This Is EMS: Caring for Our Communities

Is this what the groggy awakening from spending a year in a coma feels like? Eyes blinking, shafts of light...improving focus...familiar surroundings but somehow different? Memories, dreams of a confused reality, of the year past that started as all others, and then seemingly everything suddenly changed and a vertiginous spin into a nonstop barrage of ECHO meetings, video conferences, and daily updates that were contradicted by new daily updates the same day—all in the backdrop of assaults on truth, reality, and science.

It must have been in a fugue of some sort that we would be asked to go to war against a ruthless new viral enemy without guns or armor, and yet ambulance bays turned into negative pressure rooms, we unloaded patients in parking lots, improvised hoods, and experimented with containment curtains and filters to limit the spread of an unseen enemy whose true means of transmission seemed to be unclear and debated.

Eventually the army was clothed and the mission better defined. The assault was now a siege, and we girded for each patient with restrictive garments and respirators that isolated us from our patients and our coworkers, slowing our responses to them and then requiring laborious work to prepare for returning to service. Rinse and repeat, day in, day out, week in, week out, month in, month out. It became a routine. We got it done, but it was a grind, and it was fatiguing.

We were lucky we followed the science. We did what was necessary in terms of masks, distancing, and quarantine, and we likely limited the full impact of the deadly contagion. Still, some of you got sick, as did your friends and family, and we were often quarantined or isolated, adding to others' workloads and increasing the overall stress. Despite our efforts, many across our nation died.

Eyes blinking, light filling the room, now coming into clear focus…an amazing worldwide effort of science and manufacturing, an apparent moonshot performed at light speed, began delivering millions of doses of vaccines that were remarkably effective and safe. Treated like the rarest ambergris at the outset and reserved for those most at risk, now widely available and providing most of us with the opportunity to reduce our risk of contracting the disease.

A way forward! We feel an increasing hope of returning to normalcy, yet still knowing that we have learned much from this time, and the lessons must not be forgotten or ignored. What are some of those lessons for EMS?

We are resilient but vulnerable.

We are not just a transport resource.

Our mission is public health.

Transport is not the only option.

EMS Week this year is especially important and also poignant. We are not celebrating a year like any other, giving routine acknowledgment to this extraordinary group of our fellow citizens who at all hours, in all weather, make personal sacrifices to fulfill their passion of taking care of others in need.

In a time when there is a white-hot spotlight on the disparity in the access to medical care in our society, EMS remains a bulwark of bringing care to all comers, without concern about ability to pay, race, creed, color, or sexual orientation. EMS’s example of access to care should be regarded by the rest of the house of medicine as inspirational and aspirational. Especially after what has been demonstrated in the year past.

We take this opportunity, as a community and as a nation, to honor you who have devoted yourself to caring for your communities in a way that no one else can. EMS Week 2021: Caring for Our Communities. Yes, you truly did and do.

We have only one request of you: Please be sure to also take care you. Acknowledge that this was a tough time, and we are still recovering. Reach out if you need it and watch out for your brothers and sisters, as they may be struggling.

Please enjoy the much-deserved limelight of this week!

Michael Levy, MD, FAEMS, is president of NAEMSP.

With contributions from Anne Zink, MD, chief medical officer, state of Alaska.