EMS World Expo Sessions Cover Innovative Topics

Helping attendees stay ahead of the curve by offering fresh and innovative classes is something EMS World Expo takes pride in. Two courses that offered attendees this opportunity covered using body-worn cameras for documentation in EMS and emerging EMS employment issues.

Body-worn cameras improve EMS documentation

In a Wednesday session, Dr. Jeffrey Ho, chief medical director for Hennepin EMS in Minn., covered a study he had completed on the positive effects of using body-worn cameras for documentation in EMS.

Ho first took the room through a bit of an experiment. He showed attendees a GoPro recording of a crash site he had responded to, and then led them through a series of questions. Although some people in the class answered some of the questions correctly, some of the specifics that would be important for documentation were difficult to remember.

“Memory is an adaptive process and subject to errors,” Ho says.

To display some of the documentation benefits of wearing body cameras, Ho and others conducted a study using 10 paramedics. The paramedics participated in a staged scenario of responding to a drug overdose, and then were asked to complete documentation for the scenario. After their original documentation, they were allowed to make changes after watching video of themselves from their body-worn cameras. In total, 71 changes were made, including 13 changes that fell under the category of “major.”

The average paramedic in the study had been practicing for 7.7 years, but Ho says the paramedics who had been practicing the longest generally made the least changes.

Although Ho acknowledged the study had some drawbacks, touching on the small sample size and the pool of paramedics all being from Hennepin EMS, he says it’s a good starting point in what he considers an important practice.

Ho says using body-worn cameras for documentation can ease the burden of having to remember the events of a call after the fact, which can be difficult for EMS practitioners given the nature of their work. “Everybody goes to work stressed or tired,” Ho says, “which affect our memory.”

Ho says using the cameras can have benefits beyond documentation as well. Collecting video of calls can make for less liability in case of criminal accusations. If someone accuses EMS personnel of misconduct, there will be video evidence of whether or not that misconduct actually happened. Hennepin EMS keeps recordings for 30 days and, unless a video is requested by police or otherwise requested to be archived, the videos are deleted after that time is up.

Ho also says the recordings can make good teaching material.

Emerging employment issues

On Thursday, EMS World editorial advisory board member Matthew Streger, who is a partner with Keavney & Streger law firm and a previous EMS administrator, and Ryan Greenberg, NEMSMA board member, held a panel to discuss emerging employment issues in EMS. As Streger noted in his opening remarks, as society changes, EMS must adapt, and it’s important for employers to stay on top of social issues and know how to address them in the workplace.

The group first brought in Roscoe McCoy, a paramedic and LGBTQ advocate, to discuss how to create a comfortable environment for transgender people in the workplace. There have been recent instances of alleged discrimination in the workplace against transgender employees, such as an incident in June in California when a transgender EMT sued the hospital that employed her.

The overarching theme of the discussion was compassion and creating a safe space for the transgender employees. Ensuring these employees feel comfortable on the job is critical, Greenberg says. The employer must be aware of issues, and present solutions in an open and accepting manor.

“When you talk about a safe space, a lot ties into how you address things,” Greenberg says.

One way to avoid creating a tense or hostile workplace environment is to avoid practices known as misgendering or dead naming, McCoy says. McCoy explained says misgendering means calling someone the wrong gender or using the wrong pronouns. Dead naming is the practice of calling someone who has gone through a name change their name given at birth. McCoy says it’s understandable that mistakes might happen, but doing so intentionally is seen as very offensive and can create a very uncomfortable environment.

In all, McCoy says, it’s important to just treat transgender employees like another member of the team.

“We don’t want to make a big deal of it,” McCoy says. “We want to come in, do our job and go home. We are human, and that’s all we want is to be treated as such.”

The second topic the session touched on was firearms and body armor in the workplace, and to discuss this, Streger and Greenberg brought in Hank Meyer, a senior special agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who has practiced EMS in Massachusetts and Louisiana, and Justin Reed, an assistant EMS chief from Texas.

A law was recently passed in Kansas allowing public employees including EMTs and paramedics to carry concealed weapons while on duty. Although both panel members said they advocate for the right to bear arms, both had their apprehensions about carrying firearms in the workplace.

Meyer says in his experience, it might cause more hassle than it’s worth. In the high-coverage areas Meyer has worked, he says armed police officers are almost always on the scene before paramedics. Combine this with an increase in training that would be necessary to cover any liability that comes with carrying a firearm, and Meyer says it might be better to leave them off the ambulance.

Reed agreed, saying it would be an extra level of concern for him and his employees on top of an already stressful line of work.

“I’m worried about my medics identifying and treating sepsis,” Reed says. “I don’t want to worry about shoot/don’t shoot situations too.”

On body armor, Reed, Meyer and Greenberg agreed that it was a good idea, but say it needs to be up to the individual agencies to determine what works best for them. Some questions needs to be answered on a case-by-case basis, including what type of armor to purchase and whether it needs to be worn all the time or only on certain calls.

Reed and Meyer both suggested making sure employees don’t feel the “Superman” effect and feel invincible in dangerous situations if the armor is worn full time.