We had an amazing talk with Chief John Moon, (ret) of Pittsburgh EMS and Freedom House Ambulance, one of the first paramedics in the United States.
If you don’t know the story of Freedom House, you should. Before Seattle, Miami, and yes, even Squad 51, Freedom House was providing bleeding-edge care to the citizens of the Hill and greater Pittsburgh, in a world where they were not regarded as equals in emergency services or healthcare.
Dr. Haney Mallemat (@criticalcarenow) joins Dan to discuss how social media can influence medicine and how recent medical events have shined a light on CPR and bleeding control.
In a matter of a few days, the world was shocked to hear that actor Jeremy Renner had been traumatically injured while on vacation in Nevada and Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin experienced a cardiac arrest on the field. These two tragic events have shown the world, albeit briefly, how important early CPR and bleeding control are to survival.
If you watch TikTok, and let’s be honest, you all do; you know The EMS Avenger from his short posts on evidence-based medicine and all around being a good egg as a clinician.
Dan got to sit down with him (aka: Jimmy Apple) and got to talk about social media in EMS, likes and dislikes, and the role of social media like TikTok in making clinicians better, not just passing time while posted!
Greg Friese is the Editorial Director of EMS1.com among other things. He brings a very interesting view of how EMS providers should be compensated for the work they do. In January of 2022, he wrote a piece discussing the importance of EMS providers not just receiving a living wage, but rather for EMS workers to make much greater than a living wage. He recently wrote about the dismal raise that Austin EMS providers received to provide a voice to workers who felt voiceless.
Dan Gerard is a man of many hats. He is the current President of the IAEMSC as well as the EMS Coordinator for Alameda county in California. He has spent his lengthy EMS career pursuing new advancements in pre-hospital medicine and is currently piloting a program in Alameda county that may be a game changer when it comes to recognizing and treating seizures in the field. Ceribell is a device that wraps around a patient’s head like a headband and produces real-time EEG tracings that can be interpreted by an EMS clinician with little to no training. The best part about this system is that it is already FDA approved an is being used in hospitals with encouraging results. Take a listen and let us know what you think!