Five Questions With: Mike Taigman Talks Provider Health at Pinnacle

Mike Taigman has spent more than four decades either on the streets doing EMS work or working to help other EMS providers save more lives, reduce suffering, and be more effective leaders and stewards of their own well-being.

Owner of Paramedicine ECR and author of Super-Charge Your Stress Management in the Age of COVID-19, Taigman speaks from years of experience helping others. He was a paramedic in Denver who honed his clinical skills caring for patients and helping new paramedics provide solid care with kindness and compassion.

Today he is an assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco, part of the faculty for the school’s Master of Science in Healthcare Administration and Interprofessional Leadership, where he teaches improvement science and facilitates the comprehensive practicum. Taigman also is an adjunct professor in the University of Maryland Baltimore County Emergency Health Services Management graduate program.

He is the “improvement guide” for First Watch, which helps EMS, fire, public health, and law enforcement by transforming raw data into meaningful information for analysis, decision-making, and performance improvement in near-real time.

Taigman’s expertise includes EMS street survival, patient-centered leadership, and effective quality/performance improvement. He has managed EMS operations and worked to end disparities in healthcare.

He holds a Master’s degree in organizational systems and serves as a teaching assistant for “Practical Improvement Science in Health Care: A Roadmap for Getting Results,” a collaboration between Harvard’s Medical School and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.

Taigman also is the facilitator for the EMS Agenda 2050 project. He holds a certificate in socially engaged spirituality from Saybrook University.

A sought-after conference educator and author of more than 600 articles in professional journals, he will speak at the Pinnacle EMS leadership conference on August 9 about modeling healthy behavior with science-based strategies for improving wellness.

Pinnacle will be held August 9–13 in Phoenix. For more: https://pinnacle-ems.com/.

EMS World: EMS providers are notorious for taking poor care of themselves. How does the job they do contribute to this?

Taigman: I’ve heard this, but I’m not sure it’s true. I’ve visited with thousands of EMS providers all across the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, Palestine, and Israel. Several are superfit triathletes, marathoners, vegans, competitive bodybuilders, yoga instructors, meditators, and the like. Some are overweight, chain-smoking, fast food-eating balls of stress. Most, like the rest of our population, are somewhere in between.

Most “normal” people are exposed to suffering, trauma, and death a few times during their lives. The folks working in EMS experience a wide variety of the suffering that happens in the world on a regular basis. This stress, especially if poorly managed, takes its toll on our bodies, minds, and spirits. Add long hours, inadequate pay, and limited control, and it’s easy to see why we tend to suffer more physical and mental illness than most.

What are the personal and career implications of poor self-care?

The obvious personal implications of neglecting your health and stress management are preventable disease, disability, and death. Many, if not most diseases have their roots in inflammation, which is exacerbated by maladaptive responses to stress like fatty foods, sugar, alcohol, and recreational drugs. It also touches our relationships with family and friends when we take our stress home.

Our job still includes carrying heavy equipment and lifting heavy patients. Often the places and positions where we find patients do not allow for good lifting mechanics. Shoulder, knee, and back injuries have cut years from several of our careers.

What are your strategies for tuning providers into self-care and promoting better habits?

EMS providers are smart clinical professionals. I start by sharing the science behind stress management and inflammation. We talk about their contribution to disease, anxiety, depression, PTSD, etc. Then we talk about dozens of easy-to-implement science-based changes, each of which will move you closer to health. There’s a whole new branch of medicine called lifestyle medicine which is jam-packed with fun and easy things you can do to improve your health quickly.

What other measures should EMS providers be taking beyond diet/exercise?

Eating good food, getting some aerobic and resistance exercise, sleeping 7–8 hours a night, practicing some form of mindfulness, and nurturing good relationships is a pretty good strategy for living a long and vibrant life. 

How can system leaders help mitigate these challenges and facilitate positive change?

The first step for leaders is to build their own system to manage their threat stress and improve their health. It’s hard to lead others to better health if you’re a wreck yourself. Next they can collaborate with their team members to create training, schedules, facilities, posting plans, support systems, equipment choices, and the like that make it easier to make healthy choices. Making your team’s health and happiness a core part of your strategic plan is also helpful.

Carol Brzozowski is a freelance journalist and former daily newspaper reporter based in South Florida. Her work has been published in more than 200 media outlets.