Ep. 3 | Emily Brown, Director of EMS & Trauma Services, SGMC Health

Transcript

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- Welcome to another episode of "What Brings You in Today?" I'm Erika Bennett.

- And I'm Taylor Fisher.

- And today, we have Emily Brown, Director of EMS and Trauma Services at SGMC Health here with us. Today, Emily, tell us what brings you in.

- So, I'm excited to be here to talk about advancements that we've made, EMS and Trauma. Everybody I think knows that this past June we received our trauma designation. EMS was a huge part of that. So we've got a lot of good stuff that we've done, a lot of good stuff coming up, a lot of exciting classes, and different things that we're gonna do for both EMS and Trauma.

- Yay, can you tell us a little bit about your role at SGMC Health and a little bit about your background, how you got here?

- Sure, so I'm the director of EMS and Trauma, so I oversee all of our emergency services, which is ambulance, and also our trauma program, which is in charge of the care that our trauma patients receive from the time they come in until the time they're discharged. EMS plays a very big role in that, but we do, we service three counties for our EMS, so that's Lowndes, Lanier, and Echols. We run about 23,000 calls a year, and then we also have our trauma program, where we treat about 2,000 patients a year. So I oversee all of the administrative functions of that.

- And when we're talking trauma, just for those that don't really have any medical background, tell us some examples of what, what is considered trauma?

- So trauma can be anything from a fall. People that, your geriatric patients that are on blood thinners, they're at a really high risk of having some major injury from fall. So something that would seem very simple to a lot of the population is not as, is a pretty bad trauma for them. All the way up to a gunshot wound or stabbing bad accidents, motor vehicle accidents, cars, ATVs, UTVs, all of that would be encompassed in trauma.

- Okay. So 911 EMS, all that is a part of what you oversee, right?

- Yes.

- You get the 911 calls in the EMS. So I was just wondering, what is kind of maybe the silliest thing you've gotten a 911 call for? That really, they didn't need to be calling, but they did.

- We we get some things that probably are not, I guess when you see the worst, people have the worst day of their lives and it's a major thing that when you get called for foot pain for three months, that that just seems super silly. But, you know, we're not like the fire department that gets called to get the cat out of the tree. I mean, they don't really do this, but sometimes they call us, you know, to move a piece of furniture around their house and just things like that, so.

- Okay.

- And so, you know, piggybacking off of that, when should you call 911? So I know there was kind of a trend a couple years ago where people began to not call 911. They thought they would just try, they may try to get themselves, drive themselves or have their family member drive them to the emergency room. So there's certainly times when we don't want that, and so when it's like the most appropriate usage and kind of what we specialize in with our response to emergencies? I'm thinking like, trauma, stroke, heart.

- Sure, so anything that you, could potentially be a heart attack, stroke, a bad trauma, but really I kinda look at it as, I think everybody's situation's a little different. And so what would not necessarily be a time-sensitive issue of maybe someone that fell at their house and they think they have an injury. That injury probably is not life-threatening, but are they able to drive themselves safely? Are they able to get off the floor? Are they able to come safely? So there's different things to call 911 for. I think certainly people overuse it, and don't always utilize it in the most responsible way. And that ties up an ambulance where somebody might really need it. But I think a lot of people put the emphasis on the heart attacks or the strokes or the traumas and sure you need to come for that in an ambulance because we can treat you on your way to the hospital. But I think there's other things too that qualify for that, so.

- Yeah, and tell us about that. Elaborate on that. Just so the public knows. It's kinda, it's something relatively, I mean, we've been doing it for a number of years now, but not everybody knows that when they call 911, there are certain things that can be like early intervention in the field that can kinda help.

