Editorial: Honored to Be in Your Service

As you follow the course of your day, whether on duty or off, you can be sure a large segment of the people with whom you interact—store employees, children’s teachers, clergy, passersby on the street—have been touched by your skilled hands and compassionate heart in some way.

Maybe it’s the cherished grandfather who was able to join his family for one more memorable holiday season. Maybe it’s the wide-eyed infant in a stroller you helped bring into the world. Or the teenager recovering from substance abuse issues because you cared when others didn’t and connected her with resources that could help break the cycle of addiction.

And even in the sad cases, maybe it’s the family members who gained inner peace and a sense of closure thanks to the patience and kindness you offered when it was time to say that final good-bye.

EMS professionals are the unheralded guardians against, and sometimes companions into, life’s most difficult transitions. It’s a time-honored privilege afforded only to a select few and never taken lightly by any provider who dons the duty shirt and reports for their shift each day with a sense of pride and purpose.

At EMS World we don’t take the privilege of serving you lightly either. Since 1972 you’ve turned to us as the most trusted source of EMS-focused educational content—evidence-based clinical updates, facility and provider profiles, expert management guidance, new product announcements, and recurring columns from today’s EMS visionaries.

Committed to flexibility and adapting to the emerging trends in the profession, we take a top-to-bottom look each year with the assistance of our esteemed editorial advisory board at what’s working, what isn’t, where we can improve, and what trends we should be following in the year ahead.

Here’s a taste of a few 2019 milestones reached, what’s new, and what we’re working on for 2020:

• EMS World’s webinars, CE articles, and Expo presentations are now housed in a single location for your CE convenience. Visit lms.emsworld.com for our user-friendly CE portal;
• In November EMS World was honored with a Folio: Award in the healthcare/B2B category, our latest in a long list of industry accolades;
• A series of planned quarterly supplements in 2020 will dive deeper into specific topics—education, stroke care, transportation, and data in EMS are just a few of the upcoming focus areas to look for;
• Our new podcast channel scours the Internet and brings you today’s top voices in EMS, as well as our own podcast that spotlights one feature a month from our print publication and supplements it with additional interviews. Visit emsworld.com/podcasts;
• New columns for 2020 include Student Corner, highlighting the enthusiastic research of today’s EMS students; a focus on leadership in EMS; and a partnership with the Gathering of Eagles (i.e., the U.S. Metropolitan Municipalities EMS Medical Directors Consortium) to keep you up to date on what the country’s premier medical directors’ conference is working on. Our popular EMS Around the World, Hall of Fame, Journal Watch, and other columns will continue into the new year.

If you’re reading this online or you are holding a friend’s copy, sign up for your own free print subscription at www.emsworld.com/subscribe. 

The industry’s only print publication is paired with an active website that’s updated each day with online-exclusive content to keep you informed, engaged, and entertained. Finally, the world’s leading EMS-dedicated event, EMS World Expo, took over New Orleans Oct. 14–18 this year, and we expect that momentum to steamroll into 2020. Read all about the highlights in our feature article in this issue.

Want to be a featured speaker at this one-of-a-kind event? We are now accepting session proposals for consideration for the 2020 EMS World Expo, scheduled for Sept. 14–Sept. 18, 2020, in Las Vegas. We hope you’ll join us. Visit www.emsworldexpo.com.  

You trust EMS World to keep you informed and engaged, and we take that responsibility seriously. Thanks for supporting your EMS publication, and we wish you a happy holiday season and a safe and prosperous 2020. We’re honored to be in your service. 

Jonathan Bassett, MA, NREMT, is editorial director at EMS World. Reach him at jon@emsworld.com.