Eric Clauss, MSN, RN, EMT-P: EMS Leadership Workshop (1/26/24)

Welcome, Everybody. It is January 26th at 11am Another great Friday. Hope everyone had a great week. Now this is a Florida EMS webinar, AKA the Seagulls. And we bring really smart, passionate people to the show every week. And these are all going to be on YouTube. So if you don't, if you're not on our YouTube channel already, search YouTube for Florida NAEMSP and you'll. You'll find over about 150 speakers. And already we've had since the start of this thing. So we have a few more people coming in today. But today we have a very special speaker. Eric and I have known each other for, for quite some time. He was actually a speaker at First Air First Care. He's got an amazing story to tell. He's an amazing leader and he's up in Tennessee. And what, what he's doing now is something that I think that all of us need to at least hear about and maybe even try to incorporate in our own agencies is EMS leadership. And so, Eric, if you wouldn't mind making a quick introduction. And we have some people from your state on the call, which is amazing.

All right, awesome. Thanks, everybody. What an honor it is to be able to be sharing some information with you today over the next few minutes. I'm actually presenting to you today from Vanderbilt University Medical center in Nashville. And I have been part of the team, the EMS center of Excellence team at Vanderbilt, since 2015, and I joined Vanderbilt back in 2005. And yeah, it's just been an amazing opportunity to be able to learn from amazing people, not just here, but really kind of across our state. I wanted to kind of briefly share with you just a little bit of background on me and is my career started out as a volunteer firefighter in Howard County, Maryland, which is just outside of Baltimore. Kind of fell in love with the fire service and moved to Tennessee and then went to paramedic school, graduated that 1990 and worked in a county that is just adjacent to Nashville for about 11 years. After that journey, went to nursing school and then eventually went on to get my master's in nursing, specifically in leadership. So leadership has been really a passion of mine. I've been teaching leadership for probably about a dozen years, and it's just an awesome thing. And today what I wanted to talk to you all about for the next few minutes is really what we believe is a groundbreaking statewide EMS leadership initiative that we believe has the potential to really impact our field and really change the culture is really what we're trying to do. And just to kind of give you just a little bit of background about, you know, how we got here today, just really kind of assessing the needs that leadership is important is a few years ago, our state EMS director, Director Brandon Ward, gathered some key stakeholders and some young professionals.

In a room. And his mission was to be able to get some feedback about some of the challenges that these frontline providers were facing. And it was a fascinating meeting to be part of. And during this meeting, these individuals opened up and they actually signed a disclosure agreement or a confidential agreement. And so what was discussed, you know, really stayed there. We protected the individuals, but some of the feedback that was received was what you might expect, lack of pay.

Maybe lack of retirement. But this was the part that sort of raised everybody's eyebrows is there was a huge dissatisfier with the leadership realm and the people that they report to or our industry and the state in general. Specifically, some of the examples that we heard was my supervisor was promoted because they were a good medic, but they are a terrible leader. So that kind of, you know, got a lot of conversations going. Well, unfortunately, the pandemic hit and resulted in postponing this project. However, about a year ago, our state director, Director Ward, got together some additional key stakeholders and. And a vision was created and formulated which has now grown into a statewide partnership with the Tennessee EMS Education Association. We refer to them as timsa. And TIMHSA is a statewide organization that promotes education and leadership development across the state. This partnership has resulted, and why I'm here today, in the development of a comprehensive leadership workshop that will be available to every provider across the state. The second thing that we have been able to do is we've launched a monthly leadership podcast that we are about one year into that and then also a coaching call. I wanted to spend just a minute to talk about our leadership podcast. This is a little bit different from what we found is there's a lot of clinical podcasts that are out, but we did not want to touch that. We wanted to interview people that had a story of success. And I am honored to be able to share with you that Dr. Antebbie is actually going to be featured on the podcast with me. We're recording it next week and to share his story of success and what leadership looks like to him. And we hope that episode will be out probably spring at the latest. It's on Apple and Spotify. But in addition to those three things.

