January 26, 2025

86 | Kevin Hazzard | Missing EMS | American Sirens | Chaotic scenes | Early paramedic John goes from cleaning hospital rooms to intubating critical patients

22 minutes

Kevin Hazzard

Author of A Thousand Naked Strangers and American Sirens (you can find these on Amazon or wherever books are sold). You can find Kevin Hazzard at KevinHazzard.com

What does Kevin miss about EMS?

He misses the partnerships and the chaos you went through together.

The memories he has are both good and bad from his time in EMS, the failures and the mistakes but also the victories

We get into Kevin’s newest book American Sirens

We talk about the difficulties in controlling and bringing order to a chaotic scene and how this is a skill that has to be developed over time

Kevin tells a story about a call with a panic attack and how this may be normal for us but for the patient experiencing the symptoms, it may be a real unique and scary scenario

Kevin’s “large” partner would take control of the scene that was out of control by pushing the biggest dude up against a wall and then everyone else would back down

Even without size on your side you have to present external confidence on scenes

A situation that, by definition, is out of control, must be controlled

Even those scenes that are not out of control, you still need to convince grandpa that you will take great care of grandma and you understand how important she is

We talk about the story of John in American Sirens and how EMS gave him purpose and how EMS gave us purpose as well

John was a black man that grew up in a segregated city, extreme poverty, his mother died of alcoholism and his father ultimately had to give him up to an orphanage. But John didn’t give up and he saw the respect and dignity that was given the earliest paramedics at Freedom House ambulance, even as black men, and worked his way into practicing paramedicine at the highest level

This was a time that, in the city of Pittsburgh, if you had a medical emergency, it was handled by two cops

Kevin does a great job of articulating Johns full circle in the book. He goes from orderly, the lowest of the lows in the hospital, to practicing paramedicine at the highest level, intubation, and bringing in critical patients into the same hospital ED

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Everything you hear today from myself and my guests is opinion only and doesn’t represent any organizations or companies that any of us are affiliated with. The stories you hear have been modified to protect patient privacy and any resemblance to real individuals is coincidental. This is for educational and entertainment purposes only and should not be taken as medical advice nor used to diagnose any medical or healthcare conditions.

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