicles of EMS. If you have a few minutes take a read and get involved.
So everyday I try to push my personal envelope of comfortability and that of those around me. It makes things feel awkward more often than not but being awkward is awesome so embrace it.