Under the advisement of Director Ward, the Tennessee State EMS Board has established a new subcommittee that's titled Leadership and Advancement Committee. And I feel that's just a demonstration of his commitment about this important initiative to really develop our young leaders, to see if we can make an impact and add value to those individuals. So I wanted to share with you just a couple of minutes about the leadership workshop. So we spent about six months developing this course, and it was pretty grueling. There was several of us, a handful of us, about five or six, that really were behind the content. And we spent several full days in a room with a whiteboard going through hundreds of slides, and all of these individuals had taught leadership. And we just kind of put all of our experiences together and, and then we developed a curriculum. So the time came that we were going to do a beta test and we got 40 of the most successful EMS leaders and directors from across our state in the room. So they arrived and it was a little bit surprising because when they got there, it was an intimidating group. You know, some of these individuals had up to four years experience, and we're going to teach them concepts on leadership which you, you, you.

It.

It's really a hard barrier to overcome. But what we asked them is, we said, listen, we know that your experience supersedes most people in the state, but we want to challenge you to let us present this course to you as we were doing it with young providers, and they agreed. And we went through it and some of them had gave us feedback, like some of the concepts and discussions that we were having, we'd never done before, and we wish we would have learned about this sooner. So we took that feedback and we adjusted the curriculum slightly. And then we did a second beta test group. And these were about 25 leaders across the state that were young, that were up and coming individuals. Some of them were supervisors new to the position. Some of them were just identified as people that had great potential. So we did that beta test group and the feedback that we've received from this group was really overwhelming and a little bit surprising. We heard feedback like, you know, especially from the beginning, the. The leader group was, you know, the information was useful, not just for leadership, but for everyday life. Well put together information and the exercises and discussions were helpful. However, the beta test number two with the individuals that were the providers, we learned about some challenges that we were not expecting. And some of the challenges that these individuals were facing were things that we take for granted as leaders. But we were getting comments like, how do you overcome fear? I'm dealing with imposter syndrome. What is it? How do I deal with it? How do I get through it. Understanding core values, understanding what healthy habits are, but simply understanding the concept of leading yourself. And most of this was identified because this is not a presentation that's set by PowerPoint. We're facilitating questions and what does a leader look like? And then we talk about that from their experiences. And it was pretty amazing to get that feedback. So where we are currently is the presentation is finalized and we are rolling it out at our yearly leadership conference in mid February in beautiful Gatlinburg, Tennessee. And we're doing a pre con and after that conference we are officially rolling out across the state and we are partnering with the directors associations across the state to be able to offer this workshop. And obviously TIMSA is a big part of that and many of us are, you know, that are volunteering our time to do this is just an incredible reward. And we've gotten some feedback, we got some people on the waiting list. People are already starting to talk about this and we're getting context about, hey, can you come and just teach an hour lecture on, you know, why leadership is important? And we've promoted that on the podcast as well. Just sort of helpfully changing the culture, knowing that this is not a one time thing. It's something that's going to be, that we're going to have to continue to work on for years to come. And I wanted to give a little bit of outline about the actual program. Just briefly, is the, the outline we. There are different modules. So Leadership Fundamentals module two would be talking about character, talking about problem solving. How is resilience fit into this? The levels of leadership? What about personal growth, how to communicate? What does self improvement look like? What is a leadership plan? And then we do an application exercise with a fun game activity. And then last but not least, we do a very robust Q and A.

Which is fascinating with just hearing the questions that are that are asked. We have developed a workbook specifically for this class. So as we go through each exercise, which is very interactive, they're able to record it and at the end of the program they're able to take that and refer to this workbook. You know, at any point in any journey, the plans are to have a leadership program that is going to be developed. There's going to be one program per year. This is the fundamental class that, that we have done. But we're already looking at what is 2025 class going to be. And then after that we're going to build additional content which will be standalone by the way. Something else that I'm really excited about is our participation with some leaders within the state. We have physician involvement and one of those individuals is Dr. Jarrett McKinney. He's really my partner in crime here at Vanderbilt and is on the EMS board as well. An EMS board certified physician was trained by Dr. Slovis, Corey Slovis, and all of you know his name. And so we're excited to get that because we understand that, you know, having those physicians which have so much influence that can help us at minimum with Q and A, and it just allows us to be able to promote and add value to these individuals. So, you know, with that we are prepared and, you know, ready to take this on the road and making final tweaks. And so that's just sort of an overview of the program and I am happy to take questions. I know Dr. Antebe, I believe, has a slide that has my contact information, and I know that's a brief overview, but I am happy to take any questions at this point. And Dr. Anteby, I'll turn it over to you and I'll let you take the reins. And I'm happy to do whatever we got to do at this point to answer questions.

