#116 – What Mouth-to-Mouth Resuscitation has to do with Systems Thinking
From Anesthesia Guidebook by Jon Lowrance
March 22, 2025 · 24 min
About this episode
The episode discusses the author's first day as an EMT and connects mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to systems thinking.
On the corner of Skyland Drive and 23 in a little town called Sylva in Western North Carolina, sit’s PJ’s gas station. One hot summer day back in 2005, I was filling up the tank in a convalescent transport van on my very first day as an EMT-Basic. That’s the most basic, entry-level certification of working as an Emergency Medical Technician or EMT. My convalescent transport van had a wheelchair ramp and my role as an EMT-B was not to do 911 calls, but to drive this glorified shuttle bus. My role was to transport people to and from their doctor’s appointments. Maybe to help them get home after being discharged from the hospital. If you were too sick for a taxi but not quite sick enough for an ambulance, I was your guy. The guy training me that day, a senior paramedic, was actually a good friend of mine and happened to also be my boss at a local outdoor education company. Everyone affectionally called him “the Padj,” a shortened third-person version of his last name, Padgett . The Padj ran Landmark Learning , which offers wilderness medicine educational courses for outdoor guides and enthusiasts and eventually became the Southeast training center…
People in this episode
Host: Jon Lowrance
Topics covered
- Emergency Medical Technician
- Mouth-to-Mouth Resuscitation
- Systems Thinking
- Wilderness Medicine
- Convalescent Transport
Keywords
- EMT
- resuscitation
- systems thinking
- wilderness medicine
- transport van
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Landmark Learning, NOLS Wilderness Medicine
Places: Sylva, Western North Carolina
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