Critical Care Crossroads

Ep. 1: From Humble Beginnings

• Critical Care Crossroads • Season 1 • Episode 1

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Meet Carson, Jaden and Nicole on their first ever podcast together! We're glad you're here! Listener discretion is advised.

Follow @critcarecrossroads on Instagram for updates about the show and more content from the crew!

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Critical Care Crossroads, where we talk all things EMS, critical care, and the wild world of free hospital medicine. I'm Carson. I'm Jaden.

SPEAKER_02:

And I'm Nicole.

SPEAKER_01:

Quick reminder, the views and the opinions you hear on this podcast are ours and our guests' alone. We do not represent our employers, the agencies we work for, or any organizations with which we're affiliated.

SPEAKER_02:

This show is for educational, commentary, and entertainment purposes only, and is not a replacement for your organization's protocols or guidance.

SPEAKER_00:

Stories involving real patient encounters may have been de-identified or altered to protect patient privacy. Due to the nature of this podcast, listener discretion is advised.

SPEAKER_02:

So buckle up, join the ride, and let's navigate the crossroads between street medicine and critical care together. Hey, everyone. Welcome to Critical Care Crossroads. This is your go-to podcast where EMS, flight, and frontline stories intersect. This is our first podcast, so bear with us. It may be slightly bumpy. No pun intended on that. I have Jaden and Carson, like we talked about in the disclaimer. This is kind of your podcast to listen to on your way to work or on your way home. Stay awake. Hopefully, we keep you awake. We are very honest and we may stir the pot a little bit with each other. And we've got three different people, three perspectives, and it's going to be plenty of unfiltered conversations. So hope you guys.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Like she's like, she's talking about we have an in the room here on the virtual room here with us, a flight paramedic has done fire and EMS. That's Nicole. We've got an ER nurse. It's also done combat medicine as Jaden. And I've done a little bit of cardiac ICU ER and some combat medicine myself. So we're excited for this podcast. We kind of want to delve into the education side, the lifestyle side, maybe just some general commentary. But the big thing we want to drive home with this is that we want to be available for all life at your level. So anyone that's in EMT school or day one of whatever they're doing all the way up to paramedic level, nurse level, physician level, we want to be welcoming to everybody. Sound good? No. So I figure there's going to be a lot of awkward pauses if we kind of figure this out. So bear with us. I figure what we could all do is kind of tell our origin story and kind of what we got what got us into this career in the first place and how we went from nobody knowing nothing about EMS whatsoever or healthcare and into what we are now. So maybe we can start with Jaden.

SPEAKER_01:

Hi, guys. Again, I'm Jaden. As you guys saw from our Instagram posts that we kind of made, just giving a kind of little snippets of who we are and what we already kind of do. As Carson said, I've been in EMS and in the military for the last four or five years. And I'm recently a new grad nurse. I've been a nurse now for a year in ER. So as Carson said, we have different perspectives and I can get perspective of new grad nurses and some of those lower licensures to start with and just having that journey from there. But I started getting into medicine when I was younger because I've always enjoyed understanding the body and how it works. It was always something interesting for me, how my friends loved mechanics and being able to understand how to fix a car. I preferred a human being. just being able to see the disease processes and understanding on medicines and different medications and what we can do as providers or EMS can do in the field or nurses and physicians in the ER or ICUs, just being able to see their process and how they work through being able to diagnose and be able to take care of their patients was something that just really interested me. So I started out as a emergency medical responder, which was the lowest tier license that I could get. I transitioned to a CNA for a few years. And then I joined the Army National Guard, went down to San Houston and got my 68 whiskey certification as well as my EMT license. That was back in 2019. Holy shit, that was a long time ago. That's where I became a medic, at least in the guard side as well as the EMT and civilian side. I've been that for the last four years while I was in college to get my BSNR in. And here I am. So that's pretty quick, easy what it is and how

SPEAKER_00:

I got into it. What do you think is your why? Why ER medicine? Why ER nursing? And I suppose any other type of healthcare?

