EMS One Call At A Time

Description

Every EMT writes reports on everyone else. This is the one you write on yourself.

EMS: One Call at a Time is a guided EMS journal book for EMTs, paramedics, and first responders.

You get a badge, a schedule, and a truck. What nobody hands you is somewhere to put the first arrest, the first one you got back, the first time the scene was bigger than the crew. So it goes where everything else goes — nowhere — until one day the name is gone and it bothers you more than it should.

EMS: One Call at a Time is a guided journal for the people who answer the tones. Sixty-some prompts across seven chapters, arranged in the order a career actually happens: why you got in, your first shift, your first partner, the day the patch came. First cardiac arrest. First ROSC. First delivery. The hard one nobody prepared you for. The bad wreck, the regular, the lift assist, the dog that was definitely not friendly. Getting puked on. The Q word. Every meal the tones interrupted. The call that followed you home, the one you couldn’t save, and the save that made the whole thing worth it.

Then it keeps going, because a career does. There’s a timeline in the front you date as you go, from EMS class to last shift. Blackout bingo for a career’s worth of nonsense, and a bucket list of the calls you still want — plus the ones you hope never come. Chapter seven is written for the last tone: hanging it up, what you’d tell rookie you, and the one you’ll carry out. Three spreads in the back are left blank for family, partners, and crew to sign.

Each prompt works the same way: the left page asks, with a few short fields and a question. The right page is ruled and yours. No dates to keep up with, nothing to fall behind on, no wrong answers. Heavy 70lb paper that takes a pen.

It isn’t a textbook and nobody’s testing you. It isn’t a scrapbook with slots to fill in. It’s a place for the stories nobody at home has heard, and something to hand to the next one coming up.

A gift that says it without making them say it. For the new EMT pinning the patch, the twenty-year medic who’s never written any of it down, and the one working their last shift. If you’re buying it for someone else, sign the pages in the back first — most people do.

Written by Jason Fouks, EMT-B, of Born Force Training. A portion of every copy funds AED grants and CPR training for communities through Bond’s Path, Inc. — because somebody’s first arrest is somebody else’s worst day.