Inside EMS

Kelly Grayson, on coming off the truck

This episode of Inside EMS is brought to you by Lexipol, the experts in policy, training, wellness support and grants assistance for first responders and government leaders. To learn more, visit lexipol.com.

After 30 years in EMS in Louisiana, the past 15 as a critical care paramedic, Kelly Grayson is leaving the Bayou state – and the rig – for a full-time paramedic educator role in New York.

Kelly will begin his position as the lead instructor as the lead instructor for the new CoAEMSP-accredited paramedic program at Clarkson University in Pottstown, New York, in August.

Chris and Kelly discuss what motivated Kelly to make this leap, and what happens when you change jobs and have to prepare for the next chapter.

Memorable quotes from this episode

“I can render no higher praise for an EMS agency than to say they let me do my job without handcuffs.”

“When we lose a longtime member of the workforce – it hurts – and I hate to be the one to do that.”

“You never want to burn a bridge. Even if you hate the place you work, you never know that you may have to go back to them one day and say, you know, ‘are you looking for any help?’”

“If I make a commitment to a place, I’ll follow their rules, cheerfully.”

“Make yourself valuable to prospective employers. If you’re not happy where you are, you can make a good living at EMS, you can have career satisfaction in EMS. You might not be able to have those things at the place you are currently.”

“It’s an employee’s market right now.”

“Vote with your feet.”

Together, they discuss:

• When it’s time to make a career change
• The skills you need when you come off the truck
• Shifting the paradigm in EMS education
• Developing and standing up a new paramedic program
• Bringing affordable EMS education to rural communities
• How to leave a position without burning bridges

ET3: Don’t let this be the final word

This episode of Inside EMS is brought to you by Lexipol, the experts in policy, training, wellness support and grants assistance for first responders and government leaders. To learn more, visit lexipol.com.

“My first reaction was, what the hell. My second reaction was, well, I guess if there’s not going to be any participation agreement, then we’re not bound by confidentiality anymore, and I’ll just email the Booz Allen presentation to every member of Congress, and say, ‘here’s the savings to the Medicare program, please pass the TIP and TAD language. And I honestly think we should do that, and we probably will.” — Matt Zavadsky

In this crossover episode of Inside EMS and EMS One-Stop, Matt Zavadsky, MS-HSA, EMT, chief transformation officer at MedStar Mobile Healthcare (an ET3 participant), joins cohosts Chris Cebollero and Rob Lawrence to discuss the recently announced end of the ET3 program.

Top quotes from this episode

• “That must be a mistake … I was just dumbfounded, absolutely dumbfounded.” — Matt Zavadsky
• “We can’t stop this – we’ve got to continue to move this along somehow and ensure that we’re still doing the things we need to do for our patients.” — Chris Cebollero
• “Continue to do what you do while we try to sort out this mess, because we thought we were on the right route, and then someone’s now put out a roadblock, so we have to work out how to detour or indeed knock it down. Keep up the good work while we try to work out how to get around this.” — Rob Lawrence
• “We as a profession cannot let this be the final word.” — Matt Zavadsky

In addition to why CMS didn’t see the savings they were anticipating, and the hoops agencies had to jump through to participate in the ET3 program, the group focuses on what’s next for reimbursement reform.

Together, they discuss:

• How the national associations (NAEMT, AAA, IAFC, IAFF) are working to get legislation introduced in Congress to get treatment in place and transport to alternate destinations (TIP and TAD) covered
• The need for data from organizations that participated in the ET3 model that proves the cost savings
• Admittance avoidance vs. arrival avoidance at the ED
• Turning frustration with Medicare into action

Enjoying the show? Please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. Contact the Inside EMS team at theshow@ems1.com to share ideas, suggestions and feedback, or if you’d like to join us as a guest.

Generational codes: Retaining your primary customers – your people

Steve Grau, Anna Liotta and Steve Wirth join hosts Rob Lawrence and Chris Cebollero at the American Ambulance Association Annual Conference 2023

This episode of EMS One-Stop With Rob Lawrence is brought to you by Lexipol, the experts in policy, training, wellness support and grants assistance for first responders and government leaders. To learn more, visit lexipol.com.

In this EMS One-Stop/Inside EMS crossover podcast, Chris Cebollero teams up with Rob Lawrence to report on the 2023 American Ambulance Association Annual Conference from the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas. Rob and Chris discuss their own personal highlights and Rob’s leadership session, delivered with Acadian Ambulance President, Justin Back.

