Fla. Medical Director Dr. Antevy anticipates the return of the EMS conference

Welcome back to another edition of Inside ems. I'm Rob Lawrence, and this week I'm sitting in for Chris Ceballero, who is doing that thing on the bottom of his description that says other duties as assigned. Last week, Kelly Grayson was away at a conference, but I'm delighted to say I hope he's back and on the other end of the line. Hello and come in. Kelly Grayson.

Good to hear from you, Rob. I think Chris's other duties as assigned right now probably involve a drink with an umbrella in it, but it's great to have someone with an understandable accent on Inside EMS for a change. Even your. Your British accent is much more tolerable than Chris's Joyce, New York accent. He still hasn't shed that after all the time in the South.

Accents are a funny thing. I did another podcast with Dr. Conrad Fibers. If you know him, I'm English, he's South African, and we were kind of fit. By the end, we were wondering who was going to understand a word we said, but we did it anyway. Now, today, of course, Kelly, we have a very special guest with us, and I'd like to bring in a person that's known to many people, a great influencer and a great example in our world, Dr. Peter Anteby, who's medical director for Coral Springs Parkland Fire Department, Davies Fire and Rescue, and Palm Beach county fire. Dr. Anteby, welcome.

Bob. Kelly. Great to be back on this show. I think I started my first podcast with Chris and Kelly back in the day. They've set the stage, and I'm always very honored to be a guest. Thank you so much.

It's great to have you here.

Pete, thank you for coming. Before we get into today's chat and today's subject, we just need to take a moment to pause and reflect. Somebody that has recently left us, and I'm talking about our good friend Ted Settler. Unfortunately, he passed this week quite rapidly, quite unexpectedly. And for those that don't know Ted, Ted was a paramedic, but also an epic filmmaker. And if you remember maybe 10, 12 years ago, he did some fantastic work with Justin Shaw. Seats at the table, you know, far ahead of his time in terms of the sort of social media stuff. Also worked with Justin and a UK paramedic, Mark Glencorse, on charting their journey together from both sides of the Atlantic. He also created Level Zero, which was a study of Alameda county up in the bay in Northern California. An epic filmmaker and an epic guy, and we are truly, truly sorry. We extend our condolence to Ted's family at this point. Did you guys know Ted very well?

Oh, yeah. Early on, you know, when EMS blogging, when it was in its heyday, I had probably one of the more, if not the most popular EMS blog out there.

And Ted was a friend and colleague of Justin Shore, the happy medic. And I first. You know, he was the one that first brought, you know, the video medium into EMS social media. And it was a powerful storytelling tool with A seat at the Table. I was a huge fan of A Seat at the Table.

Yes, me too.

And the Chronicles of ems, you know, and spreading our message and learning how EMS is done in other countries. You know, Ted was a great guy and a rabid Michigan Wolverines fan.

And it's just we're A little lesson today with his passing. People with that kind of vision and that kind of passion don't come around very often. And seems like the greatest lights tend to burn out the quickest.

Absolutely. You had a memory.

Yeah. I mean, Listen, I echo 100% of what you both said. And our deepest condolences to Ted's family. He was just an amazing man, a creative artist. I know him, thankfully, through Tom Boothelet. I went to the Hilton Head, to the South Carolina Recess Academy, and I just saw him at work, and I just saw what he produced. And he was able to bring something that, you know, then seems so mundane, which is doing cpr. He brought it to life. He made it impactful. He made it important. And I agree with you, Kelly. People like that should not be leaving this earth so early because he impacted so many people near and far. So he's in our prayers, he's in our thoughts, and all those who knew him well. Again, our deepest condolences and well said, Peter.

Well said. Moving on. It's been a week where we may have gone back to some sort of normality. And by saying that, I mean, Kelly, you've been out at a conference, and so give us a quick two minutes on that. How was the attendance? How were the sort of rules of social distancing? How did it go?

Yeah, it's the first time I have. I've had to put on pants to do an EMS talk in 15 months.

We went to the initial assessment for that.

We may cut that in the final edit, but we'll keep going.

