Career Development

Volunteering From Local to Global: How to Take your Emergency Services Training on the Road Goal:  To apply your Emergency Services Training and experience to help people, volunteering in different locations around the world. Last year I had the amazing pleasure of travelling to the Zulu Natal in South Africa.  On the way there I spent one day and one ...

10 benefits of swag, but the bonus is connections you make.

Career and Family Life, Inextricably Linked. The Toughest Family Questions GOAL: Improve Emergency Responders’ health, safety and performance on the job.  We often talk about our separate lives. We call it Career and Family, but in emergency services, like the military, there is a very special dynamic between the two. By the nature of what we do, people in our Career ...

How teaching others can teach you. You know it. You are pretty darn good at what you do.  In every aspect of your job you strive for excellence and 9 times out of 10, you reach it. Yet there are still a couple of things you have a hard time mastering.  Maybe there’s even one BIG thing, that one thing ...

Turn the Negative Into the Positive In Emergency Services – as in any work place – sometimes negativity creeps in until it becomes the all too familiar norm as the day-to-day begins to wear on everyone. Sometimes Negativity just shows up in its rumpled uniform, a little bit late for shift change, shoelaces untied, already complaining as it comes in ...

  Keynote presentations are the movie trailers of EMS. They show the good, the bad, the ugly. They can show us the inspiring, the terrifying, and the catch you by the heart and throat moments. Day after day emergency personnel the world over go to work, and take it one call at a time. Gear is checked, trucks are maintained, ...

Social Media   There are a million websites and a bazillion “Social Media Gurus”, “Mavens” and “Experts” with businesses to guide you through the world of social media. To distinguish themselves, they seem to rely on either whizz-bang theatrics (flashy, blinky text) or scare tactics (if you don’t employ SM marketing right now YOU’LL DIE!). In hopes of making money ...

  The Holidays Like of much of the Emergency Services community, I too, am working this fourth of July and I too will be sweltering in turn-out gear while others will roast hot dogs, drink beer and watch fireworks (and good for them, I hope to join them next year).

  Focus on Development and the Career part will follow naturally Ah, Career Development.  Some begin their career in emergency services as soon as they’re born. Some even before that. We see Mom and Dad or Uncle Jim  and maybe even Granddad or Grandma wearing that uniform and going out to help people and even play with the lights and ...

  Anniversary Time May is a month of Anniversaries for me; the Anniversary of my birth (I’m 41), the Anniversary of my service at the Fire Department (12 years), the Anniversary of my Paramedic License, (16 years), and most importantly, the Anniversary of my marriage (now almost five wonderful years). I think that Anniversaries are a fantastic opportunity. When I ...