Loud & Clear: EMS Guiding Principles - Advanced Continuing Education for Paramedics, EMTs & Prehospital Care Providers

Stephanie Suzadail's favorite word is "fail." She'll tell you why and how we should embrace it.

In this episode she walks through the difference between failure that builds you and failure that breaks you. Why Sisyphus is a warning, not a role model. Why the best clinicians you'll ever work with have made bigger mistakes than you have. Why high-functioning organizations report mistakes ten times more often than average ones. Why self-identified perfectionists only ever climb to "moderately successful." 

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Most medics walk onto a domestic violence scene armed with instinct and not much else. Jim Schmidt thought 20 years in the fire service had prepared him for anything — until he had to identify his stepdaughter Gabby Petito's body in 2021. In the months and years after he realized how little EMS is prepared to recognize and treat domestic violence victims. What he's learned since has rewritten what first responders should be doing on these calls. Jim walks us through the red flags, why strangulation may leave no external marks but signals a 750% jump in homicide risk, how to document, how to treat and talk to the patient, and what patterns we can recognize.

Resources

DomesticShelters.org — find local DV/SA orgs by address

National DV Hotline — 1-800-799-SAFE · text START to 88788

JEMS article by Jim Schmidt on educating first responders to recognize domestic violence: https://www.jems.com/ems-training/domestic-violence-educating-first-responders/ 

Jim Hopper, PHD on the neurobiology of trauma and sexual assault: https://www.youtube.com/@JimHopperPhD 

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Don't Be A Field Training Officer Be A Field Training Mentor.

Field training is about more than teaching skills, it shapes culture, standards, and the kind of clinician someone becomes. In this episode, Ross sits down with Ben Tacy onsite at FASTCAN to talk about the origins of field training and why Ben prefers the language of mentorship over “field training officer”.

If you care about leadership, education, workplace culture, or building better medics, this conversation is worth your time.

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Frostbite is more dangerous than it looks and easier to make worse than you think. In this episode, Ross and Will sit down with Dr. Greg Doctor, a wilderness medicine specialist and emergency physician practicing in the Colorado Rockies, to break down frostbite from the prehospital perspective.

Greg walks through field assessment, when to rewarm vs. when to leave it alone, pain management, and when to bypass your local ED for a tertiary care center.

Whether you’re running urban calls or wilderness rescues, you may see this and this episode will help inform how you approach cold injury.

 

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Subscribe to The Confidence Dispatch, our free weekly newsletter for paramedics who want to get 1% better every shift: →  https://loudandclear.kit.com/d45b012fae

 

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The Paramedic Confidence Builder is a year-long course and coaching community for new medics who want to close the gap between what school taught them and what the job actually demands.

Not a lecture series. Not another CE you'll forget by your next shift. Real frameworks for clinical reasoning and mental performance. The stuff nobody teaches you in school.

If that sounds like what you've been looking for, book a free 30-minute coaching call and we'll talk about whether it's the right fit. Even if it’s not we’ll give you actionable advice on the call so that you still walk away with something valuable: →  calendly.com/d/cq38-87r-fkk/paramedic-confidence-builder

The contaminated airway is one of the most unforgiving calls in prehospital medicine. Blood, vomit, debris — your laryngoscope goes in and you're blind. For decades, paramedics managed this with tools designed for a clean OR and training that never got close to the real thing.

Dr. Jim DuCanto decided that was unacceptable. He's the anesthesiologist who invented the DuCanto catheter and SALAD (Suction Assisted Laryngoscopy and Airway Decontamination). Will Berry sat down with Dr. DuCanto at the FASTCAN conference for a conversation.

In this episode we cover:

- The SALAD technique, step by step

- Why paramedic OR training should default to video laryngoscopy

- The downsides of SALAD that Dr. DuCanto himself will tell you about

- What a new portable suction device does differently

Guest: Dr. Jim DuCanto anesthesiologist, inventor of the DuCanto catheter and the SALAD technique

 

Want more?

Also subscribe to The Confidence Dispatch — Our free weekly newsletter for paramedics who want to get 1% better every shift: → https://loudandclear.kit.com/d45b012fae

 

Want to go even further?

The Paramedic Confidence Builder is a year-long course and coaching community for medics who want to close the gap between what school taught them and what the job actually demands. 

Not a lecture series. Not another CE you'll forget by your next shift. Real frameworks for clinical reasoning and mental performance — the stuff nobody teaches you in school.

If that sounds like what you've been looking for, book a free 30-minute call and we'll talk about whether it's the right fit: → calendly.com/d/cq38-87r-fkk/paramedic-confidence-builder