SPEAKER_01:

I think it's just really interesting to challenge yourself with these. You have no history of this person other than maybe a previous note of them visiting, whether that's an EMS. I know from you guys also, just showing up to a house and just kind of working with whatever you have. MacGyver Medicine's always been like one of my favorite things of just kind of making up the process as you go. It can be really exciting and really just insightful, just being able to understand things, a little bit of everything all at once and just trying to piece a puzzle together, whether that's on scene, whether that's the patient being brought into the ER and starting from step one, getting their labs and kind of seeing what happened and going through the whole process. and being able to kind of either A, wrap it up in a bow for an admission or B, able to kind of get them to point B of like, hey, is this gonna be a discharge? So the why is just being able to take care of people that I've never met before and being able to just work those puzzles together. It's just been something very interesting to me.

SPEAKER_00:

That's awesome, man. you're pretty fresh out of school still in your first year of ER nursing and everything else too. What do you think transitioning from that? There's usually someone else like a paramedic or a nurse I can grab to, to being that guy. Now, what's the biggest struggle with that that you've faced? Uh, something that's

SPEAKER_01:

was struggling was as much as it was when I was younger of trying to like, Oh, I don't know what to do next. I should probably just ask my paramedic or nurse. It's the same way as a nurse.

UNKNOWN:

Um,

SPEAKER_01:

When a person comes up to me and says, hey, what do you want to do next? Or what do you think we should look for? Whether that's another tech or an EMT or even me thinking through the process, well, I need to go talk to a doctor. It's still kind of terrifying just knowing that you have that new knowledge base, but also just understanding that there's a lot more tools that are available to you, whether that's your nursing process, whether that's the ability to start IVs or be able to kind of make an intervention throughout your standing orders or whatnot. So the biggest thing was me just trying to get used to being that person that can be a resource to others, but also still understanding and having the humility to know that I do not know everything still. And being a new grad nurse, especially in the ER, you have to know a little bit of everything. So it can be definitely scary, but there's so many resources available in the ER. You can reach out to your pod mates or you can reach out to a physician or you can just text somebody and say, hey, I don't know what to do next.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. No, the reality is too, that imposter syndrome doesn't ever completely go away, but as you get more successes to focus on throughout your career, there are really, it's a good way to mitigate that. So you can kind of, you know, internalize and recognize the fact, Hey, this imposter syndrome is showing up, but I, I've been able to have successes to build upon for this before. And, uh, I do deserve to be here. So that's kind of the best advice I can give to someone in that situation. I've reached

SPEAKER_01:

out to you plenty of times, Carson, during, uh, nursing school and, during my first year of just like, man, I don't know. Sure,

SPEAKER_00:

I'll keep rolling with this or whatever it is. And unfortunately, I can't always say the advice I give is the best, but it's there. It's there to be had. Jayden's one of my best friends, too. We met in the Army along with Nicole here, and that's kind of why I'm excited to get the three of us together in the same virtual space, at least, and hopefully in the same physical rooms as well. Nicole's story is probably the most profound among both of us, so I don't want to snub her, but I kind of want to save hers for the end. So I think I'll go ahead and move on to mine, if that's all right.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Cool. Yeah. So growing up in middle school and high school, I was the superintendent and the principal's kid. And that comes with a lot of really good things. But the bad thing that comes with is you don't really fit in anywhere. You can be really good at school, but like, you know, you can be good at sports, can be good at whatever. And you don't but you don't really have that thing because you don't want to get too close to anybody navigating the politics of a small town school. But when I was a teenager, I I wanted a car. In order to have a car, I needed a job. And so the job that I found was lifeguarding at a water park. And one thing people don't know about me is I'm not very physically coordinated. And I had a really, really minor disability being physically coordinated with my growth and my development. And part of that comes with the fact that I couldn't play sports very well. I couldn't do all those things. And so whenever I got offered a lifeguard job, it was just kind of surprising. I'd put in to become like a mower. But I actually took to it really, really well. And so as the years went by in high school, lifeguarding, I made all these friends here and I became good at CPR and I, you know, teaching CPR to other people in first aid, had some real saves at the water park there. And so what that grew into was me finding this thing that I associated with tight friendships for the first time and with being in the quote unquote in crowd. And then it came time for me to pick a career and just kind of experimenting. I knew I had to go off to college is what my parents wanted me to do. And I found nursing. I was a little scared off by med school. And nursing, it was a cool thing. And I just knew nothing about it. I didn't have any mentors in my life. And I didn't have anybody that really knew what it was and where the role fit. I just thought there were these orderlies passing out meds. Turns out there was a lot more to it than that. So throughout that time, I ended up moving back home away from the university. And in that time I took an EMT class and that's kind of where I found this niche. And I'm like, I want to make EMS work, but I also want to make nursing work. And then I figured out what flight nursing was and kind of set my sights on that from there on. So I began volunteering at the fire department and I began working in the ICU as a tech and then eventually got my first ER nurse job. With that, I was an ER nurse for about a year. Started as a new graduate when COVID hit. That's a whole nother time for a whole nother episode. Moved on to cardiac ICU and then got my first flight job, which is where I met My old partner, Nicole.