We went to the initial assessment conference in Glens Falls, New York. They typically hold it in Lake Placid, but we held it in Glens Fall this year. IAC is a great conference, probably one of the better conferences I attend every year in terms of quality of speakers and the engagement of the attendees and how well the conference staff organizes and treats the speakers. And in this case they had a murderer's row of EMS luminaries. They had Dr. Antebbie talking about in the pediatrics track. We were so busy. I did a lecture in the pediatrics track in the day and never got a chance to meet up with Peter during the session. But we had, you know, we had Jeff Jarvis and Pete Antebbie and Rom Duckworth and a number of. And some blowhard from Louisiana all doing this thing. And the way they worked, this was great. They did their usual spiel, but to overcome the social distancing obstacles and the stuff. Because New York State is still not fully open, ironically, they're going to open up fully, like two weeks after the conference ended. But they rented an entire hotel. The entire hotel was booked of nothing but conference attendees. So for the four or five days we were there, it was only initial assessment conference people. They required us all to have COVID 19 vaccines and if we didn't, we were tested daily. And that was on site and free of charge. And we socially distanced in all the sessions that we were supposed to. We spread our seats apart, but we were having human interaction again. And in the outdoor stuff where social distancing and mask use is not necessary, they had a lot of their events and meals and stuff outdoors and it was great to get out and fellowship again and, and get past this enforced isolation.

That's excellent. So did you have to take your vaccine card with you?

Yes, yes, I took my vaccine card with me. I gave them a copy of my card and like I said, for the folks that didn't have their vaccine cards, they were COVID 19 tested there every day.

I don't know if you caught the John Oliver show the other day, but he made a really excellent point. With all the science, all the speed with which we've developed this vaccine, they couldn't make the card to fit in the wallet. Final hurdle. Final hurdle. He's got a point. Talking to conferences. Peter, I am excited because I have been an Eagle fan for many a long year and spent many a time going down to Dallas as it was, sitting in a room with a thousand of my closest friends and listening to either a 1, 2, 3, 4 or 10 minute session. It's back. And so why don't you tell us where it's back at and when it is and we're going to start talking about this because I'm excited. I Got to tell you.

Well, I tell you what, some of my favorite memories, Rob, are doing podcasts with you right outside, outside of the hall in Dallas at the Eagles. So.

And guess what, guess what, this time I'm going to do it again.

We love that. Well, so now we've actually moved it to Florida and it's in the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel, which is, if you haven't seen the pictures, if you just Google it, it's a huge guitar shaped building, brand new, beautiful pool, obviously casino, the best restaurants in the world. And we have really, we've been so surprised because we don't really advertise this conference at all. And all 900 room block nights are essentially full. There may be a room or two left, but it's completely sold out. And we are working on something that unfortunately in Florida, I shouldn't say unfortunately, but Florida has done pretty well through Covid, especially the last, let's say six months and the number of infections per day here are down. But still the governor will not allow us to check vaccination cards or make that something that gives you entry. So what we're going to be doing is we're going to actually have everyone be given a daily test and it's a PCR on site test that I've actually gotten a company to completely fund. So the conference is June 14th through the 18th, the Eagles being the 17th and 18th. That's a Thursday and a Friday. We're going to be PCR testing everybody Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. So that if you want to come, quick swab of the nose, we'll already know who you are. There's no paperwork to fill out and you'll get a response in your phone an hour later telling you if you're positive or negative. This test has 100% specificity. So there's never been a false positive in the 30,000 tests that they've ever done. It's a test being used in schools across the country and we're excited to kind of be forging the way to getting conferences open. It's literally cheap as can be, even if we weren't paying for it. So we hope everyone shows up, come on down to Florida in June and let's have a great time and maybe play a little blackjack at the same time.

I must admit, Peter and Kelly, I've been a bit skeptical over the last 12 months that when we get back to in person we will organizations have the budget, will travel be allowed or permitted and will people actually come? So you've answered that question. By telling me about the room block. So that's good.

Yes. Oh, my God. People are just itching to leave. Now. There are people from across the globe who typically come from Australia, from the uk, Paris and so forth. They have travel restrictions. Unfortunately, our brethren from across the pond won't be able to come. But I would say that I think we already have 60 or 70, just some of the eagles and the speakers are all coming, which is just incredible. Incredible.

It's a shame that many of our international EMS luminaries are travel restricted from.

Coming to the United States.

