Many of you may not know this, but this past week was National EMS Week.  This year celebrates the 50th anniversary of the origins of the modern EMS system. 

This week, I realized that I had never given my readers any origin story after opening Small Town Digital. That’s not to say that I think people are just waiting on the edge of their seats to hear all about me, but it’s therapeutic for me to write it out, so that leads us here.

I began my EMS career in 2009 after serving several years on my local volunteer fire department.  My experiences with the members of my department and county EMS agency ignited a desire to further serve my community by expanding my training to become an EMT.

I enrolled in an EMT-Basic course at Lenoir Community College and went through the program. I was hooked.

I was hired in 2009 at Lenoir County Emergency Services and from the first shift I worked, I loved it. I continued my EMS education and eventually became a Paramedic (the highest level of prehospital care). I had also begun teaching in the LCC program as well, and I found that I loved teaching almost as much as being in the field. In 2016, I left the field for the classroom.

I found myself missing being in the field, but at the same time, I left because my mental health couldn’t take any more of the sights, sounds, smells, and horrors that are seen by EMS personnel daily. I’m not ashamed to admit that is what led me out of EMS and into the classroom in the first place; I just needed time for my mind to heal and process what it had experienced. It wasn’t so much that I was overthinking, or continuously reliving traumatic experiences, , but that I had become completely numb and without compassion. I couldn’t allow that to overcome my personality and find myself stone-faced with a 1,000-yard stare for the rest of my life. Unfortunately, nobody tells you the classroom has as many stresses and mental challenges as operating in the field.

After a few years in the classroom, I was bored and stressed; a weird and awful combination. I’m not going to lie about it at all. The challenges and stresses that came along with EMS program coordination just weren’t for me. I started looking into other options, but I wasn’t really qualified for anything but EMS, it’s all I had ever done.

The desire to explore opportunities beyond EMS led me to learn a new skill set. I went back to school at night over the next couple of years and earned my bachelor’s in business administration. After that, I started self-teaching sales and marketing skills, watching YouTube videos, and getting my hands on anything I could to learn a new set of skills. I asked my program director if I could manage the program’s social media and he generously obliged (I also think at the time he was somewhat relieved to hand it over).

I was hooked again and for the first time since operating in the field, I felt that type of excitement that only comes when you’re getting good at something you enjoy. I left the college system, which was a very hard decision because it was a state job with great benefits. I took on a few sales and marketing jobs after that and was eventually a VP for a private EMS Education company based in NC. I loved that job, but not everything lasts forever. Due to restructuring with that same company, I was likely to be out of a job soon (at least temporarily) so I had to pivot quickly.

During all this, I also became licensed as a Real Estate agent. It was the most challenging thing I had done besides Paramedic Academy. I started to market myself as an agent and found that I really enjoyed that as well. Of course, the housing market isn’t the most stable thing in the world as a new real estate agent, so I decided one evening I was going to take everything I had learned and practiced in marketing and put it to work.

I created Small Town Digital, which is named after the road my wife, daughter, and I live on in Jones County, NC. Small Town is an overstatement, trust me. We are about 30 minutes away from everything, but we love it here and we live very close to my wife’s parents and her family. It is perfect for remote work, which is a huge part of my business. The way that I have my marketing agency set up, I can work from anywhere and if I happen to not be available for some reason, I will always give my clients a heads-up.

Small Town Digital grew rapidly, and now I am at the cusp of either maintaining what I have or scaling. Hard work and tough decisions lie ahead, but I am confident that I can handle the tasks at hand. After being a Paramedic and encountering real life-and-death scenarios, this doesn’t seem so daunting.

My journey led me from being a field Medic who needed to clear his head for a while to being a real estate agent and CEO of a small business. The point? The point is, if you’re not happy where you’re at, there are options. Small business ownership is not for the lazy or faint of heart. Unless you want calls at all hours from clients who are always needing something from you, it may not be for you. I knew in advance what I was signing up for. But, come to think of it, wasn’t I already trained and prepared to answer calls for service at all hours, taking care of others and providing solutions to their problems?

Afterword

This article was written as an origin story, but also to draw attention to EMS Week and the prevalence of PTSD in Emergency Services personnel. This is not meant to draw attention to me or my mental health, but to highlight the fact that emergency responders are at higher risk for post-traumatic stress. From a research study by NIH:

“Paramedics have a pooled prevalence of PTSD that is considerably higher than rates of unexposed general population and populations affected by human-made disasters. Chronic exposure to low-threshold traumatic events during daily routine work is a risk factor for developing PTSD. Strategies to ensure long working lifetime are strongly needed.” (Hoell, et.al)

If you know someone in EMS, reach out and wish them a Happy EMS Week and thank them for what they do. Way more work needs to be done to ensure that EMS professionals maintain their mental health and establish healthy coping mechanisms. Unfortunately, that work may never be fully complete due to the nature of the job. My hope in writing this is simply that awareness is raised just a little bit.

Source:

Hoell A, Kourmpeli E, Dressing H. Work-related posttraumatic stress disorder in paramedics in comparison to data from the general population of working age. A systematic review and meta-analysis. Front Public Health. 2023 Mar 9;11:1151248. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1151248. PMID: 36969652; PMCID: PMC10035789.