- Sure, so heart attacks, we're able to identify that on our EKG. So we're able to do an EKG or 12-lead EKG and determine whether or not you're having a STEMI, which would require you to go to the cath lab. So if we identify that and you live 25 minutes from here, we're able to go ahead and call that in and then you have your whole cardiology team waiting. So that's just a lot less time that it takes for you to get to the cath lab where there's a small window of time, you know, for you to go in and be able to open up those blockages. Same for stroke. So there's a window there. If you're having a stroke and we recognize that early, again, your team's waiting and there's a small window of time, just a few hours from the onset of symptoms, where you can actually receive the thrombolytic medication. Trauma as well. So if you're, you have a severe trauma, early notification gets your whole team in the trauma bay. It also gets emergency blood there, because the sooner we know you have a surgeon there, you have your whole team, your blood, your operating room team, and that's where you're gonna save that patient's life with blood and in the OR.

- Wow. That's something I never thought about, but having that lead time is probably so crucial. I was kind of curious about how do you think SGMC Health's trauma response and EMS has kind of evolved over the years?

- So we started this process probably about two and a half, close to three years ago. It took us right at two years to start collecting the data and doing all of the training, getting all the data that we needed before the Department of Public Health would come do our survey. So basically, they require you to function as a trauma center before they'll even come do your survey for you. So during that two years that it took us to do all that, you know, we did an enormous amount of training and community outreach with our community. We started at the foundation, and the foundation is out there where the trauma occurs. And so all of our fire departments, Valdosta, Lowndes, Hahira, even our volunteer fire departments in these counties, we're all on board with that. We did a ton of training, and they are crucial to early intervention for us. They have a lot more resources than we have. They're a lot closer to the incidents a lot of times where we may have an extended response time and them telling us what we have on scene, them going ahead and calling that into our ER, which they have the capability of doing now. All of that makes a huge difference for our patient and how well-prepared we are whenever the patient gets here. So it's the evolvement of our trauma program has been really neat to watch from the very beginning. So I was there at the very beginning and it's not like you came in in the middle of it, and it's really neat to see it how it builds up and continues to build up. There's all kind of things that, you know, we've done in the past two years, but stuff that we wanna do now, education and expanding this out to the region and not just our county, which is on our plate to do this year, so.

- Yeah, I think it's very interesting how you... It's not just EMS, you know, that is trauma, it's the firefighter, it's the first responders, it's all the community partners that you get to work with. And I know I've seen different things that we've also done to help the level of care that can be provided in our ambulance, such as like those. I will get it wrong, but the AED defibrillator, the automated, like-

- The LUCAS device, yes.

- Yes, the LUCAS device. So things... There's a lot of advancements coming with like equipment that helps our medics do their job. So that's pretty cool, and then like even the Stop the Bleed and the different educational opportunities that you have to provide. So what kinda community outreach, you know, there's part... Trauma can is somewhat, you know, you could try to prevent it, but what are the best tips for trying to avoid being in a... We'll talk to our cardiologist and our neurologist and stuff about our heart and stroke, but for trauma, what's your best advice?

- So we see a lot of car accidents. So distracted driving, making sure that you're going the speed limit, that you're properly restrained, that includes your kids, you know, that there's laws about, you know, how old and how much they have to weigh, how tall they are before they can get outta certain seats. So making sure that they're properly restrained. We see a lot of car accidents really all year just because of where we're at on the interstate. But summertime and then around the holidays, especially when there's school breaks and stuff, we see a big uptick in that. Summer and Christmas is a big time for us to have a TV and UTV golf cart accidents. There's lots of safety tips about that. You know, children should not be driving those. If they do have a appropriate sized ATV, UTV, they need to have helmets in the appropriate safety gear. Never drive it on a highway. You always wanna make sure that you're driving it somewhere where it's safe. There's not anything you can run into. But golf carts, you know, making sure everybody's got a seat, sit down, don't drive it fast, no sharp turns. And then there's just the other, you know, safety as far as, we see some hunting accidents with firearms, things like that. So there's not a lot of, other than just safe practice, you know, but that's kinda where we do the outreach of teaching even lay people how to apply a tourniquet. You know, if you're out hunting and you have an accident like that, fall out of a tree stand or you accidentally have a gunshot wound, something like that, you know, that tourniquet could save your life until somebody can get there to render first aid. So we do all of that, you know, in the community. So the Stop the Bleed has been a big thing just with active shooter scares across the country. So we do a lot of education in the schools for the teachers. We do a lot of Stop the Bleed for businesses and we even do it for local motorcycle-

- Groups.

