Ludwig on Leadership: What EMS Leaders Can Learn From Admiral Rickover

Gary Ludwig is a featured speaker at EMS World Expo, October 3–7, in New Orleans, LA. Register today at EMSWorldExpo.com.

Admiral Hyman Rickover is known as the “Father of the Nuclear Navy.” He began his Navy career in 1918 and was forced into retirement in 1982. With 63 years of service, he was the longest-serving U.S. naval officer. His main achievement was becoming the first admiral to oversee the implementation of nuclear propulsion in the U.S. Navy for submarines, cruisers and aircraft carriers. His team designed, engineered and built the U.S. Navy’s first nuclear submarine in three short years. He oversaw this program for 30 years.

Admiral Rickover had many successes during his career in the Navy. The U.S. Navy has a tremendous safety record when it comes to nuclear propulsion on its ships. There has never been a major accident involving a nuclear-powered ship because of the reactor. Two nuclear-powered submarines have sunk in the Atlantic, but not because of a nuclear accident. This safety record is no fluke. When you think about your high-risk EMS system, there are many similarities.

Admiral Rickover had seven principles that guided him to success. EMS managers can use many of these principles to lead their systems effectively.

First, Admiral Rickover believed employees should exceed the minimum standard. He did not believe in the status quo. If you’re just meeting standards, you cannot be outstanding. He believed employees and organizations should always look to improve.

Another principle he followed was that employees who operate in complex systems should be highly capable. This certainly applies to EMS systems, where life-and-death decisions are made by your employees daily. Unfortunately, we all know or have worked with a provider whom we feared would treat us if we were in an accident. Conversely, we have all worked with or know providers whom you would want to look up and see if you were seriously ill or injured.

Another Rickover principle was that managers should accept bad news when it comes and deal with it head on. He believed that the success or failure of systems was because of the manager or supervisor leading them. If something failed, he felt it was the supervisor or manager who was not capable of managing their area. Bad news should be handled directly with the removal or demotion of the manager or supervisor. Do you as the EMS manager currently have supervisors or managers working for you who are keeping your EMS organization from reaching its full potential?

Admiral Rickover also believed you should not dismiss the risks and dangers associated with any job. This is especially true in EMS, where inherent dangers are everywhere, including harm to our employees from accidents, assaults by patients and infectious diseases to name a few. But there are also risks including theft, lawsuits and reputation damage to the EMS organization through negative publicity.

Admiral Rickover was a major proponent of constant training. In EMS, training should happen every day—even if just to review a medical protocol or drug. As I like to say, professional athletes practice and train every day and they know when game time is and what the field will look like. On every EMS call, you do not know the game time or what the field is going to look like. As an EMS manager you should ensure your employees have training constantly available to them, but not the kind where they just sit in a classroom enduring death by PowerPoint to get CEUs for relicensure like I have seen in several EMS organizations.

Another principle of Admiral Rickover’s was that organizations should learn from their mistakes. He would say, “Success teaches us nothing; only failure teaches.” As an EMS manager you should continually look at data and see where failures in your organization are occurring. Many EMS managers see mistakes as embarrassing or somehow a failure of their leadership. If there is something that goes wrong, you should embrace that mistake and learn what can be done to prevent it from happening again.

One final principle of Admiral Rickover was that systems should be in place to continually assess your employees’ and your system’s functionality. In EMS, we call this quality assurance and quality improvement. Audit processes should be part of any EMS system to ensure high performance and reliability on any call.

I strongly encourage you to research Admiral Rickover including his speech to the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in 1954. Because of his responsibilities of managing and leading a high-risk system, much can be learned from this man who enjoyed many successes in his career.

Gary Ludwig, MS, EMT-P, is chief of the Champaign (IL) Fire Department. He is a well-known author and lecturer who has managed award-winning metropolitan fire-based EMS systems in St. Louis and Memphis. He has a total of 37 years of fire and EMS experience and has been a paramedic for over 35 years. Contact him at garyludwig.com.