SPEAKER_03:

Hi.

SPEAKER_00:

Hi.

SPEAKER_03:

Hi.

SPEAKER_00:

Hi. When it's worth, you're a great lifeguard. Oh, thank you. I appreciate it. That's from humble beginnings, right?

SPEAKER_03:

How

SPEAKER_00:

are you on the spot? 100%. Yeah. But no, that's pretty much me. There's not a whole lot to it. There's nothing profound. I'm still kind of making it up as I go. It just kind of happened to be the one thing that I fell into. And I've been making it right for about the last decade.

SPEAKER_01:

So I met Carson firstly through the military. He joined our unit and I watched his bright eyes walk through the door for our unit. And I was like, who the heck is this guy? And from there just fell into a really good relationship with him. But Carson, how would you say that the military has really shaped your perspective on medicine and at least kind of an understanding of how it transfers over to ems and civilian side but also having that piece on the military side

SPEAKER_00:

yeah i guess i left that part out i just randomly joined the military after nursing school there was no good rhyme or reason other than like the call to serve and the benefits that come with it but um it really instilled a good amount of discipline um it the the bonds you make in the military are really in first responder in general but you know the military tenfold are the ones that you really really get drawn to um they're people that sign up to literally kill and die for each other so Learning that discipline element and how strong those bonds get formed has really, really started to thrive in the military. And on top of that, just the combat medicine they teach at 68 Whiskey Combat Medical School is absolutely incredible and top-notch. So that was pretty inspiring as well. Also, turns out I did not do my research and we're using the free version of Zoom and we have about nine minutes. Let's move on to Nicole.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, well... I'm Nicole, like Carson said. I got into fire and EMS and eventually flight through kind of a shitty situation, but thankfully it had a good outcome. My son was four days old. I got him home from the hospital and I was holding him, just got done feeding him. And I looked down and realized that my son was blue. He was not breathing and he did not have a pulse. So I performed CPR on him at home. Thankfully, I got him back, and now he is very ornery, and he is growing like you would not believe. You wouldn't even realize that's what happened eight years ago. I realized that I never wanted to be in a situation where I didn't know what to do ever again, so I went to school to get my EMT license. I quickly realized that places don't necessarily want to hire you with just an EMT license, so I decided Got my paramedic license, and then I went to the fire academy. I got my fire one and two with my hazmat and all of that fun stuff that comes with it. I worked on the ground for several years, just rural. Got that experience. Went up to the city for a little bit. Didn't really enjoy it because I enjoy... taking care of my patients for 45 minutes to an hour and not just putting them in the ambulance and then shipping them off to the hospital within five minutes. It's just not fun for me. I like actually getting to see the outcome of how my treatments dictate the patient's outcome and if what I'm doing is actually working. I finally got enough experience to be able to fly. They want you to have three years minimum of being a paramedic to fly. go into flying. Um, so I finally gathered that and I've been flying now for about a year and a half. Uh, Carson was my old partner. Um, we now work for the same program, but we're not partners at the same base anymore. Um, Carson and I got into a lot of shit, um, on our calls and, we have had a lot of different, uh, patients that we could talk, I think for days about, um,

SPEAKER_00:

on the experiences we like to call them.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. I, uh, I've really honed in on training and like making sure that, you know, I'm never failing at something. And if I do fail at something because not everyone is perfect and I know that I am not perfect, I study my butt off to be better at something like airway skills. Like I'm always finding a way to go and practice innovations with the dummies and or mannequins, excuse me, the mannequins. And, you know, just making sure that that's, That's going to work out for me because I don't want to be in someone's airway and then be like, oh shit, what am I doing? I haven't studied for this. I don't know what's happening. So yeah, that's kind of everything in a nutshell. I was a base clinical lead at my last base. I'm an instructor in several different things. I've taught multiple EMT and paramedic programs. And I just completed actually an EMT program. So that's me.