Awesome. Eric, that was incredible. I would love to open it up. I'll make a couple comments. I'll put your slide up at the very end, if that's okay. I'm sure people would want to contact you. And we, quite frankly, I think it would be great if we could somehow get you back here to our yearly conference as well.

You know, I love this concept. What I love about the fire department, you know, at least in our area here, is that when you, when you come in there, you know, there is that stair step and you could see your future in front of you. The question is, how do you get, how do you get people to a recognize that they are a leadership quality once they are recognized, or that either they recognize themselves or, or people around them say, hey, that that person is just incredible, then you kind of get them through some sort of process, right? Whether it's officer development, etc. I'm wondering with the course that you have, and again, there's a lot of people on this call who have mentored me. And I can see Dr. Wayne Lee was the first person. Ken Shepke, Paul Pepe, Julie Downey, There are many people who have kind of shown me the way. How do you provide that person, that young leader, with mentorship.

Beyond the course? Right. That actually provides some kind of accountability, which I think is very important. I'm just curious, beyond that leadership course, what is your plan for beyond that to have some accountability and mentorship moving forward?

Yeah, that's a great question. And I think that's probably one of the obstacles. Right. It's not just a one and done so being able to change the culture of this, our coaching calls. I'll give you an example of what that is. We're starting this in March where it is going to be an opportunity for these individuals to call in the. Listen, we're doing them on a Friday morning from 7 to 7:30. But we believe it's, it's the small steps that we, we do on a consistent basis and the buy in of leadership with, you know, traveling around across the state doing the podcast. But it only takes a couple of individuals that, that are identified to reach down and say, listen, you have great leadership potential. We want you to, to be part of this project. So in my opinion that's what's happened is we're teaching in this class to say, guess what? You are a leader from the provider standpoint. Just think of the influence that you have to be able to influence a patient going to the hospital or not. So we just know it's going to take consistent activity and that's why we're excited because so many people are part of this.

Part of our mission as the subcommittee of the EMS board is to really look at this and, and to get people at the table that are behind this mission and the vision. So we believe, and we only had one meeting with that subcommittee, we have a lot of work to do, but we just know this is going to be in it for the long haul and develop this course in the curriculum.

Hold on.

I think, I think I had to mute that person. All right, awesome. That was an excellent answer. I appreciate that. I would love to hear. We have a lot of great people on this call and so if you have a question, raise your hand. But I'll have one more follow up which is at least in the last couple years that I've seen people who were, you know, basically doing their job and they're doing it very well, but they were kind of that diamond in the rough. Okay. And then the spark that I, that I seen with my own two eyes is basically that those folks were sent out to a conference. Right. I'm thinking of Chief Gonzalez and Chief Moran, went to the Seattle ra, came back, exploded it here and now we have Resuscitate Florida. I mean thanks to everyone at the state, Tommy Bernardo, ken Chepky, Steve McCoy, those two individuals literally went. They got activated. Charlie Coyle, he just came with me in namsp. And I mean, the guy's incredible just to, you know, just to begin with. But now he is like, we're on research calls now. It seems like every other day he's been activated. Right. What, what are your thoughts about having people. And again, that's what this whole webinar is for. It's a Florida nmsp. We want people to join. We want people to get involved. What are your thoughts about having people have some sort of activity external to the department on a regional or national or state or national level to then activate them? Just curious of your thoughts on that.

Now, I love that because it takes an army to do this. And the more people that are part of this, I think the better. Ultimately, what we want to do is to develop a train, the trainer type of program where we're actually identifying those young individuals that are, you know, going to outlast us because they're younger than us to be able to get them. So I think it's our responsibility as leaders to intentionally look for those individuals and lift them up and share with them that, hey, you have the potential to carry this on long after we're gone. But you're right, I love the idea. And that is certainly something that is going to be important for the continuation of this.