Rob and Chris are joined by Page, Wolfberg & Wirth Founding Partner, Steve Wirth, Esq., and discuss bias, the topic of Steve’s conference session.  Rob then interviews AAA keynote speaker, Anna Liotta, together with Royal Ambulance President Steve Grau, as they discuss:

• Generational codes in the workforce
• The revolving door of employment
• Creating the milestones of forward progression
• Understanding that your people are you primary customer

TOP QUOTES FROM THIS EPISODE

“In dealing with bias, self-awareness is absolutely critical – you have to do an inventory of your life and say ‘where are these things that I’ve experienced and how do they affect my decision making today and my interaction with other people,’ so self-awareness is really the first step.” — Steve Wirth

“When you go to a conference, go up to somebody. The reason that you have a nametag, with your first name in very large font is so that I can say, ‘Hello Chris, I’m Rob, pleased to meet you. What do you do?’ and that’s how a network occurs.” — Rob Lawrence

“Having this culture of a high-level of engagement is really focusing on our employees as our primary customer and making sure that we understand what their goals, ideals, passions are, and how to meet them.” — Steve Grau

“Just by the way they answered a simple question ‘so, what do you do?’ I could tell if they had been working there 2-3 weeks if they answer with a bright sparkle, ‘I work at Amazon.’ But if they had been there 2-3 months, they would pause, ‘well … I work at Amazon,’ And 6 months, they would drop a codeword, ‘I currently work at Amazon.’” — Anna Liotta

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Watch for more

https://www.ems1.com/leadership/articles/the-10-commandments-of-servant-leadership-OkBq610vz8C12Gb1/

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EPISODE CONTENTS

Part 1: Rob Lawrence and Chris Cebollero – Serving to lead

00:30 – Rob and Chris introduction

1:30 – Car seat safety (not rated for ambulances)

3:30 – Rob’s leadership session with Acadian President Justin Back on the principles of leadership, serving to lead

05:30 – Chris discusses leadership as a science

06:30 – What we want from our leaders

Part 2: Steve Wirth – Overcoming bias

07:30 – Welcome Steve Wirth

08:00 – Steve discusses his conference session, “We are all prejudiced” delivered in partnership with Macara Trusty (GMR)

11:30 – The importance of networking and meeting professional friends

14:56 – Chris talks about his leadership series on EMS1

Part 3: Anna Liotta and Steve Grau – Retaining your primary customer

16:00 – Introduction: Anna and Steve

17:00 – Generational difference - Have you seen a “Star Wars” movie?

17:30 – Anna: Common sense is not that common

18:30 – The Royal Ambulance (award winning) Career Bridge Program

20:00 – Generational codes in the workforce

22:50 – The revolving door of employment

24:00 – Creating the milestones of forward progression

25:00 – Anna’s Experience with Fortune 500 companies

25:30 – Understanding that your talent and people are your primary customer

26:00 – Creating an arc of experience

28:00 – Not allowing yourself to say “that’s how I did it”

29:00 – Fostering the whole human

30:00 – Pulling talent forward

31:00 – Rob and Chris close

ABOUT OUR GUESTS

Anna Liotta

Anna Liotta, creator of Generationally Savvy Communication Solutions, is an award-winning speaker, business consultant and author. She engages audiences with her practical strategies for attracting, growing and retaining top talent and loyal clients from every generation.

Anna integrates communications, sociology, business psychology and demography to unify workplaces and dramatically improve company performance. Her expertise and insight have helped such companies as Pike Place Market, Intel, Wells Fargo, Microsoft, Amazon, the PGA, NBA and United Way.

Steve Grau

Steve Grau and his family emigrated from Ukraine in 1989, arriving in San Francisco with $80 to their name. He became interested in healthcare 15 years later, when he took a hands-on role caring for his grandfather after a series of debilitating strokes. Witnessing how emotional support impacted physical healing, Steve was inspired to leave the tech industry to start an ambulance service that focused on patient experience.

Steve Wirth

Steve Wirth is a founding partner of Page, Wolfberg & Wirth. In a distinguished four-decade public safety career, Steve has worked in virtually every facet of EMS – as first responder, firefighter, EMT, paramedic, flight paramedic, EMS instructor, fire officer and EMS executive. He was one of central Pennsylvania’s first paramedics. Steve brings a pragmatic and business-oriented perspective to his diverse legal practice, having served for almost a decade as senior executive of a mid-sized air and ground ambulance service, helping to build the company from the ground up.

What’s your book title?

This episode of Inside EMS is brought to you by Lexipol, the experts in policy, training, wellness support and grants assistance for first responders and government leaders. To learn more, visit lexipol.com.

In this episode of Inside EMS, our cohosts and best-selling authors put our listeners on the path to becoming authors.

Top quotes from this episode

“Everybody has a book title in them and we’re going to put everybody on the path of becoming authors.”

