My name is John and I am 63.

In just over 3 years time I’m going to be driving through your jurisdiction just as you are sitting down to your first meal in 12 hours.  As your order hits the counter I will experience an odd tightness in my chest and dismiss it as gas.

When you take your first bite my wife of 35 years will watch me clutch my chest and stop the car on the side of the road.

Just as you begin to think your bad day is finally slowing down, the worst day of my life, and possibly the last, has just begun.

I’ve slumped over in the car, releasing the brake pedal and the car drifts into a signpost, discharging the airbags.

My wife is hit by the passenger side airbag as she is leaning over to help me, noticing my unconsciousness just prior to her own.

A passerby has stopped and is now describing a motor vehicle accident to your dispatcher.

Lunch is still warm in your hands when your radio alerts to the accident.

You are tired.

You are hungry.

The kids have been keeping you up late.

The rent is past due.

Big deal.  I’m about to die.  While you’re cursing me walking to your rig, my MI is moving and my wife’s head injury is complicating what is already going to be a difficult airway judging by the amount of teeth on the floorboards.

As your rig negotiates traffic, my respirations are rapid and shallow, my wife’s now non-existent.

When you pull up to the scene I need your A game.  I need you trained to the point where what you are about to do comes as naturally as breathing, because we’re having a bit of trouble in that department.

This is not about you.  It’s about me.  It’s about us.

So back to your studies, we’ll meet again before you know it.

The family of David Taylor would like to thank each and every member of the Arkansas EMT Association for your thoughtfulness and support during this difficult time in our lives. Your presence helped to lighten our burden, and it was kind of you to take the time to share your memories of David with us. Your words were not only a comfort, but a source of strength for our family during this difficult time. From the bottom of our hearts we want you to know that we love and appreciate each and every one of our EMS family.

- Judy Taylor

The EMS community started 2009 with the murders of two providers and a lot of press regarding scene safety. On January 17, EMT Melissa Greenhagen, 37, was shot in the chest by a stranger outside a hospital in Glasgow, MT. Then, 13 days later, EMT Mark Davis, 25, was fatally shot during a response to a private residence in Cape Vincent, NY.

It is a tragedy that the deaths of these comrades have not received more national attention. But to many, it comes with the territory. Even when EMS providers aren’t gunned down on duty, they face daily threats of abuse and assault from patients and others. Days before Greenhagen’s murder, the Edmonton Journal reported a patient pulling a loaded gun on paramedics in the back of an ambulance. One medic, according to witnesses, had to run from the vehicle and hide behind a fire truck. The providers did not receive any physical injuries, but likely endured a large psychological impact.

According to a 2005 NAEMT study, the No. 1 injury to EMS providers is assault, with 52% of those surveyed saying they’d been attacked on the job. According to Brian Maguire, DrPH, MSA, a clinical associate professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who studied the issue, “The risk of nonfatal assault resulting in lost work time among EMS workers is 0.6 cases per 100 workers per year. The national average is about 1.8 cases per 10,000 workers per year. So the relative risk for EMS workers is about 30 times higher than the national average.”

Continued

Ben Blankenship

Thanks, yes thanks to every one of you.  Thanks for allowing me to be your president for another year.  We had some great successes and we left some things to be accomplished in the near future.  I am most pleased with the legislation creating our trauma system.  I do believe that this one major step in our future will make the most significant difference in our ability to care for our patients that has occurred in quite some time in the history of emergency medical services in our state.

We also obtained licensure for our profession, no small feat.  Lots of work into the effort for this accomplishment and a tremendous amount of time and effort were committed just assembling the bill, in the end it was over 16 pages and the areas of other state law that we impacted were unbelievable.  While some still question the importance of obtaining licensure for our profession the majority of us know that we have made another step in elevating our profession.

Continued

There are times in our lives where pride of our business and dedication to our service is at an all time high.  We take several things for granted and never realize that it can be taken away from us at a moment’s notice.  With recent events in my life, I have realized not only how important life may be, yet who is important in sharing my life with. This is where that sense of pride and dedication to our service steps in.

On Sunday, August 9, 2009, I woke as I did every morning with a cup of coffee and a cigarette and sat on my porch and watched the sunrise and listened to the day awake.  I never knew what was brewing deep inside my old bald body until later that morning.  While enjoying my Folgers brew and Marlboro cigarette as I have for the past 32 years, my “chronic indigestion” returned and I began having some pain in my right shoulder.  Continued

It has been 10 years since his sudden death and the end of a successful but too short career.  He served his country, loved his state and never lost the passion to see patients restored to health.

Dr. Hammons was an Air Force doctor who saw the success of pre-hospital treatment for heart attack patients and wondered why they could do it in California and not do it in his home state of Arkansas. He had read the works of Dr. Frank Partridge and visited other advanced training sites. He knew if Arkansas was to ever have Advanced EMT’s (Paramedics), they needed to train here. He had faith that the revolution in emergency medical care was one that was needed here and his dedication to developing a training site. Continued