Awesome. And now I want to. I'm going to pick on some people because there's a lot of great people here who have set the stage, especially where I am in Broward and Palm beach county and who have successfully.

Positioned their area so that there was a succession plan, et cetera. So let me bring in Dr. Lee. Let me start with you, Wayne.

You've been a leader in so many different areas. You've led so many on the hospital side, the EMS side. I'd love to hear your take on this and some of your input.

Well, first of all, this is just a great topic. I just love this. And Eric, thank you so much and your team and Peter for bringing him on board. You know, it's interesting. Just day before yesterday, I had lunch with the exec of leadership, Broward, which is a program in Broward county that's been around. I think now we're on Class 42. And I was actually the first physician in the program, which was in.

I was in class six, now up to 40. And it's interesting because one of my criticisms that that program, and I even said this to him the other day, was, you know, it. We went out to all of the, you know, we went to the jails, we went to the schools, we went to the Arts and Culture day, et cetera day for a year. We had a commitment and. But we never talked about leaders. And it was so listening to you talk about the questions of leadership, overcome fear, the imposter syndrome and so on, so forth, I think really you've nailed it. But with that said, it's interesting to me because I think leadership goes beyond leadership and ems, you know, and there's leadership in the community, and I think we have some people on here that exemplify that. So I would. And in thinking about this, listening to you, I thought to myself, there's never been an EMS chief or a paramedic, to my knowledge, in the leadership Broward class, you know, and we're up to, I think they do 50 a year for now. How many years? 30 years. And so. But I do think it goes beyond the community. I mean, beyond ems. But I think you're starting at the right place. I welcome it. I can't wait to see it down here. Thank you so much, Eric.

Thank you so much.

Great, great comment, Wayne. Thank you so much. And Eric, I think that you ought to look at Wayne for your podcast because he's a wealth of knowledge. I'm going to bring in. Let's see. Dr. Paul Pepe. So, Paul, you have mentored many, many, many people. You. I think that if there's someone who can, who can detect talent and those people who don't even know that they're talented and rise them up. So you, in my opinion, epitomize that. Can you. Can you say a couple of words with respect to leadership and someone who's been in this for so long.

I.

Don'T know where to begin in some respects. But yeah, you're right. I had an eye for people finding people that were not talented. You're a good example of that.

True.

But I mean, well. But on that note, but be very blunt. Sometimes it's hard. Some people are not natural leaders, and there are some people who are natural leaders. And you'll see they are people who exude caring about others and caring about what those other people want or need or, you know, that kind of thing. And like, for example, when, you know, when I found it, nmsp, the reason I did it was because there is this need there when you got there. And I didn't think I was an expert, but I thought there were people out there who really needed help. So what it was is just being or what I would do on the streets to say, hey, medics, what do you need? And I think that was really important because a lot of what they felt was that they had what they called a lack of, you know, a lack of control there. I forgot what the. The psychologists call it. Right. But they just failed. Does anybody give a damn about us down here? So I think I could just summarize it real quick. Is that when you do a word association game about leadership, if you say, hey, what's right now, if I asked you do. Let's do word association. Son, daughter, sun, moon, you know, day, night. And then when I go to leadership, okay. Next thing you know, it goes all over the map, you know, in terms of that. But what it ultimately comes down to when people say someone who listens or somebody who always has good advice or whatever, it really kind of comes down to this common denominator of trust. And that takes time. So leadership takes time. And that's just. That's just a getting little, you know, nutshell. But I'd be very glad to help out, by the way, with your course in the future, be a speaker. But I hadn't really organized my thoughts about this too much, but those. That's my initial blur out there, I hope. Does that. Hope that helps or. Yeah, right.

Yeah.

Okay.

I love.

I love the word trust. I think it's it that takes time to build. It's easily destroyed, and you really have to work hard on it every single day to make it so that people really do trust you, especially in this field. So I. I think that's very important.

