Editorial: Exciting Times in EMS

It’s not often you find a job you know, from the moment you read the description, is the job for you, but that’s exactly how I felt when I found the opening for vice president of the new public safety division at EMS World’s publisher, HMP.

I first became an EMT in 1992, while I was an undergraduate at New York University. During the school year I volunteered for the Central Park Medical Unit, an ambulance corps that patrolled New York City’s famed green acres and treated everything from cycling spills to strokes. During the summers I worked as a lifeguard and supervisor for Shore Beach Service in Hilton Head Island, S.C., and volunteered for the Hilton Head Island Rescue Squad.

I became a paramedic in 1998 after graduating from St. Vincent’s Hospital, the since-closed Level 1 trauma center in New York’s Greenwich Village. Upon graduation I began volunteering for Hatzolah Volunteer Ambulance Corps and working per diem at Englewood Hospital in New Jersey.

I’ve worked continuously at these organizations since, in addition to decade-long stints at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center and Pascack Valley Hospital and Holy Name Hospital and Medical Center in New Jersey. 

At NYU I studied history and chemistry. Upon graduation I worked for four years in the healthcare consulting practice at Deloitte in the World Financial Center.

In 2000 I started an online medical education company focusing on the evolving subspecialty of interventional cardiology. This company, Clinsights, was sold in 2003 to PPD and then was spun off again in 2007 to the Cardiovascular Research Foundation.

I worked at the Cardiovascular Research Foundation over the next 10 years, during which time I held several positions and went to business school, receiving an MBA in 2014.

In my final position as executive director of CRF’s Center for Education, I ran a prolific interventional cardiovascular educational website (TCTMD.com), which I cofounded, and the largest interventional cardiology conference in the world (TCT), which averaged more than 10,000 attendees a year.

Goals and Objectives

I have several goals and objectives in this new role. To name but a couple: 

First, I plan to work with my EMS World colleagues to create, develop, publish, and present to you, our readers, educational content that is interesting and relevant and to do so in novel, innovative, and unique ways.

Second, I hope to expand the extensive educational offerings we currently provide to EMS providers to other public safety professionals, including those in the fire service and law enforcement. In today’s climate the services provided by each of these groups are increasingly overlapping, and so educating them both independently and collaboratively is a key success metric.

I am extremely excited to join such amazing teams at HMP in general and EMS World in particular. This role is a unique opportunity to merge my two passions: developing and facilitating online and conference-based educational content and doing so for the betterment of the community of prehospital healthcare providers, who are unique, underrecognized, and underappreciated.

These are exciting times in EMS, with increasing opportunities through the miniaturizing of medical technology, allowing it to reach the field, and the expansion of EMS professionals’ scope of practice to include roles within mobile integrated health and community paramedicine, just to name a couple.

With these evolving responsibilities, continuing medical education will remain key to the competency and success of prehospital providers. We at EMS World want to be your preferred resource to provide it.

Education is a collaborative experience, though, so I welcome your feedback to help us provide you and your colleagues with the most relevant and comprehensive education possible. If you have an idea to share, please contact me at josh@emsworld.com.