EMS Grand Blog Rounds

One of the things I found myself talking to John Mitchell about last week in Baltimore was the fact that the blogosphere is actually comprised of alot of different spheres filled with all types of blogs. There are the obvious Techie Blogs, the Foodie Blogs, the Craft Blogs, the Political Blogs, the Humor Blogs, the Personal Blogs, the Photo Blogs, and of course the Mommy Blogs… and that is really only just scratching the surface of the blogosphere as a whole. We, as public safety and public health professionals, are a very small percentage of the greater blogosphere and it’s important that we recognize great contributions of content and share it. So here are some really great posts from the EMS Blogosphere that appeared over the previous week:

• Rogue Medic continued to provide a clearer picture of the Pittsburgh EMS situation by responding to anonymous comments from those who don’t do the job. Additionally TOTWTYTR hits the nail on the head by pointing out that Public Safety Director Michael Huss continues to throw around blame instead of accepting responsibility. I can think of no other bloggers I’d want backing my social media less department at such a time, and maybe someday one of the trade magazines or publications will take a stand for a department and write an original story instead of just reposting the Associated Press drivel. Chief McCaughan, my offer still stands
• Sean Eddy from Medic Madness asks a very important question… who do YOU work for? The answer may surprise some of you… and it may just make you rethink how you care for your patients
• Ms Paramedic has an inspirational post about making thunder as opposed to stealing it. I can relate to that post on a number of levels. Everytime I think I may have pushed the boundaries or have backed a lost cause, I am reminded of a saying my mother once told me: Every mighty oak was once a nut that stood its ground. Nuts make thunder, just in case you didn’t know…

And finally…

• I would be remiss not to mention Steve Whitehead’s fabulous monthly February Roundup in case you missed anything during that month…

Have a safe week!

It’s been another pretty busy week in the blogosphere in general. The buzz hasn’t been so much about Google Buzz, but more about aftermaths of buzz worthy events. So here are a few posts that I found about the future of EMS, rightfully defending those unable to defend themselves, and the truth about the emotional toll we as EMS providers pay…

• The really big story over the course of last week was the premiere of The Chronicles of EMS. All the heavy weight bloggers had their own take including Steve Whitehead, Greg Friese, and Chris Kaiser. Of course Mark Glencourse and Justin Schorr explained the experience from a uniquely universal perspective. The CoEMS event was also blogged by some relative newcomers to ye old EMS blogosphere Jeramedic, Ms. Paramedic, and Ronnie Grubb. Gotta love how this is spreading…
• Chris Kaiser has a fantastic post about the negative emotions in EMS. If I were an instructor, I’d make it a mandatory must read for any of my classes
• Rogue Medic has taken on the defense for Pittsburgh EMS Paramedics and has asked Where was Public Safety Director Michael Huss as his EMS crews became virtually inundated and overrun with call volume? I’m really glad Rogue took this on because it seemed no one was going to be able to do it promptly enough. I had a post drafted that was similar to his (albeit without his specific sources), but he did a far better job than I could. Depending on the correspondence from a certain trade magazine that I am still waiting for, that post may be turning into a rage against the machine… again

And finally…

• KevinMD has a great post on why Doctors and Hospitals need to pay attention to word of mouth. I would dare to say that EMS Agencies need to heed the same advice for the exact same reasons

On a completely unrelated note, I’ll be attending the EMS Today Conference in Baltimore on Friday March 5. I’m only there for the day, but the two presentations I have scheduled have a 3 hour break in between… so if anyone’s going and wants to go drool over a new Mirage in the afternoon, let me know.

Have a safe week!

It’s been a pretty busy week in the blogosphere in general. While the announcement of Apple’s iPad dominated the tech news (and therefore the majority of the blogosphere) there is life beyond tech and plenty has been going on in the EMS section of the blogosphere. So here are a few posts that I found as an important reminder, an EMS author’s view of the tech battles being waged, and the finer art of performing a trauma exposure…

• Jim Hoffman has a great post on his blog Authorized Transmissions titled Do You Want To Be A Cop? There’s A Test For That. As difficult as it may seem at times, I think it’s important to keep in mind what he says in that post, especially when it comes to actually doing our job and providing emergency medical care without bias or the passing of judgment on our patients who are also involved with law enforcement. Of course, since we already have a test for it, all that is missing is the app
• EMS author Reynolds weighs in on the Apple vs. Amazon E-Book Smackdown that is currently warming up behind the scenes before becoming a full out brawl. I find all of this incredibly riveting mainly because I’ll be having an e-book offering myself in the not so distant future, and what happens here may very well change the way things are being done now. As for who I’m rooting for… well Amazon really made that decision for me when they released the Kindle App for iPhone which ironically will work on the iPad. I’m sure whoever thought up that idea figured it was a good move at the time but I’m not so sure about now…
• Greg Friese provided an excellent post about remembering that every patient has their own story. The post was a submission to The Handover Blog Carnival. January’s edition was hosted at Gomerville and the next one will be hosted at Notes From Mosquito Hill