SPEAKER_00:

That's awesome. I think it's incredible that, you know, a lot of people could really be scared away by that situation you talked about kind of earlier on in your intro and instead kind of taking the bulls by the horn and taking some sort of gripping or ownership. What's the psychology behind, you know, someone that goes through that experiences and wants to build off of it as opposed to. I don't want to use the term shy away from it, but what was really the driving factor you think psychologically? I

SPEAKER_02:

think that it scared me enough being in that situation of having probably a men or two, because I called 911 and they told me to start CPR. And I was so scared that I was like, I don't even know how to do CPR on a baby. This is a four-day-old. It's not a one or a five or a 10-year-old. This is a four-day-old. And I was terrified. I was terrified in that. Afterwards, it was like, man, I don't ever want to be scared because that might happen again. He had health issues for up to a year and a half, somewhere around there. It was terrifying. I was like, I don't want to go through this. I grabbed the bull by the horns and I Went to EMT programs because it made me feel a little bit more comfortable and knowing that if something happens, I, I know how to perform CPR. I know how to like, you know, do the Heimlich maneuver. I, I'm not, I'm not going to be the scared parent that sits there and watches my child, you know, not breathing or they don't have a pulse and I don't know what to do. I mean, it is terrifying. Don't get me wrong. Like we'll run patients now that are you know, very newborn and, or they're premature or something. And it, I mean, it'll stop you in your tracks. It'll make you scared for sure. But then you're like, okay, I have all this training in the back of my head. So I have these tools and my hands are what helps me figure out. And obviously going to school multiple years in a row and continue training that, that helps a lot because you can never stop learning. And I tell it to all of my EMT students and paramedic students that once you stop learning and studying and wanting to grow, you need to get out of the field because you're going to, you're going to stay stagnant. And I think just staying up on the skills helps a lot with that. And, um, yeah, kind of went off on a little tangent there, but,

SPEAKER_00:

uh,

SPEAKER_02:

all around to say that, um, having the knowledge and being able to say like, I did this, this, and this to help me where I'm not terrified in case something happens that, that is how that helps my brain kind of, wrap around how to like be okay and move on I mean like and I was pretty you know messed up like postpartum for a while but um like I was like okay well as soon as I get past this I'm gonna I'm gonna do this and I mean I was looking at an EMT program like very quickly after that so um just it scared me for sure but

SPEAKER_00:

yeah I think like how many people can say the first patient they saved was their own son or like anyone that they really like loved like that too

SPEAKER_02:

You know, my son will tell people that my mom has done CPR on me. And I'm like, okay, honey, please tell them that this is when you were younger and not now just for fun or something. Like, you know, you need to specify. Like, don't let people think that I'm doing this just for fun at home. But he will tell people that, you know, mom did CPR, mom saved me, which I think is really, really sweet. And, you know, he'll be like, mom. You know, you did do CPR on me. You did save me. And it's like, well, thank you. I hope you remember that for the rest of your life.

SPEAKER_01:

You're

SPEAKER_00:

just getting those CBLs in. Is it just getting the CBLs in?

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I think we only have about a minute and a half left here. So I don't mean to cut this off sooner than it needs to, but this has been a great conversation. And like I said, you guys are two of my best friends in the world. So I'm really, really looking forward to taking on this venture with you guys and seeing where it goes and what more we can talk about. I'm really excited.

SPEAKER_02:

And the listeners, if they've listened this far. I hope that you guys enjoy this podcast. We're still learning this. This is something we've wanted to do for a really long time. And we are definitely open to any ideas of what you guys want to hear and target that specifically. We'd like to release some videos about certain trainings and things like that. So whatever you guys have, just shoot it our way. Hope

SPEAKER_00:

you guys have a great day. Yeah. Hope you guys be safe out there too.