Expanding Our Role

So a couple times this week, today being the last day, I've been the "standby EMT" for a television show filming in my area. I'd love to share all the details, but I've been sworn to secrecy by a contract that is many pages with many long words. All I'll say is that this show will be aired on a national cable channel in July, but I look forward to sharing more then!

It's actually not as glamorous as it sounds. I've been sitting in my car, jump bag with all equipment in the seat next to me, for three hours now. I've accomplished a lot of homework and reading, and now I'm going to use my computer until it runs out of battery. Maybe something will happen requiring some use of medical skill, but probably not. The network's insurance policy requires an EMT on set "just in case", so here I am.

Early in my class, we had the typical section on what is expected of a medic, what the role of the medic is in society, etc. We learned about the field growing to primary care, industrial medicine, sports medicine, flight medicine, and more. I guess that me sitting here waiting for something to happen is kind of industrial medicine - I'm on the scene of an industry as the chief (and only!) medical personnel. It's interesting to look back on EMS history and see all the opportunities we've gotten since then...

In my opinion, the earliest we can trace EMS back to is Napoleon's times, where the first triage system was used. 911 was "invented" as the national emergency number in 1968 (to be finalized by President Clinton in 1999), after EMS was established as part of the DOT in 1966. Since then, it's just a big history of laws and changes. We've lost and received funding from Congress several times. We're currently working under "The EMS Agenda for the Future" from 2006, trying to develop more in research, financing, education, prevention, care, and more.

I hope to focus my career on two of the newer aspects of paramedicine - aircare and education. And while I do want to teach BLS and ALS, as well as AHA, I also want to educate the public. I want to go to birthing classes and teach new parents how to properly install a carseat to protect their children. I want to go to local elderly church groups and teach signs of stroke and the importance of early recognition - did you know that every MINUTE during a stroke, 2 million neurons and 14 billion synapses die?! I'm sure I could come up with many more. I think that preventative education could save lives, and it's something that's not nearly offered enough.

My computer's down to 12% battery life. Darn...looks like I'll have to find something else to keep me occupied until filming wraps for the day! Back to the books again.

Tomorrow, I'm taking my good friend up to DC for an important interview she has. I'm looking forward to an interesting morning while she's at her interview and then Alpha/Beta Therapy in class tomorrow night.