Preparing For The Worst To Be The Best

Emergency responders go into each day, never knowing what to expect.
 
Emergency responders can never predict their day but they can spend time preparing.

As horrific mass shootings continue to occur across the country, the fourth annual Topics in EMS conference helps to make sure our responders are ready, whatever comes our way.
 
December 2nd 2015 was a day filled with grief, terror and shock, a day that put our country in fear.

But as the days and months rolled by people begin to move on.
 
“America has a very short term memory, and we tend to forget these horrific events,” says San Bernardino Police Officer Mike Madden.
 
For Officer Madden, it’s a day he’ll never forget.

He was the first officer to arrive on scene of the active shooter at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California.
 
“It’s a very sobering reminder of what can take place but you have to stay focused, you have to do your job,” says Madden.
 
And that’s exactly the reason for making the trip from sunny California to Fergus Falls, Minnesota, reminding his fellow responders that exact message.

“We hope it never happens in our communities some of these horrific events that we hear about on the news but we know that they’re going to happen again somewhere, someplace and when that happens we want to be prepared,” says CEO of Stevens County EMS Randy Fischer.
 
“The message I brought them today I got through and I know I did because I had people talking,” says Traveling Educator Bob Page.
 
Page spends his days traveling to similar conferences, sharing some life-saving advice.
 
“They’re going to take the information they learned today and they’re going to apply it to the field tonight,” says Page.
 
Even something as simple as putting wires on a patient where you never put them before.
 
“Statistically we can find 23 to 86 percent more heart attacks that would ordinarily have a normal EKG on the patient,” says Page.
 
Information they’re learning today, applying in field tonight.
 
This is the fourth year for the conference and it’s been attracting people across the upper Midwest. Organizers say they expect the event to continue to grow.