“I have an idea of where I want the story to go, but how the characters interact, how they talk, the adventures and trials and tribulations they go through, develop as the story goes along.”

“When I'm at my best, the writing just flows, and I'm just typing away and I'm giggling or crying, as the case may be, and enjoying the hell out of it.”

“The days that it doesn't flow like a waterfall is where it takes some work ethic and some discipline, and you have to get the story on the page no matter how bad you think it is, and then find your muse and find the spark in it in the editing process.”

Together, Chris and Kelly discuss:

• How writing can be therapeutic
• Kelly’s latest short stories, “They call me Tully”, “Cecil the Combat Wombat,” and “The battle of Waffle Haus 814”
• Chris’ top 10 tips for success in “Ultimate leadership”
• Writing process: how Kelly gets through the tough days and Chris’s unique approach, that isn’t writing at all

Additional resources

• How to submit an article to EMS1
• 5 alternatives to journaling if you don't like to write
• Getting published in EMS
• How writing may have saved my EMS career

Send your book titles to theshow@ems1.com

White shirt syndrome

In this episode of Inside EMS, our Cohosts, Chris Cebollero and Kelly Grayson, break down the skills needed to be a servant leader.

Notable quotes from this episode

“My job as a leader is to get work done through other people.”

“The true measurement of leadership success is how engaged, satisfied and productive the workforce is.”

“What I believe as a leader is that my job as the chief of the department is not any more important than your job of working on the ambulance. It’s that we have different roles and responsibilities for reaching the vision.”

“The most important component of servant leadership is realizing that it’s an honor for you to be in the position that you’re in and you can get taken out of that position as fast as you were put into it.”

Together, they discuss:

• Chris’s recent article and video on servant leadership
• Reversing the organization chart
• Practicing responsibility upward
• The skills a servant leader should bring to the table

Enjoying the show? Contact the Inside EMS team at theshow@ems1.com to share ideas, suggestions and feedback, or if you’d like to join us as a guest.

How do we get to the top of the skills mastery list?

In this week's episode of Inside EMS, Cohosts Chris Cebollero and Kelly Grayson lean on their experience as field training officers and EMT instructors to discuss EMS skills mastery.

If our message to new EMT graduates is, “You don’t know everything there is to know about EMS,” then how do we teach them what they need to know in the field?

Top quotes from this episode

“It’s not laziness; it’s cognitive offloading.”

“If I’m not using it, why am I teaching it?”

“Is the way you intubate today the way you intubated when you started in EMS?”

“There is nothing that substitutes for constant repetition and practice.”

Contact the Inside EMS team at theshow@ems1.com to share ideas, suggestions and feedback, or if you’d like to join us as a guest.

‘You don’t know everything there is to know about EMS’

In this week's episode of Inside EMS, Cohosts Chris Cebollero and Kelly Grayson share their messages on professionalism, career development and asking questions with the graduating classes of EMTs.

Memorable quotes from this episode

• “You don’t know everything there is to know about EMS – so you need to be able to ask the question why.”
• “EMS is a very egotistical business – it’s the egotism that prevents us from asking why”
• “You have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable … you have to challenge yourself; you have to reach.”
• “We train people to be decisive in their actions and their throughs and to think fast – what we don’t always teach them is that the wisdom of EMS has to come with some years behind you and you have to develop some introspection.”
• “People are using [EMS] to get to the fire department, people are using it to get to medical school, people are using It to get to nursing, and that’s great – but don’t waste your time while you’re here …. That has to start with professional development.”

Together, they discuss:

• Choosing your hard
• How to guide and motivate the next generation of EMS provider
• How EMT classes graduate two kinds of people (and why it’s a good sign if you’re terrified)
• Looking ahead and developing the goals you need to advance as an EMS leader
• Learning from your mistakes
• The value of teachable moments
• An exercise in assessing your skills mastery
• Is EMS a career or a stepping stone?

Additional resources on career mastery and growth

• Achieving EMS mastery
• How to maximize clinical expertise through everyday experiences
• Cultivate a ‘beginner’s mind’ for ongoing growth
• 5 ingredients for psychomotor mastery

How EMT education has changed to engage newer generations

This episode of Inside EMS is brought to you by Lexipol, the experts in policy, training, wellness support and grants assistance for first responders and government leaders. To learn more, visit lexipol.com.

In this EMS Week episode of Inside EMS, Cohosts Chris Cebollero and Kelly Grayson welcome Brian K. Hathaway, president/CEO of Spirit EMS, in Greenville, Ohio, who offers a free EMT training program. Hathaway shares his perspective on how EMS education has changed, and the creative ways Spirit is attracting, engaging and retaining recruits – from 2-year agreements, to giving away a car during training.

