Joseph F. Clark, Ph.D.

Did you know that not every firefighter is a paramedic? Also, not every paramedic is a firefighter. Every time you see an ambulance that ambulance may have EMTs alone or paramedics. I’m talking about Advanced Life Support versus Basic Life Support. ALS and BLS ambulances both have skilled people providing medical care at different levels [...]

There is a big difference between the medicine that occurs in the streets with ambulance personnel and the emergency medicine that is practiced in emergency departments. Despite the differences there is a closeness between those people and their respective disciplines. Both sets of people who work these jobs see humanity at its best and WORST. [...]

In “My Ambulance Education” there is an interesting quote. “In college, if you make a mistake in a test there may be a final or makeup so you can do it over. But in life, and on the ambulance, there is no such thing as a do-over. The ambulance life is excessively harsh and contains [...]

March 12, 2009. Well, tomorrow “My Ambulance Education” is scheduled to be released by Firefly Books. After years of writing and polishing it will be set forth for others to see and experience. In some ways the anticipated book release feels like the first day of school for a child. All sorts of emotions and [...]

My mom could not finish reading “My Ambulance Education.” She was very well aware of my accident with the motor boat while skiing, but she had never read the detailed account of the accident. Reading the detail of her son hitting a motor boat (head first) while skiing was too much for a mother to [...]

I’ve been privileged to have multiple rewarding jobs in my life and working on the ambulance is the ride of a lifetime. I cannot emphasize enough how that experience has helped me in my career. I have recently been able to advocate for research into pre-hospital technologies. My main research enterprise is now able to [...]