And finally…

• For those of you wondering what to do with those shiny scissors you just got, Steve Whitehead provides a great and detailed tutorial on The Art of Using Trauma Shears. I also just want to mention that Steve recently published a great e-book called The Non-Conformists’ Guide To EMS Success and there will be a more formal review of it tomorrow. Until then, find some old jeans, and practice your ripping

Have a safe week…

It’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day here in the United States. While there has been no real cohesive National Call To Service as there was last year, since I already volunteer quite a bit of my time, I’m spending today eating chocolate cake, drinking home brewed ice coffee, and reading blogs that I’ve been backed up on… just like last year. So here are a few of the posts that I wanted to share with you that filled me with pride, inspired me to finally be able to take Droid screen shots, and some solid advice that I wish those who were emotionally tied to the Haitian disaster would heed:

• A big congratulations goes to Medic 999 who is the winner of the #FCBlog09 contest! It’s really nice to see a purely EMS blog take the win!
• Greg Friese announces the availability of an EMS Scheduling App for the iPhone and all you iCultists out there. Of course, I’ll be waiting for the Droid version to become available… and I am strongly predicting that any application that wants to be relevant will be launching an Android version in Q2 and Q3 of this year…
• Steve Whitehead has announced the publication of The Non-Conformists Guide To EMS Success. As a non-conformist myself, I am looking forward to reading where exactly I went wrong or if in fact I did it right…

And finally…

• While not from the EMS Blogosphere per se, Firehouse Zen has an excellent article on the importance of not self-deploying to a disaster zone and taking the event as an opportunity to educate our own communities

Have a safe week…

It’s a new year. A new decade. 2009 still has a few gems in it that I think need to be pointed out before we go full steam into 2010. So here are a few blog posts from around the EMS Blogosphere that gave closure, I felt honored by, and heads into 2010 at full gallop:

• In case you spent December living under a shell, the Social Media Responder 2009 contest concluded with the Charlotte Fire Department taking the win. A big congratulations goes out to them… and a challenge goes out to the rest of you. Do you think you have what it takes to be a Social Media Responder? Nominations for #SMR2010 opens up December 1 and that is less than 11 months away
• It was more than just the end of a year… it was also the end of a month which means that Steve Whitehead has another great monthly recap. I feel honored to have been included for my challenge to EMS Agencies to start 2010 off right by establishing a Social Media Policy. Steve also did a full year recap as well so that you can catch up on anything you might have missed… which is my nice way of saying be sure you’ve read all of it… twice
• KevinMD has an interesting post regarding the need to use caution when listening to medical advice from celebrities. I completely agree… especially if that celebrity happens to be named Jenny McCarthy…

And finally…

• Congratulations to Greg Friese of EveryDayEMSTips.com, Rogue Medic, and Steve Whitehead of TheEMTSpot.com for being nominated for the Fire/EMS Blog of the Year ‘09 contest being run by the FireCritic. As an avid reader of all three blogs, casting a vote for only one is going to be a very hard thing for me. Do you have a favorite EMS Blog you want to see nominated? Then head on over to the Fire/EMS Blog of the Year ‘09 page and start nominating!

Have a good week and stay safe…

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Top Posts of 2009 (davidkonig.com)
• #CoEMS Trailer Now Available (davidkonig.com)

‘Tis the season of being busy, busy, busy. Luckily I still find time to cruise the Feedreader at night and offer you some posts from the EMS Blogosphere that I found to be threatening the industry, sound advice, and a geek mouthful and then some:

• KevinMD has a powerful post concerning serving jail time for medical mistakes. I can’t help but think that if this practice is allowed to continue the inherent threat of doing “hard time” for making a mistake, albeit a grave one, will thin the ranks and in turn raise the cost of healthcare even more than it has by the uninsured as there will be a lack of personnel willing to take the risk associated with the profession. As if the profession wasn’t already risky enough…
• In Greg Friese’s 31 Days of Continuing Education (#31DaysofCE) he covers the trend of personal branding. All of his recommendations are solid, and my sole additional tip to add would be to maintain an active profile on Facebook because it continue to be the current premiere social network with both the largest user base and an international presence
• Buck Ferris gave some step-by-step instructions on how to blog anonymously. I will admit, I think alot of what he is saying is complete overkill and more than slightly black hat for the spirit of Social Media… but nonetheless if you’re a bit geeky you’ll find it an interesting read. Considering a law friend of mine once told me that the difference between hackers and the real computer criminals is the use of Linux… I would advise caution irregardless

And finally…

• Kelly Grayson is collecting submissions for the holiday edition of The Handover blog carnival. While I’m an avid reader of The Handover (as well as a few other blog carnivals) I’ve never made a submission out of sheer laziness… which isn’t a reason for you not to…

Have a safe week…

I hope you all have survived the horrors of the feasting table as well. Here are some posts from the EMS Blogosphere that I found to be dead on, timely, and interesting from any perspective:

