ICARE Revisited

Integrity, Compassion, Accountability, Respect and Empathy; after nearly 10 years, the ICARE concept of instilling and recognizing these values among EMS providers is still going strong.

"It has exceeded my wildest expectations,” says EMS Educator Chris Le Baudour, who originated the concept.

The Past of ICARE

The ICARE program evolved following a lecture that Chris presented on “Ethics and Values” at Santa Rosa (CA) Junior College on the second night of an 18-week EMT program. Chris challenged his students to identify five values that could be used to guide students through becoming EMTs and afterwards through their careers.

After several brainstorming sessions, the class had identified and unanimously agreed upon the above five values. It was while attending an EMS conference in Los Angeles that Chris discussed the set of values with another colleague (Dr. Chris Nollette), and they realized that when placed in the right order, the first letter of each value spelled “I CARE.”

• I-ntegrity
• C-ompassion
• A-ccountability
• R-espect
• E-mpathy

Back in the classroom, Chris and his students came up with a program in which the classmates recognized each other for embracing the values with pins that read “I CARE.”

“The goal was to have every single student wearing an I CARE pin by the end of the semester,” as Chris tells the story on the ICARE website.

“As the semester progressed, students seemed more focused on the positive in one another and developed a sincere interest in finding ways to recognize one another rather than in being recognized themselves. We put no restrictions on what a student could or could not be recognized for, so long as they in some way embraced one or more of the I CARE values,” Chris writes.

As the semester came to a close, the discussion in the class turned to how to perpetuate the ICARE program, and it took off from there. The program spread as Chris discussed it around the country, as students and participants established new branches, and as EMS World Magazine promoted it along with a free classroom poster in 2008, along with a redesigned poster to celebrate the 10th anniversary. Click here to download a pdf for your agency's use. If you would like to use the poster with a photo of your own agency, e-mail editor@emsworld.com.

The Present of ICARE

Most notably, in about 2009 the National Association of EMS Educators adopted the ICARE program into their curriculum for their national EMS Educator’s course.

“I would say that probably once a week I receive some sort of communication from another program that has adopted it,” Chris says, in which they praise the program or ask questions.

Chris says he hasn’t kept track of how many programs have adopted it because he never expected them to keep adding up. “I had no idea…” he says.

Among his examples are the  Air Evac Lifeteam based in Missouri and REACH Air Medical Services in California, Oregon and Texas, which have made  ICARE a part of their new-hire academies.

Chris says he’s still getting requests to teach the concept at conferences and to provide educators with the classroom poster. He says it’s always entertaining when people take pictures of the posters in various locations to share with him.

The Future of ICARE

As for the future of ICARE, Chris would like to see it go even further.

“A lot of mature organizations and institutions have a set of shared values—for example, the National Association of Realtors,” he says. “I’ve always hoped that one day EMS would adopt one set of shared values.”

(He even hoped that before ICARE, he notes...That void of shared industry values was the idea behind the classroom assignment.)

Chris says he could see ICARE being that set of values.

“They make sense and touch not only on the professionalism aspect of EMS, but the compassion and integrity,” he says.

He says the values are also especially meaningful for the fact that they were developed by EMS students– not by established providers, who can become jaded.

“It would be nice if as a profession we adopted a set of shared values and could promote it to people entering the profession. That would be a great goal.”