- Groups, because they're riding and they may come up on a bad accident or they themselves may have an accident. So we do a lot of education with a bunch of different groups. There's a wide variety of that too.

- Yeah, that's super cool that you're out there doing that. Definitely needed, but it's, I think it's something you don't really think about until it happens to you, right? Especially I would think with the golf cart accidents and stuff, you tend to get relaxed and laxadative, I guess, with your safety protocols.

- Definitely.

- So.

- Everybody wants to have a good time, but you can do it safely.

- Yeah.

- Yes.

- Oh, yeah. Is there a specific case that maybe sticks out in your mind that you felt like, you know, SGMC Health's EMS had a great response that really resulted in a positive outcome, where it could have been a negative outcome if the response wasn't so great? So I'm putting you on the spot.

- I think we have a lot of those. I mean, honestly, you know, it would be difficult to pinpoint every single one of those from an EMS perspective. I think that we look really hard at our response times, but we also look really hard at our times on scene. So we're really pushing that, and I think that's something maybe that causes a little confusion in the public sometimes, because they think when we get there we should do all the work on their family member or on them there. But the truth is, is that we need to get you to an emergency room to a hospital, where we can do all of the things. And so expedited transport, you know, for most chief complaints or illnesses is really important. You know, we have, and I think our trauma survivor story from last year in our annual report, you know, I think that probably that will be my favorite one in my entire career. But just the response, it really showed how the whole team works. And so, you know, EMS getting to a very difficult area to get this guy that was pinned under a UTV to bring him in and for everybody to be there and do what they're doing. But he was hurt so bad, and so everybody just, you know, so young, and everybody thought, "Well, his career as a firefighter's over." And I still see him and his mom, and he's at a fire department now, and probably in better shape than he is ever been in his life. So he-

- That's awesome. He's... That's a huge success story for us, but not just for us, but for him. And, you know, he uses that incident as a testimony when he teaches and sees a lot of people. And so that's really a blessing in this job is to be able to follow somebody from the very beginning to even now, after they're fully recovered is, you know, for them to allow you to have a part in that is in us.

- So it's kinda one of the unique things with your position, because you get to follow the patient throughout all the way to recovery and home. Whereas a lot of times, emergency room worker or EMS, you know, they'll stabilize the patient, get them to whatever, but then they don't get to see what happens on the outcomes. I think that's really cool. Obviously, that this job could be very emotional, right? Traumatic on our staff employees. Like, what do y'all do to keep mental health wellness forefront? Because I'm sure that some of this stuff is, yeah, I mean, it's tough. It's tough work.

- It can wear on you. It takes a special person to be able to do it and to kinda have that mindset. But I think everybody, at some point in time, just kinda sits back and wonders, "How much more of it I can see and how much more I can take?" So we do try to put an emphasis on when we run, you know, very stressful calls, things that didn't have a good outcome that we know would take a toll on our staff. We have a good critical incident, management team is what it is. System is what it is, and it's really kind of run through our emergency operations, emergency management, Ashley Tye, through the county and they will call our group together and they will send, you know, peer counselors over and have different meetings with 'em. So I think that helps, just sometimes sitting down after it's over with and doing a lot of talking about it. I think that people carry around a little bit of guilt, because it didn't go the way you wanted it to, but it's typically nobody's fault. You know, it's just how the, how it rolls and, but talking about it is a good thing. We also have the dogs. We have Doodle.

