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

The calls that scare clinicians the most are often the ones they have the fewest opportunities to practice.

So what happens during a rare, high consequence emergency? First, Jennifer Barnhart of Austin-Travis County EMS and Sergeant Luke Serrato of the Austin Police Department discuss the response to a mass casualty shooting on Austin’s Sixth Street.

Then, Ross talks with Allen Wolfe about three unusual burn and blast-injury cases. They discuss when a smaller burn may still warrant transfer to a burn center, how to recognize an airway that may require an early surgical approach, what a blast mechanism can reveal about hidden injuries, and why protecting burned tissue cannot come at the expense of protecting the airway.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

How shared language and closed-loop communication help EMS and law enforcement move together 

Why responders may need to pass ambulatory or vocal patients to reach those who cannot self-rescue

What disrupted tympanic membranes, clothing patterns, circumferential facial burns can reveal

 

Resources:

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Guests:

Jennifer Barnhart, Clinical Specialist, Austin-Travis County EMS

Sergeant Luke Serrato, Austin Police Department

Allen Wolfe, Senior Director of Clinical Education and Clinical Nurse Specialist at Life Link III

The hardest part of evidence-based medicine is not finding a paper. It is deciding whether that paper should change what you do on your next shift.

First, we talk with Dr. Jeff Jarvis about how to evaluate medical literature beyond the headline, abstract, conclusion, or p-value. You’ll hear about the PICO framework and why patient-oriented outcomes should matter more than the numbers that are easiest to measure.

Then, Ross talks with emergency physician Dr. Ben Abo about the evidence surrounding rigid cervical collars. He also shares how his EMS system removed collars from its ambulances by involving trauma surgeons, neurosurgeons, emergency clinicians, and frontline providers in the change.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

How to use population, intervention or exposure, comparison, and outcome to decide whether a study applies to the patients you actually treat

Why return of spontaneous circulation, p-values, and national benchmarks can distract clinicians from the outcomes patients care about most

What the literature suggests about cervical collars, spinal cord perfusion, airway compromise, aspiration risk, intracranial pressure, and pressure injuries

How to bring research to a medical director and change a long-standing protocol 

 

Resources:

NAEMSP Trauma Compendium: Prehospital Management of Spinal Cord Injuries

Want more? Sign up for our weekly newsletter, The Confidence Dispatch.

Want individualized coaching and mentorship? Check out The Loud & Clear Fellowship.

Just have a question and want some personalized help? Book a free coaching call with us.

Interested in ABLS Now? Our listeners get 10% off and a chance to win a free subscription. Enter before August 1, 2026.

 

Guests:

Dr. Jeff Jarvis, MD, MS, EMT-P

Dr. Ben Abo, DO, EMT-P

Guest Host: Matt Hedlun, Battalion Chief of Education at Thompson Valley EMS

Trust is the architecture behind every patient interaction you run.

Dr. Cory Scheer, author of Closing the Trust Gap, has identified three evidence-based building blocks of trust: competency, problem-solving, and care for others. It turns out EMS providers already use all three the moment they step on scene.

In this episode, we unpack the gap between senior leaders and frontline EMS workers, what your "trust signature" reveals about how you naturally lead, and why imposter syndrome might be a signal worth listening to instead of pushing through.

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The hardest part of a bad call is rarely the algorithm. In two different interviews I explore some human traps of running an EMS call. I talk with Danny and Rance from DNR Prehospital Education about a choking arrest, a difficult field intubation, and the trainer-trainee dynamic that made the call more complicated than the procedure itself. Then Bobby breaks down the CAFE pneumonic of heuristic traps: commitment, acceptance, familiarity, and expert halo. This episode moves from the protocol and algorithm to the human challenges of running.

Want more? Sign up for our weekly newsletter The Confidence Dispatch

Want individualized coaching and mentorship? Check out The Loud & Clear Fellowship

Just have a question and want some personalized help? Book a free coaching call with us.

Interested in ABLS Now? Our listeners get 10% off and a chance to win a free subscription (giveaway on July 1st, 2026).

A postpartum patient does not need to look dramatic to be in real danger. In this episode from FAST 26, Ross talks with Amy Loucks about pregnancy-related deaths, maternal care deserts, postpartum warning signs, hypertension, cardiomyopathy, infection, and the calls EMS can easily miss. Then Elizabeth Garchar walks through amniotic fluid embolism, now often framed as an anaphylactoid reaction of pregnancy: sudden cardiovascular collapse, right heart failure, DIC, TXA, whole blood, AOK, and the principle that matters most when everything goes bad: treat mom first.

 

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Episode Resources-

CDC: Preventing pregnancy-related deaths — https://www.cdc.gov/maternal-mortality/preventing-pregnancy-related-deaths/index.html

Amniotic fluid embolism overview — https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/15463-amniotic-fluid-embolism

AOK regimen for amniotic fluid embolism — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9477128/

 

https://www.marchofdimes.org/peristats/

https://www.marchofdimes.org/research/maternity-care-deserts-report.aspx 

https://saferbirth.org/ 

https://www.nmperinatalcollaborative.com/