{"id":16146,"date":"2012-07-25T05:36:20","date_gmt":"2012-07-25T12:36:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/?p=16146"},"modified":"2013-01-04T15:33:39","modified_gmt":"2013-01-04T22:33:39","slug":"newman-the-positive-paramedic-project-52-build-on-strengths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/2012\/07\/newman-the-positive-paramedic-project-52-build-on-strengths\/","title":{"rendered":"Newman | The Positive Paramedic Project #52 Build on strengths"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Dean DiMonte on the job as an advanced care paramedic.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A nugget of Big Medicine every day. #52 Build on strengths<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Dean DiMonte was raised in a tight-knit family where stepping up to help people in need was as much a part of family life as getting together for big dinners and sharing laughter and stories. His parents are the kind of folks who welcome you into the fold with a warm embrace and an immediate offer of food and drink. But don\u2019t make the mistake of accepting a challenge from his mom, Bev, to go bowling on Wii or you will surely get your butt thoroughly kicked.<\/p>\n

My first introduction to Dean came when his big brother Terry was telling a story about his kid brother, the paramedic, on the air at CHOM-FM in Montreal. \u00a0Terry\u2019s voice was a comforting presence that marked the end of long chaotic overnight shifts or the beginning of another day on the streets. He\u2019d tell a story, crack a gentle joke, and then spin some excellent music and we\u2019d be off on another emergency journey.<\/p>\n

Dean and I didn\u2019t hook-up until after both of us had left the streets \u2013 and his case, the air \u2013 to pursue consultancy work in the private sector. Dean\u2019s paramedic career included stints on the ground and as a helicopter medic in Ontario, leaving us with a lot of common ground to explore. \u00a0Every time we get together, we talk about making EMS more relevant in a world no longer interested in rewarding us for simply showing up and trying to save lives.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve been reading the Positive Paramedic Project you know I\u2019m not a colour-strictly-inside-the-lines kind of human being. Neither is Dean. He actually took his leave of EMS because the bureaucracy was threatening to choke the life out of his passion for the job. And he began an indepth exploration of the concept of leadership knowing that the way EMS systems are guided will make or break this relatively young component of the health care system.<\/p>\n

\u2018We have people leading paramedics who have never spent any, uh – quality time, upside-down-in-the-dark talking a critically-injured patient through an extrication in mid-January. They just don\u2019t know what it means to be a paramedic. And so, why are we surprised when the values and visions they express as goals for their organizations capture so little of the very essence of EMS?\u2019<\/p>\n

Dean maintains we\u2019ve been hung up on transactional leadership so long, EMS systems have become tick-off-the-box trick-based compliance factories. \u2018And we\u2019ll be stuck in that self-defined box until we realize that we need to have paramedic-led community-needs-driven empirical-data-based emergency medical services that are providing services that matter.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018We need to follow the lead of mentors like Michael Nolan [Renfrew County, Ontario] and Michael Neill [Toronto EMS] who have never lost their sense of patient advocacy to this day.<\/p>\n

\u2018We need to identify the internal references that have led to paramedics losing their way. How can we expect them to believe in the positive when their first instinct is to say, \u2018This place will never change\u2019 There\u2019s a reason \u2013 a frame of reference \u2013 for that statement, and we need to identify where it comes from and work hard \u2013 very hard \u2013 to change it.<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s a process. We need to shape references and we need to begin changing peoples\u2019 mindsets. Paramedics are people who have answered a call to step-up and help people in times of great difficulty. We need to build on that strength.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018We need to innovate and expand our role into community care. There is such a wide spectrum of services required that we could fulfill that we\u2019re not even looking at. We need to occupy that niche and reach further out into the community.\u2019<\/p>\n

I agree with Dean. We\u2019re so focused on compliance we\u2019ve completely neglected vision and shared beliefs. Sure, there are rousing feel-good let’s-all-sing-kumbaya coaching sessions about the need for bottom-up leadership but at the end-of-the-shift any supervisors who are silly enough to take a stand based on actual values are seldom rewarded. Often they are punished severely.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve got a close friend who was a supervisor in a big-city EMS system and made the mistake of advocating loudly on behalf of the patient and the community. For his caring service, he was terminated by a young administrator who wouldn\u2019t know his ass from an oropharyngeal airway inside an actual ambulance. \u00a0The administrator had somehow been allowed to transition from managing a fast food franchise to running a major EMS hub. Other than knowing the sticky-side needs to go on the bloody part, he had no experience in the world of emergency medical services. And yet, there he was, ending the career of a senior paramedic who had left it all out on the road.<\/p>\n

As my friend Pietro [another veteran of the emergency services world] says \u2018That box we find ourselves in keeps getting longer on the sides and narrower at the ends. A couple more nails and we\u2019ll have crafted our own final resting place.\u2019<\/p>\n

Be well. Practice big medicine.<\/p>\n

Hal<\/p>\n

You can learn more about Dean DiMonte’s take on EMS on his website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

NB: Big Medicine is my nod of respect to a First Nations expression that, roughly translated, means the right people working together at the right time will be Big Medicine. I\u2019ve been saying \u2018Be well. Practice big medicine\u2019 for as long as I can remember. It is my own very personal version of \u2018Sawu Bona\u2019, the Zulu greeting which means \u2018I see you\u2019\u2026 I see all of you, I see your good works, I see the difference you are making in the world.<\/p>\n

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A nugget of Big Medicine every day. #52 Build on strengths Dean DiMonte was raised in a tight-knit family where stepping up to help people in need was as much a part of family life as getting together for big dinners and sharing laughter and stories. His parents are the kind of folks who welcome […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[9887,11552,9888,9889,21461,21619],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16146"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16146"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16167,"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16146\/revisions\/16167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}