- Yes, tell us about Doodle.

- We have Doodle, the therapy dog. If nothing else, he's goofy enough that he makes everybody smile just a little bit. So we have him, that we keep over at our EMS station most days and he goes to events with us in classes, and he's two, so he's been doing this since, you know, when I first got him. And then our assistant chief also has a therapy dog that just completed the therapy dog training this week, actually, Barkley. And so he'll test for his therapy dog certification next week, I think. And then we'll be able to utilize him in our program and then he just got a new baby that we hope will be our third edition and final edition, I hope.

- Daisy, we got to meet her. She's so wweet.

- Daisy, the puppy. So she also is at the station every day 'cause her's too little to stay home by herself. And so-

- Yeah.

- She-

- She's too sweet. She needs someone to hold her.

- Yes, she does. So everybody, you know, even when there's not a bad call just during the day, you know, everybody stops by the station to see the dogs and sat there.

- And we specifically request them to come see us.

- Yes, you can. I mean, if dogs could talk, we would have Doodle on this podcast right now.

- For sure, for sure.

- Well, I would like to say just personally thank you to you and your team and I would encourage anyone listening to take a moment if they can today and thank a first responder. It's definitely a tough, difficult job, but where would we be without our first responders? Certainly critical to keeping our communities healthy and safe. So I just wanna personally say that.

- Definitely. I mean, I've needed EMS services in the past and my family members have, and, you know, anytime you pick up the phone and you dial 911, you're just always so grateful when somebody shows up.

- Yes.

- Even though, you know, it's a terrible time and I just, I can't imagine how you guys deal with, showing up for the worst days, and then still do it over and over again. And I just wonder, I mean, did you want to go into this kind of EMS?

- Yeah, what kinda led you into this?

- What made you wanna do this?

- So I had no intention. I had never thought about being a nurse when I started nursing school. But I started when I was almost 19 at the hospital that is in my hometown. And I started as a registration clerk and then, well, I started as a secretary for the director of nurses because I could type really fast. And then I got promoted to a registration clerk. And so, she, the director of nurses sat down back there at the registration test one day and she said, "I just," and I didn't know what I wanted to do, I was just working, and she said, "Darton College just left my office and they've got a scholarship program where you can go be an RN in nine months, instead of the 18 that it typically takes." She said, "And I think you could do it." And I was like, "Okay, I'll try it." And I did, and so I was a nurse in nine months and then-

- I love it.

- I went to work there at that hospital, because they sent me to school. So I went there to work at that hospital and it was a super small hospital, 25 bed, critical access hospital. And so I worked on the floor, because back then you had to work on a med surg floor for like a year or two before you could work in the ER. But they would let me hang out in the ER and learn some stuff and watch them. And so the first bad trauma that came in there, which we get about one a year over there in the little Miller County, but the first bad one I ever saw, I was like, "This is what I'll do."

- Wow.

- So, and that's what I do.

- So you're an adrenaline junkie.

- I am, so. And still even now, 20 some odd years later.

- Yeah.

- So, that's how.

- Well, we're grateful. We need people like you.

- I can't imagine. I faint at the sight of blood. So I can't imagine being a nurse at all. Well, I think we've gone over a lot of things. You gave us some great tips, and I mean, is there any other, like, words of, you know, aspiration, that's not the right word. Any other tips you can give us on how to prevent trauma or safety? Anything that, as someone who sees us every day, you say, "I wish I could have told this person this." Anything like that to leave us with?

- You know, I think everybody just knows. I think you get complacent, it's something that you've done. Looks like driving a car, you know, you do it every day, but unless you're really paying attention to, you're probably a good driver, but you gotta be watching out for the other guy. And so just being vigilant about that, and making sure that you're safe and doing all the fun stuff sober. That's a good idea, I always do that sober.

- Yes.

- So we just went through the holidays and thankfully, it was not super busy, but with the summer coming up and all the summertime traffic, it's just important to remember all that.

