About Us

PrehospitalPush is about excellence in prehospital care.

We’re a team of prehospital enthusiasts and aspiring physicians who conceived this project with the ultimate goal of providing free, open-access resources to encourage prehospital providers to think critically. Not to be confused with an online textbook of medical curriculum, this site instead serves to provoke thought through:

Summary and discussion of core concepts in patient management.

Evidence-based inquiry of subjects of debate.

Review and summary of pivotal topics in the EMS literature.

Convenient access to other EMS FOAM and news feeds.

We don’t presume to be subject-matter experts, but we do share a passion for prehospital medicine. All discussions on this website are substantiated with evidence from primary sources, but our opinions and discussions do not imply expert consensus. We welcome and encourage any constructive feedback related to our site or its content.

Why should you care?

Our patients don’t have the luxury of choosing their provider, in the same way that they choose their personal physician. In recognition of this, we should hold ourselves to a high standard so that there can be confidence when an individual in distress dials 9-1-1. Prehospital care should always be exceptional and personalized.

Prehospital providers have classically been salaried lower than many other medical providers. In order to advocate for an improvement in salary, the work must be justified. Other medical professionals, such as nurses, have created degree-competencies (such as graduate degrees in nursing) in order to carve a niche for themselves. To accomplish this in the prehospital arena, there must be advocates for the cause that are willing to conduct research that demonstrates improved outcomes with prehospital interventions. Thereafter, expansion of scope may be possible through increased education that converts the provider from a protocol-follower to a critical thinker. This is the point at which significant increases in salary are justifiable. The critical care paramedic course, which provides a foundation for prehospital providers to engage in interfacility transport of seriously ill patients is one current example of this concept in action.

The interplay between prehospital providers and medical directors should not be unidirectional. The educated prehospital provider will be able to intelligibly approach their medical director regarding changes to the practice of care in their system. The provider has an unequivocally matched view of the practice at the street-level, and the medical director has the level of education and administrative authority to consider these changes in practice.

When a provider understands the greater scheme of prehospital care, the standard of practice (such as the importance of accurate documentation) is raised by internal motivations, and not by the insistence of an external force (ie. ‘bosses’ and medical directors). This cultural change not only promotes a high level of patient care, but also sets a strong foundation for legitimate data to be collected from the system for analysis and policy change.

Many medical directors have roots in the prehospital environment. Suffice it to say, the job is enticing and addictive. Let these resources serve as a springboard to facilitate the pursuit of lofty aspirations, whether it be in EMS administration or in graduate-level medical education.

In short, we want to inspire you…

HIPAA COMPLIANCE

This blog is HIPAA compliant. Any and all clinical scenarios involving patients have either been manufactured through the imagination of the authors or have been de-identified by the Department of Health and Human Services Safe-Harbor Guidelines. Informed consent has been obtained for any patient photos hosted on the site. Should you have concern about a patient scenario or photo, please contact the website editors immediately.

http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/coveredentities/De-identification/guidance.html

PRIVACY NOTICE

Information including email addresses and contact information provided to the website authors will not be shared with 3rd party vendors.

TERMS OF USE

Use of this blog and its associated media does not constitute the establishment of a physician-patient relationship. Content posted on this site is NOT medical advice and should not be used to treat patients or yourself. The website authors shall not be held responsible for any damages sustained from the use of this website. The information on this website should not be used to establish standard care or standards of practice for the purposes of legal procedures. The opinions expressed on the website are the opinions of the website and content authors alone and do not represent the policies or opinions of any agencies or organizations.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSING

PrehospitalPush.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

You are free to share and adapt the content on the site so long as it is not for commercial purposes, you provide appropriate attribution, and indicate if changes were made.

For more information see: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

PrehospitalPush is about excellence in prehospital care.

Why should you care?

Why should you care?

In short, we want to inspire you…

HIPAA COMPLIANCE

PRIVACY NOTICE

TERMS OF USE

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSING

Meet Our Team

Michael Spigner

Seth Kelly

Tommy Eales