EMS World Expo Returns In Person

The main conference portion of EMS World Expo 2021 kicked off in Atlanta Wednesday morning, Oct. 6, with all the energy and spectacle EMS World fans have come to expect.

Following a procession by the Atlanta Fire-Rescue Department Honor Guard and American Idol runner-up Caleb Lee Hutchinson singing the national anthem, Lekshmi Kumar, MD, MPH, medical director for Grady Health System and emergency physician at Emory University Healthcare, welcomed attendees to Atlanta.

“These last two years have been the most challenging of my entire EMS career,” announced Kumar. “We have been stressed and strained in more ways than we could ever imagine.” The pandemic, protests, patient surges, and staffing shortages have taken a toll on providers and their loved ones. However, “EMS has stepped up to the plate and risen to the challenge,” she said. “This is something that is amazing to see.”

Josh Hartman, NRP, MBA, senior vice president of EMS World, and Bruce Evans, CFO, SPO, NRP, MPA, president of NAEMT, presented the National EMS Awards of Excellence:

• Dick Ferneau Career EMS Service of the Year: Pafford Medical Services (operating in multiple states and the U.S. Virgin Islands)
• Volunteer EMS Service of the Year: Darien EMS Post 53, Darien, Conn.
• NAEMT/Nasco Paramedic of the Year: Jeremy McElroy, Chesapeake, Va.
• NAEMT/Braun Industries EMT of the Year: Tracie Sanders, Normanna, Tex.
• NAEMT/Jones & Bartlett EMS Educator of the Year: Justin Arnone, BS, NRP, NCEE, TP-C, FP-C, Pride, La.
• NAEMT/North American Rescue Military Medic of the Year: MSG Michael Remley, ATP, NRP, JBSA Ft. Sam Houston, Tex.
• NAEMT/Bound Tree EMS Medical Director of the Year: Kenneth Scheppke, MD, Jupiter, Fla. 
• NAEMT-AAP/Health Scholars Pediatric EMS Award: Brian Moore, MD, FAAP, Albuquerque, N.M.
• Dynarex First Responder Caring Award: Derek Perez-Piris, St. Petersburg (Fla.) Fire-Rescue and Bayflite

Steve Berry, BA, NREMT-P, author of the "I Am Not An Ambulance Driver!" cartoon series, presented the 2021 keynote address, "Unmasking Pandemic Parody in Prehospital Care." With a humorous narrative chronicling his decades-long career as a paramedic up through the current COVID environment, Berry interspersed his cartoons with his talk.

Berry quoted Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl: "Humor, more than anything else in the human makeup, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, if only for a few seconds."