A Fire Medic Perspective: A Chief’s Challenges of Change with retired (but still incredibly active) Chief Dennis Rubin, formerly serving as Chief of Washington DC, Atalanta, GA, Norfolk, VA, and Dothan, AL Fire Departments.  

Having had the opportunity to attend the last AHA Guidelines roll-out in Chicago in October of 2010 I wound up reading everything I could on the guidelines in the research behind them so that when I showed up to represent my state I didn’t look like some kind of dope. It was an easy digging through all those papers, but when I was finished I noticed something profound in both the recommendations and the research (though not the ACLS algorithms or courses, but that is another topic). I saw how and why we were going to have to make a CHANGE.

I was excited to start my career in the fire service, but it seemed as if it may already be over. Depression hit.

Rom Duckworth speaks with Dan Limmer about What we need to know about the EMS education transition from old standards to new ones, how to experience providers get up to speed, the difference between a refresher and the transition, and the keys to teaching critical thinking to students.

Is your department or are other emergency response or civilian groups in your area considering the distribution or use of Narcan by non-ALS personnel? If so, then this document is for you.

The chief emphasized that he didn't mean that all of his people were acting like children, although the look in his eye implied that maybe some were. I wasn't suggesting anything about the maturity of his people, but rather that parents don't stop being parents when their children grow up. In fact, this is exactly what I meant by helping agency leaders acting like parents rather than substitute teachers.

Rom Duckworth speaks with Dave Statter about first due videos, the outsider perspective of the fire service, the echo chamber effect, the videos he won’t show, and the answer to the question “When Has THAT Ever Happened in the Fire Service?”

FICEMS WHY YOU NEED TO READ IT: The gears of FICEMS will no doubt grind slowly, but if your agency has any kind of EMS response component you’ll want to know which direction they’re turning. There aren’t any shockingly new ideas here, but it is a good breakdown of where EMS in the United States needs to be moving. WHAT ...

The biggest problem… With today’s social media use policies are the gigantic swaths of “gray area” that shroud some issues. Not only do statutes and regulations vary tremendously from state to state and workplace to workplace, but as social media case law develops it can be difficult to determine how key phrases such as “free speech”, “privacy protection”, and “on-the-job” ...

Everyone has their own way to write an article. Everyone has their own voice and individual style, and a way of adapting that style depending on what they want to write. In this article, I’m not going to speak to finding your voice or style , but I am going to share with you the method I use to craft ...