- Yeah, and so I actually had the pleasure of sharing a nice review that had come through to the emergency department, because on New Year's Eve, someone, their child had been attacked, a dog had attacked their child, and they came to the ER and they were just raving about the response of everyone there and just, I mean, just, they just were going on and on and on. So I was privileged to share that with the team, but there's always something happening in the ER that no one really thinks about, so.

- That's right. Accidents happen, so you just have to be paying attention and be prepared, but you can't prevent all of it, so.

- Well, on a lighter note, we asked this on our other episodes, so we'll continue the trend. What is your favorite thing to eat in the SGMC Health cafeteria?

- In the cafeteria?

- Oh, where the all spice?

- Where all spice, which is our cafe.

- Whichever one you eat at.

- So a buffalo chicken wrap is my favorite thing to eat.

- We've got two for two.

- That's my favorite thing.

- That's pretty good.

- Yeah. Or a Chicken Philly.

- Oh, the Chicken Phillies.

- Without the peppers.

- The Philly cheese steak and the Chicken Phillies are underrated, because they're not listed on the menu. So you have to know them.

- I know, you have to ask for them.

- Before you get those, so.

- Yeah.

- VIP.

- You have to ask for them.

- Like one of those hidden menu items, you know?

- Mm-hmm, yep.

- I haven't tried one, I have to try it.

- Yeah.

- I know curly fries are a fan fave.

- Fried chicken.

- Yeah, that. I always get a grilled chicken sandwich in the spice.

- Those are good.

- Yeah.

- You just gotta branch out a little bit. Yeah, I'm not very adventurous. Which is another reason I would not make a good EMS personnel. I don't like blood. I'm not adventurous. I think that I would just be like, "Okay, guys, you got it."

- How does, like, get, before we wrap it up, just, for anyone that may be interested in becoming, you know, a player in that field, whether it's a medic or a nurse in the ER, how do they go about deciding if that or what are would be like the schooling, the pathway, I guess to become?

- So I think both high schools have a healthcare pathway, like once you get into high school that you can choose. And we are planning to do some work with them this year, now that the new year started back and they've gone back to school, where we'll be able to go out and talk to them about the, about EMS as a career choice and also fire, as a career choice. And sometimes the two of those kinda go hand in hand. Our fire departments have all EMS licensed personnel, so if it's something you're interested in from the fire side, you know, you still get the EMS exposure to it. But EMS too, and, you know, you can do both. So we plan to go and talk to them at the high school about that. But we also have an in-house cadet program where we take anyone that applies and if you're hired on, you can go, and probably 10 or 12 weeks be an EMT basic, which starts out in our non-emergency transport area of our agency. But also there's some 911 opportunity for that too. So we're happy for anybody to come by the station and take a look around and talk to any of our medics and we go to a lot of events, school events, where the ambulance is there and we answer questions and things like that. So we're happy to, if anybody's interested in that, we surely wanna talk to 'em.

- That's good to know.

- Cool.

- So you do not need to go to nursing school to be an EMT?

- Nope.

- Okay.

- Nope, you can start as a EMT basic. There's really an EMR, but we hire 'em in as, we put 'em through an EMT basic class, and then you can work your way up to an EMT advanced or you can go straight to a paramedic. And so I would say that a paramedic is pretty comparable to a RN in, you know, in their prospective fields.

- Cool.

- Okay, so you heard it here guys. Hit up Emily Brown about becoming an EMT 'cause she needs you guys.

- Yes, I do.

- Thank you, Emily, so much for joining us today.

- Thank you.

- On our episode. And we encourage everybody to share your ideas or questions of anything you wanna learn about within the healthcare field. We're definitely a open book, and hope to be your partner in healthcare. So please feel free to share that with us. And then also be sure to like and subscribe to our channel, so that you don't miss any upcoming episodes. Again, thank you, and we'll talk to you soon.