By Mic Gunderson
NAEMSP Dialog Primary Moderator
Many of the e-mail discussion lists for EMS have a poor signal to noise ratio — lots of noisy low value chatter and not enough substantive information. This has kept many EMS professionals from participating in these forums. Sensing the need for a higher level of professional discourse on topics of current interest to the EMS community, NAEMSP recently launched a new e-mail discussion list called the NAEMSP Dialog. It is open to everyone with an interest in high quality discussions about EMS — you do not have to be an NAEMSP member to participate!
It is organized and managed very differently from other EMS discussion lists. First off, it is an actively moderated forum, which requires the moderator to review and approve all posts before they are sent to the participants on the list. This is intended to decrease the amount of inappropriate and off-topic posting — a common complaint. The rules of decorum for the NAEMSP Dialog also asks that when you sign up to become a member of the list and when you make a post, you provide your name and organizational affiliation(s). Anonymous posts are not allowed — another mechanism to maintain a professional level of discussion.
Another distinguishing feature is that it is a topic-controlled list — there is only discussion on one topic at a time. The topic may last anywhere from a week to a month. This is designed to keep the discussion focused and to address issues in greater depth.
Variety of sources
The topics are chosen by the list moderator and may be based on content from a variety of sources, including papers published in peer-reviewed journals; chapters from EMS textbooks; presentations and workshops at EMS conferences; position papers from EMS professional associations; news or projects pertaining to EMS; or other topics of interest to the EMS community. To enliven the discussions, authors, project participants and/or subject matter experts related to the topic will be brought in as invited participants.
After the discussion topic has concluded, the message threads are edited to a more concise format and relevant links and downloads are added to create a resource page for that topic — ready to refer to when you are looking for information to help develop policies, procedures or protocols.
The first topic covered was EMS Response Intervals. One of the invited participants was Tom Blackwell, MD, who currently serves as Medical Director for the Center for Prehospital Medicine, Department of Emergency Medicine, Carolinas Medical Center; Clinical Associate Professor, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; and Medical Director, Mecklenburg EMS Agency.
The other invited participant was Peter Pons, MD, who has served as the Associate Director for Emergency Medicine at Denver Health Medical Center (formerly Denver General Hospital) and as Professor in the Division of Emergency Medicine in the Department of Surgery at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. He was the EMS Medical Director for the 9-1-1 paramedic ambulance service in Denver based at Denver Health as well as several fire-based EMS systems. Both Dr. Blackwell and Dr. Pons have published peer-reviewed papers examining the EMS response interval issues.
The next topic to be covered will be Fire First Response. The invited participants will include Deputy Chief Alan M. Craig, MScPl, as well as Brian Schwartz, MD and Rick Verbeek MD from the Sunnybrook-Osler Centre for Prehospital Care in Toronto. They were the authors of a paper just published in the January 2010 issue of Prehospital Emergency Care entitled, “Evidence-Based Optimization of Urban Firefighter First Response to Emergency Medical Services 9-1-1 Incidents.”
Also joining the discussion as an invited participant will be David Cone, MD. He is the EMS Section Chief at the Yale University School of Medicine; Immediate Past President of the National Association of EMS Physicians, and Editor-in-Chief of Academic Emergency Medicine. He authored two research papers on this subject that were published in Prehospital Emergency Care — “Is there a role for first responders in EMS responses to medical facilities?” and “Can emergency medical dispatch systems safely reduce first-responder call volume?”
Mic Gunderson is the primary moderator for NAEMSP Dialog. He is President of IPS, a system and process design and consulting firm that specializes in EMS, fire rescue and health care systems. He is also an adjunct faculty member for the University of Maryland – Baltimore County’s Masters Degree Program in Emergency Health Services, where he teaches EMS system design. Mic has served for many years on several EMS journal editorial boards, has written and edited several textbooks, and served for 15 years as a faculty member with NAEMSP’s National EMS Medical Director’s Course.
The back-up moderators for the NAEMSP Dialog are Jim Cusick, MD and Cai Glushak, MD. Dr. Cusick is the Worldwide Clinical Medical Director for Vidacare Corporation; Emergency Physician/Faculty Denver Health Medical Center, Denver Affiliated Residency in Emergency Medicine; EMS Medical Director for Summit County Ambulance Service in Frisco, Colorado; Co-Chair of the NAEMSP Communications Committee; and has been involved in EMS for more than 40 years. Dr. Glushak served as EMS Medical Director at University of Chicago and member of the Chicago EMS Medical Directors Consortium from 1987 to 2006. He currently serves as International Medical Director of AXA Assistance, coordinating international medical transportation and emergency response. He is a Clinical Professor of Medicine/Emergency Medicine at the University of Chicago and the Editor of NAEMPS News.
For more information, visit the NAEMSP Dialog page at www.groups.google.com/group/naemsp-dialog or contact Mic Gunderson at mic@onlineips.com.