• Dave Williams has a new EMS blog project called Running An Ambulance Service. He’s posted some really interesting resources and reports, the one that caught my eye was the NJ State EMS Review. It appealed to me because it shows a) what a state has to take into consideration and b) it discusses directly the ambient stupidity “Mother may I?” system that is New Jersey
• Across the pond Reynolds outlines the patient types he now sees instead of the emergencies he is meant to handle. Apparently our patients have been migrating to England since as early as 1995…
• Shaggy posted a fantastic educational piece at Paramedicine 101 about Death Notifications to Family Members. My only criticism is to add, “I’m sorry for your loss” to the Things Not To Say list as opposed to the Things To Say list. It’s a knee jerk and insincere response, and those in grief know it

And finally…

• The nominations continue to roll in for Social Media Responder 2009 over at PIOSocialMediaTraining.com . If you have a moment, why not nominate your favorite Social Media Responder? It just takes one nomination to go before the Judges… and the best part of it is there are now prizes…

Be safe out there…

It’s been a few weeks since my last edition, and while I would like to blame my deep cerebral pondering of the State of the EMS Blogosphere as the cause, the truth is that it’s hardly been deep thinking but rather work overload and food poisoning via pretzel nuggets. Seriously, if you ever go to Roosevelt Field Mall, do not buy from Pretzel Time in the food court. As for the State of the EMS Blogosphere, well as these posts will illustrate, I think its alive and doing very well:

• Rogue Medic gets the Best Blog Post Title Ever Award for his post titled Magic Sirens Prevent Ambulance Drivers From Hitting Things. I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that a fire blog posted about that ridiculous story or that an actual EMS Agency is declaring it. Personally, I’m all for the rocket launchers…
• Greg Friese decided to take the high road with the aforementioned topic and posted Tips To Reduce Intersection Collisions that actually work. Maybe those tips should get posted by a fire blogger… since it was a fire blogger that put credibility into the magic sirens to begin with. Yeah… I know… I’m such an off roader…
• Buckman relates an interesting tale of how our best partners can surprise us even when we think we know them so well…

And finally…

• With the demise of Trauma, EMS filmmaker Thaddeus Setla has begun filming Chronicles of EMS. The series is following the adventures of American blogger Happy Medic and United Kingdom blogger Medic999 on their service exchange that has been referred to on their own blogs as “The Project“. EMS in general has a very hard time communicating our services, challenges, and goals with the communities we serve so I see this as a huge step in the right direction…

Be safe out there…

I just got back from a 4 day jaunt in Florida where I gathered with some of the most elite and cutting edge social media minds from the United States and Canada. Discussions ranged on everything from net neutraility, to third party commenting systems, to the better Cold Stone Creamery ice cream flavor, and finally culminating in an alien themed Halloween soiree’ the likes that are only seen once a year.

One of the things that I was asked about was the current state of the EMS Blogosphere with the recent launch of the blog network FireEMSBlogs.com. To be honest, I really hadn’t given it a lot of thought… but while I am pondering it here are some blog posts from some EMS Bloggers:

• Kelly Grayson has an interesting Wet Blanket approach to EMS 2.0. No one like being the wet blanket… but everyone likes a blanket party…
• Steve Whitehead has a great post about Chest Pain transport times.
• Rogue Medic is not just known for his elaborate yet simple posts on improving the patient experience but also for responding to comments in a similar fashion, such as this post regarding the Constitution…

And finally…

• Even though he isn’t technically an EMS Blogger, The Fire Critic has a great post on leadership that can be applied to any service…

Have a safe week…

Here are some blog posts from EMS Bloggers last week that I found offering deeply personal moments, insight into H1N1 public health concerns, and of course where things are afoot in the blogosphere…

• Medic 61 shares an incredibly personal moment… one which I personally can relate to and maybe you can too
• John Solomon has received input from a public health expert regarding concerns of the H1N1 vaccine from the public health perspective. I found it extrmely interesting that the health expert pointed out that “…almost all of the flu circulating now is H1N1…“, and he’s right
• Greg Friese has a great post with a video on Household Fire Evacuation Planning. If you haven’t already done the same, I encourage you to do it today

And finally…

• I would be remiss if I did not mention the “Beta” launch of FireEMSBlogs.com. It appears that a number of my favorite bloggers (FireCritic, STATter911, and the non-IC Ambulance Driver Files) have joined this blog network that is being operated by Elsevier Public Safety, which happens to also be the parent company of industry publications JEMS and Fire Rescue Magazine and whose online holdings include JEMS.com, JEMSConnect, and FirefighterNation. While I have made my feelings on blog networks pretty well known, I really have to wish the EMS Bloggers who signed on the best of luck. A quick glance at their “partners” shows that there is a very heavy fire presence and the EMS Bloggers are outnumbered 2:1. While that may be alright for some, it certainly isn’t alright for all, so it looks like that whole “EMS 2.0″ and EMS Unity thing that’s been talked about by a few of those bloggers means it has to be under a Fire Service banner… which means they’ve already given up on the idea before even getting started. For the techies out there, it’s a Wordpress MU installation and looks to be running a Disqus Commenting System just like my own blog right here… which by the way is NOT in “beta”

Have a safe week everyone…