LEXINGTON, Ky. — For many of us in EMS, the term “crazy busy” is often thrown around like a rite of passage. It’s shorthand for a culture of overdrive: another shift, another code, another unfunded mandate, another denied claim. But what if “crazy busy” isn’t just a schedule problem — it’s a warning sign?
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That was the challenge posed by Dr. Darria Long, Harvard- and Yale-trained emergency physician, TEDx speaker and founder of the No-Panic Parenting initiative, during her day-two keynote the American Ambulance Association Annual Conference.
Her talk, “How to thrive in even the most stressful times and avoid burnout,” wasn’t just a theoretical lecture — it was forged in real cardiac rhythm, sweat and survival — and she brought it home for our profession in a way few outside medicine ever do.
When the doctor became the patient
Dr. Long isn’t new to chaos. An ED doc, media health expert and mother of three, she’s made a career out of functioning in high-pressure environments. But her real test came not in the trauma bay — but in her basement. While home with her kids, she strapped on a heart monitor to check out some routine palpitations. What she saw next would have stopped any of us in our tracks: a heart rate of 300.
Ventricular tachycardia. She was in it. At home. Alone. With two small children.
The next 18 months were a whirlwind of hospitalizations, cardiac interventions, near-codes and the frightening realization that “just powering through” wasn’t going to cut it anymore. So instead of ignoring the warning signs, Dr. Long did what many of us in EMS forget to do — she hit pause and asked the right question: How do I not just survive this, but come out stronger?
That question led to one of the largest academic studies on burnout in women post-pandemic. But more importantly, it gave rise to the framework she now shares with audiences around the country — including the EMS community.
Burnout: Not just tired, but hijacked
“Burnout isn’t just about being tired,” she told the room of EMS leaders, “It’s about being stretched so thin — mentally, emotionally, physically — that even the smallest thing feels like too much.”
Sound familiar?
When the bandwidth runs out, even the calmest among us can lose clarity. “You start reacting instead of responding,” she said. “Your brain is hijacked. And the irony is, you’re actually less capable of dealing with the thing that’s stressing you out.”
As we all know — she’s not wrong. Dr. Long didn’t just name the problem — she handed the room tools. Her strategy is built on triage, protocols and clarity:
- Reds: Mission-critical tasks that only you can do and must happen now
- Yellows: Important but not urgent — block calendar time for these
- Greens: Necessary but minor — batch them and handle them efficiently
“Too often,” she said, “we treat every email, every call, every request like it’s a red. That’s chaos, not clarity.”
She challenged the room to stop relying on brute force to get through. Instead, like in the ED, build repeatable systems. “We don’t make a new plan for every trauma,” she said. “We follow protocols. You need systems in your life and work to protect your energy and attention.”
For EMS agencies, this also means better policies, better time-blocking and protecting people’s “red zone” hours from admin creep and inefficiency.
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‘Stop taking off the socks’
One of the most poignant moments in Dr. Long’s talk was a story from a code. She glanced over mid-resuscitation to see her resident … taking off the patient’s socks. “He was overwhelmed,” she explained. “So he defaulted to a small, meaningless task. It felt like control.”
She called it “taking off the socks” — that moment when leaders abandon the big picture because it’s just easier to do the small stuff. We’ve all done it. Rearranged gear bags instead of addressing scheduling. Updated forms instead of tackling tough conversations. We feel productive, but we’re not moving the mission forward.
In EMS, especially at the leadership level, we need to stop taking off the socks and get back to strategic thinking.
The real work: Turning it off
Many of us can run into a burning building — but don’t know how to walk calmly into our own homes after a shift. “You can’t keep your sympathetic nervous system spiked forever,” she warned. “You need a reset — whatever that looks like for you.”
Whether it’s a debrief, a decompression ritual or just a walk with your dog, her point was clear: turn it off, or it will turn on you.
Sharing the stories that matter
Finally, Dr. Long left the room with a challenge — one that hits home for EMS professionals everywhere: tell your story.
“Your patients may never know your name,” she said. “But the world needs to know your work.”
In an industry constantly battling for recognition, resources and respect, we can’t afford to be silent. It’s time to share the meaning moments — not for applause, but for awareness. The world needs to hear about the paramedic who intubated a child at the roadside, the EMT who ran into a burning building before fire arrived, the dispatcher who calmly coached CPR through sobs and screams.
These stories aren’t rare — they’re daily. They are the quiet heroics of EMS. And they matter.
Connect with the speaker
Follow Dr. Darria Long at NoPanicParenting.com or on Instagram @DrDarria.
EMS1 is using generative AI to create some content that is edited and fact-checked by our editors.