Together, they discuss:

• Why Hathaway is the Oprah Winfrey of EMT education
• How to engage and motivate the workforce
• What Hathaway is looking for when he evaluates student patient assessments
• How we deliver education to the newer generation

Memorable quotes from this episode

“As we educate in the classroom and make sure that people are comfortable and confident in their skills, and we’re making sure that we’re doing that good head-to-toe assessment on the patients – that that’s the ultimate important thing.”

“Memorizing 43 things on a skills sheet to make sure that we’ve touched everything is not necessarily applicable to every patient that we’re taking care of.”

“My concern is we’ve got to get people involved and we’ve got to continue to change with the times or it’s going to be a competition when I’m in the nursing home 25-30 years from now as to who’s going to get out of bed and respond to the call if we don’t do something now.”

Additional resources

What skills should we test?
A simple framework for an EMT skills competency portfolio

Whatever will we do without the skill sheets?
NREMT is discontinuing the ALS psychomotor exam. That’s a good thing, if you let it be

About our Guest

Brian K. Hathaway is president/CEO of Spirit EMS, in Greenville, Ohio. Brian has been actively involved in Fire/EMS since 1996. Aside from his duties as an owner of Spirit, Brian is a 27-year veteran of the Union City Fire Department and continues to work part-time as a 911 dispatcher at the Darke County Sheriff's Office where he has worked since 1999. Brian is a certified Advanced EMT, EMS continuing education instructor, volunteer firefighter, Certified Ambulance Coder, Certified Ambulance Compliance Officer and Certified Emergency Medical Dispatcher. Brian serves as education chairman and is a board member of the Ohio Ambulance and Medical Transportation Association, a member of the Four County Career Center advisory board, a member of the Darke County Chamber of Commerce, and attends the EUM Church in Greenville. Brian enjoys spending time with his wife Audrey as well as their daughter Naomi.

Shifting the paradigm on what EMS is supposed to be for the community

Educating the public about when it is appropriate to call EMS – and how quickly we should get there

This episode of Inside EMS is brought to you by Lexipol, the experts in policy, training, wellness support and grants assistance for first responders and government leaders. To learn more, visit lexipol.com.

In this EMS Week episode of Inside EMS, Cohosts Chris Cebollero and Kelly Grayson dive into where emergency care begins, and how community paramedicine launched a paradigm shift years in the making. They discuss how EMS did a fine job of educating the community about the obstacles and dangers of the job during COVID-19, but need to capitalize on and maintain that momentum moving forward.

Memorable quotes from this episode:

• “Community paramedicine has everything to do with EMS week.”
• “Advocacy is what this is all about, and we as a profession have kind of fallen down on the job for quite a while on educating the public about the capabilities of EMS, and the obstacles and hardships that we face, and that’s what EMS Week is all about.”
• “We need to leverage our advocacy and teach the real first responders, the public, about what’s appropriate to call EMS for and what they can do to crowdsource that urgent care.”

Chris and Kelly discuss:

• How emergency care begins at dispatch and nurse triage of 911
• ET3 and the telehealth model
• Kelly’s experience with treatment-in-place and alternate destinations
• Response time standards

Enjoying the show? Please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. Contact the Inside EMS team at theshow@ems1.com to share ideas, suggestions and feedback, or if you’d like to join us as a guest.

‘I legit thought I was going to die … and I refused to call an ambulance’

This episode of Inside EMS is brought to you by Lexipol, the experts in policy, training, wellness support and grants assistance for first responders and government leaders. To learn more, visit lexipol.com.

In this episode of Inside EMS, Kelly Grayson rejoins Cohost Chris Cebollero to discuss his recent medical scare and to celebrate 10 years of Inside EMS.

Kelly recently suffered a massive pulmonary embolus, which severely compromised blood flow to nearly 100% of both his lungs.

Though he admits delaying care was not the brightest decision at the time, he now knows how close he came to losing his life, and is committed to taking his health seriously – both mental and physical.

Notable quotes from this episode

“Be good patients and don’t be stupid. We are the world’s worst at taking care of ourselves.”

“It slapped me upside the face on April 14 that it’s time to start walking the walk about your own health.“

“Even if you have the capacity to rationalize, and the capacity to be clinically analytic during your own medical emergency, ultimately, all it’s going to do is give you piece of mind when you die that you knew what killed you.”

Read more about Kelly’s medical scare:

• ‘Is this what dying feels like?’
  A wake-up call and a plea: Don’t be stubborn about your health
• After the wakeup call: First steps of a wellness journey
  “The problem with people testing their limits is that they often find them.”