EMS Avenger

03/18/2026

The Ultimate EMS Podcast Mashup is here! What do nerdy researchers, educators, and podcasters do when at a conference together and the lecturing ends? We keep nerding out! We can't help ourselves. Dr. Jeff Jarvis (The EMS Lighthouse Project), Mike Verkest & Ritu Sahni (The EMS Show) and myself talk about...AIRWAY...because Jeff Jarvis. But still, WE talk about AIRWAY! Available on YouTube and all major Podcast platforms.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3Xl0fagTRj9hcusFBo8pBj?si=Bfjzc2AcTJ278H_mV8YDpg&context=spotify%3Ashow%3A3uIBq4hypziHqWUvDDNR0u

03/18/2026

Tune in tomorrow!

03/17/2026

I wanted to make sure I covered even some of the more mundane aspects of our RSV call for consistency. So here is my rationale for where I'll be getting my hand-off from the receiving facility and what I'll be wanting to know.

03/17/2026

Whole Blood was not superior to component therapy in traumatic hemorrhage in this UK RCT.

Whole-blood transfusion has recently gained favor in the management of severe hemorrhage; however, data from large clinical trials evaluating its clinical effectiveness and safety are lacking. We c...

03/17/2026

If you want to save EMS, first give up the notion that you're saving it for you. You're not. The vast majority of people currently working in EMS won't be around to see what a "saved" EMS looks like. There is no scenario in which what people working in EMS envision for it experience it. So the best thing those of us working in EMS can do right is save ourselves. Start small. Be kind. Be compassionate. Be open minded and most of all, drop the pretense that EMS is for emergencies only. That expectation is accomplishing one thing and one thing only- driving you crazy when it isn't met.

03/16/2026

You're working a cardiac arrest and you get a pulse back. This is when the clock starts. A clock counting down to when survival is lowered by half if you can't stabilize their blood pressure and oxygen levels. This is the time where it is essential that prioritization be on stabilization and not movement.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666520426000718?utm_source=chatgpt.com

03/16/2026

In pediatric patients, weight is something you would actually like to know before you get to a scene. You can do a lot of pre-planning if you already know it. As a team we want to be pre-planning all calls, but having a weight to work with with pediatric patients can get allow even better preparation and cognitive offload. Is there a chance the weight won't be accurate obtained prior to arrival? Yes. But it's much better to be prepared for it to be inaccurate rather than be unprepared when the majority of time it will be accurate, even if by Handtevy/IBW.

03/15/2026

Closing out the SOJ EMS Conference with my new talk, "How to Save EMS". This is my second year presenting it here. Such a great conference in a great part of the country! Thanks for having me back!

03/15/2026

Decompression sickness is a modern technological phenomenon (Progress tends to be accompanied by new pathologies). The culprit in decompression sickness is nitrogen. Nitrogen tends to like to hang out with lipids. But when someone experiences relatively rapid depressurization, suddenly the force exerting itself against nitrogen is lost. This results in an abundance of free floating nitrogen in the blood, which is a bad thing.

03/14/2026

The evolution of medicine, illness, and acuity as far as its quantification through data and advanced metrics is really in its infancy. I don't think we have fully grasped how large a role numbers and the way we interpret them will guide treatment in the next decade (This is not to take away the human factor when we determine if a patient is sick. But it does mitigate the human potential to error in under-treating). As quantifying shock evolves, so do the metrics. Shock Index has been relied upon more and more to be able to not only identify shock, but predict a clinical course. Now we have reverse shock index, which may be a more reliable indicator or acuity in the sick patient. Will Heuser takes us through reverse shock index and how it can be a valuable tool.

03/14/2026

This is a other example of how research actually works. In order to understand how we can best help patients and determine the best approach to giving blood, we need to establish WHAT metrics are prompting us to give it. It may be it may be intuitive to some, but research functions under the "Screen shot or it didn't happen" paradigm. If you didn't study it, you can't assume it. Or, "That which can be proposed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence". This paper is one step in a number of steps in establishing best practices. Nothing ground-breaking by any means, but to me it's rewarding to follow research as it's actually happening! This abstract is in the list of Menegazzi abstracts in my bio.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10903127.2025.2582675