Greg Friese interview; My Ambulance Education.

Recently I was interviewed by Greg Friese concerning My Ambulance Education and it was great fun. Greg had graciously supplied me with some sample questions he would start with and that helped break the ice. We talked about the general contents of the book and why I wrote it. I shared with him how some of the specific people talked about in My Ambulance Education have impacted me in my Academic Education and Current Profession as a college Professor. Specifically I talked about how two patients died; one who was a substance abuser and Overdosed and another who died of a stroke. One person slowly killed herself despite the efforts of medical personnel and the other person died slowly as medical care was powerless to intervene. These people helped guide me into medical research because of my belief that productive medical research could help thousands of patients. Helping people is why I entered the ambulance profession in the first place so the goal of my job now is the same as it was 20 years ago when I was working on an ambulance.

Greg was generous with his time as I rambled on answering his questions and he was supportive in the answers that I was giving him. He asked me how I went from being an EMT to a Ph.D. and if I was interested in getting back in the trenches (my wording). While I have thought about doing some things in the EMS setting (see my blog of June 8, “Day in the Emergency Room”) I do not plan to work or volunteer in the ambulance any time soon. I will however ride along and shadow in the ER because my current research concerns developing technologies appropriate to patients experiencing neurologic emergencies. So when practicable I plan to try to get re-acquainted with EMS and ER procedures so that I can help develop better technologies for those settings.

Greg allowed me to conclude the interview with an appeal to the EMS community to help the research community when possible. Research and Development targeting pre-hospital care in the Ambulance can only realistically be done by testing those technologies by doing proper research studies in the ambulance. This will require involvement and feedback from EMTs and ambulance personnel. Hopefully with help and detailed input from those paramedically trained professionals we will see substantial progress in the armament of technologies on the ambulance.
The interview was great fun, thanks to Greg for the opportunity.
The whole interview can be found at:
http://eps411.com/downloads/JoeClarkInterview.mp3