By the way, years ago, I wrote an article about what defines a successful medical director, for example. Right. And I had this one thing. But, you know, in the suggestion how you handled day to day stuff that comes up, right. It was like. Like with Ulysses, you know, it wasn't that he got back to Ithaca. It's how he handled all the stuff along the way that defined him as a hero. But. But also, then I learned that from when I had reactions from the medics, they'd say a successful medical director, they think in our mind is somebody that we feel like we could talk to, you know, we could. We can come to. So I'm just taking that analogy and extrapolating it and say that's what takes a good leader. Someone that they. You feel is approachable and will listen to you and care about you. That you could say, I care about you. And some people just go, yeah, right. Whereas it's. The true leaders are the people who. They go, that guy really cares about us. I may not like them for this, or I may not like. But they care about us, and that's. That's leadership.

Yeah. Awesome. So I'm going to bring in now Dr. Kramer. John, if you wouldn't mind coming in here. You're. You're someone who's. Who's basically done it all. You know, medical director. You want. You went to the state level. Now you're leading the charge.

On the commercial side, helping us.

Create a blood program nationally, if you will, and helping us that way. So from your perspective, the world, after hearing what Eric said, I would love to hear your insight with respect to leadership in ems.

Well, I think the program that you have outlined, and particularly the outreach to.

Everybody in the discipline, you know, you don't focus on supervisors, you don't focus on administrators. You're taking it out to the field clinicians, which I think is really important. I would only echo the comments that have been made earlier. I mean, trust is.

A critical component of it. Peter, you nailed it when you said that you can lose trust instantly and it takes forever to either build it initially or build it back.

You've got to be willing to communicate.

With folks, and you've got to be willing to listen to them and take the input that they receive. So I think this is a really cool initiative that you all need to really share.

Throughout the rest of the EMS community.

Your state EMS office should take it to the SAMSO and other state EMS offices and really spread it out.

I completely agree on that one. Let me bring in Joseph. Joseph, Zach. And you there. So, yeah, I'm here. Joseph, I know that's kind of. It's probably raining where you are, but you are also someone who has really taken the bull by the horns. You've done so many great things in your career, and then you said, you know, no, I'm not going to retire. I'm going to help other people. And you've helped many of us, including myself. Now, on the national level, you're a giver. You're the ultimate mention. So can you talk about leadership from your perspective and give us some advice before we turn it back over to Eric?

I think I love the program Tennessee's starting to do. I think that's great.

Leaders are developed, they're not born. And leadership is not just a title. It's, you know, a performance piece. Someone has to lead. Someone has to make decisions. In ems, I think we all have an intrinsic capability of doing something. A leader does something right for the good of all. In all my years, Gosh, that's hard to say. In all my years, I've seen a lot of different leadership styles. We don't come into the business knowing what to do, but I think we learn what not to do and try to develop, rip off and duplicate from others of what's successful. You know, when you're dealing with a multimillion dollar budget or a $10,000 budget and dealing with people, there's an interface there for what matters and how to achieve your goals. So much success. To Tennessee. Great to hear what's going on there. Thank you, Peter.

That's what you call threading the needle. And leaders have to do that, especially whether you're a medical director. If you're an EMS leader.

You have to kind of find the signal through all the noise that's around. And I think the good ones do that. So, Eric, I'm going to give you the last word. We're going to go to Dr. Pepe's webinar after this, but I have your information on the screen. Give us the last word. You have a lot of folks here who are in a leadership role, but you have some people on this call who are our future leaders. So what are your final comments to all of us? And again, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you. What an honor it is for me to be able to spend time with you. I took notes, as you could tell, and you know, I appreciate the insights, value, everything that you all shared and yeah, just totally honored. One of the, one of the ways that we end the podcast is we tried to share the message is the most important person that you're ever going to lead is you. And I believe it all starts with that. And once again, thank you so much and hope to get to travel there to visit with everybody.

Awesome. All right, thank you and thanks everyone. I'm going to put up in the chat right now the link to go over to Eagles Webinar. So if you're free, please join us. There's a link. I'll stick around for a little bit. Eric is always available and hope you reach out to him. And I'll. I'll stick around here for another couple minutes until everybody either ends or clicks on over to the next webinar. Thanks, everyone.