Paramedic Couple Create Book to Familiarize Children with EMS

After the birth of their daughter, 20-year-veteran paramedics Nicole Blongiewicz and her husband, Chris, came to a realization: There were no children’s books to explain their profession.

Most children’s books about emergencies relate to fire, police or the military, Chris says.

So he and his wife decided to create their own book, and Frederick the Paramedic was the outcome.

Chris says the idea to write a children’s book was something that was in the back of his head for a while, but this moment helped him act on it.

The purpose of the book is to educate children about what EMS providers do and help them remain calm in situations where EMS is needed.

“The point of reference for kids regarding medical attention is typically that they’re going to get a shot, it’s going to be painful and it’s going to be uncomfortable,” Chris says. “It’s a lot of fear of the unknown.”

To combat this fear, Frederick the Paramedic accompanies the reader on a realistic ridealong-style journey to help a skateboarder who has suffered an injury and needs medical attention.

The reader gets to see what the inside of an ambulance is like and get a behind-the-scenes look at the process of getting dispatched, arriving at a scene and taking a patient to the hospital.

To help the children gain more real-life knowledge of how EMS works, Chris says he wanted to keep the book as realistic as possible. To achieve this, Chris and Nicole used their wealth of knowledge from their time as paramedics and research from organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics, and worked to keep the characters in the book realistic.

One of Chris’ biggest fears was that a publisher would sacrifice the realistic quality of the book and try to make more cute characters, like a talking stethoscope or a caricature ambulance. To prevent this from happening, Chris and Nicole self-published the book using a Kickstarter campaign that garnered about $3,000.

Chris says running the Kickstarter campaign was one of the most fun parts of creating the book, but producing a children’s book was much more work than he anticipated.

The most difficult part was working with people who were unfamiliar with EMS. For example, the illustrator was a man from England with no prior EMS experience. Chris says he and Nicole spent the most time making sure the pictures were something they were happy with.

“The audience we’re going after is clearly going to pick it apart if there’s anything wrong, and we didn’t want that to happen,” Chris says.

Chris and Nicole worked at length to fine-tune every sentence in the book to make sure it said what they wanted it to say and provided an educational component for readers.

After hard work, editing and unexpected changes, the finished product was ready and mailed to the Blongiewiczs’ home. Chris says this has been his favorite part of the process so far.

Shortly after the books arrived, Chris and Nicole saw their work in action.

One benefit of donating to the Kickstarter campaign was getting an early-release copy of the book. Shortly after sending one to a Vermont library, Chris got a call from the librarian.

She said they wished they would have received the book about a month earlier. A first-grade child had to be taken away in an ambulance, and the other children were upset and crying, as they were uninformed of what was happening.

“Now they do a little EMS segment and read the book to children so they have a point of reference for what happens if they need an ambulance,” Chris says.

Chris says the book is also important because along with giving children a comfort level around EMS workers, it informs the public of the purpose of EMS.

“If you go back in history, fire departments have been around for hundreds of years, police have been around for hundreds of years and military forces have been around forever,” Chris says. “EMS as it is now hasn’t really been around since about the ’50s or ’60s.”

For this reason, Chris says it’s important to spread the message of what EMS does to people of all ages.

As for the future of Frederick the Paramedic, Chris and Nicole plan on continuing his journeys in future books.

Chris says they hope to continue using research to see which issues affect the most children, as well as expanding to chronic issues like asthma and childhood diabetes.

Another direction Chris and Nicole want to take the character into situations where the child might need to call EMS, such as a grandparent showing signs of a stroke.

Chris says the most important part about continuing the series is to make children continue to feel comfortable around EMS workers.

“We’re here to help, and if we can start spreading that message, we can make our field more respected.”

For more information on Frederick the Paramedic and to see where to order copies of the book, visit fredericktheparamedic.com.