It's a shame that our public health emergency has become so politicized on, you know, on both sides of the aisle. And it's not as it should be, but it's, you know, Rob, as you, as you noted, it's, it's promising that the new normal may not be all that untenable, you know, and that people are still willing to go out. I think a lot of people are suffering from zoom fatigue. It's a wonderful platform and distance education is something I've leveraged for years, but there is nothing like getting out and talking to someone and breaking bread with them and sharing a drink afterwards and sharing ideas and stuff. And I'm glad to see that the eagles are flying again. And even if they have migrated to Florida with the other birds, snowbirds and.

Eagles are now in Florida. Gentlemen.

That is right.

Yep. Peter, just quickly though, but for those that aren't familiar with the eagle format, just explain how it works. Once you get there and you're in the room, what happens?

Yeah. So first, great credit to Dr. Paul Pepe, who, you know, I think is the godfather of ems. I mean, he's really a savant, the godfather. He. Listen, I've gotten to know him over the years and I'm very close with him now. And I realize what's so special about him is that he's probably five to 10 years ahead of everyone. And so when you come to an Eagles conference, more than likely you'll be writing copious notes. But much of what you write may not actually come into practice for years. So if you want to really know what's going to happen in EMS in the next coming years, you come to the Eagles conference. That's the one huge difference. And the way that it's put on is. And Rob, you mentioned it earlier, Dr. Pepe will have us do a one minute talk, a three minute talk, a. I mean, it started off as 10 minute talks, but now he'll do all these different flavors of Talks of different times. And this year, because of the fact that many people can travel and it was late in the game, we are going to make it a hybrid conference. So this will be live streamed as well. So for those of you who can't make it, we will actually would love to invite you to watch this live because remember, everything's happening on one stage. So really excited for it and happy to get the gang back together again. And one last thing, I will say that the sponsors have come out in force because they said, oh my God. In person conference. Here's our money.

Thank you, sponsors.

Excellent.

Yeah, that's a big change from the way sponsors have been in recent years. They started, you know, I think they were starting to get a little jaded on what they actually got from an in person conference. So it's glad that, you know, they're relishing going back to the, to the in person format.

Well, I've actually shared, I share, I've had sympathy over the last 12 months with sponsors because of course, the notion that we're all gonna leave the zoom and then go into another zoom to go into the quote unquote, I'm making those rabbit ear finger signals, gonna go into the next Zoom room for the, the hall or the sponsor hall exhibit Hall. Never happened. It wasn't going to happen.

You took the words out of my mouth. They sponsors hate the Zoom option of thinking people are going to go to their quote unquote virtual booth. And people have tried every which way at the end of the day. And Kelly, you mentioned it person to person at the bar in the hallway. That's where a lot of this action happens. It's where ideas get stirred up. It's where partnerships are created. It's where collaborations happen. And so we need to get back to that.

Yeah, well, humans, humans are social creatures and it's not natural that we distance ourselves. You know, even if, even if we're connected electronically. Social media is a perfect example of that. You know, communication has never been as possible in the world as it is right now. And yet we use it to look at porn and cat pictures and insult each other. And, you know, and it's. We're social creatures and there's something fundamental lost in personal interaction. And it's not just manners and civility. It's. It's the connection with another human being. It's great to, great to see that, that sort of thing coming back. Even if I have to put on pants. Yeah, okay. Small sacrifice to make.

Well, talking of putting on clothing, I was telling you guys before, before we start a recording. I've literally spent two days on the road here in Southern California going around hotels to get Ready for the 2022 California Ambers association conference. And of course, the reason I had to do that is that in the last week the hotels have gone. If you don't book now, you're going to be out of luck. Because now all of a sudden the rush is back on to get conferences booked, planned on. I wore proper socks, not hiking socks. I wear hiking socks on the weekend, but never proper socks, which of course I had to tweet out because they were colorful. Sock game. The conference scene is taken off again. Hotels are filling up. If you're thinking about booking a conference, you need to check with your hotel to make sure they've got your space left because they're getting busy too. All of a sudden. Staff are coming back and it's definitely the thing to do. I want to just go back and mention about the Eagle sessions that I have to say that Eagles were doing that in the 10 minute talk. They were doing the Ted. I can't pronounce that word for copyright reasons, but they were doing TED talks long before TED was doing their own talks in terms of the brevity and the focus of it. Moving on. Peter, you're a busy man because you've also just launched something else as well called real emergency. R, E, E L. What's all that about?

Yeah, well, let me tell you, I love unique education like both of you do, and especially through the pandemic and so forth, it's been really hard to get people great education. And there is a gentleman pediatric ER doc named David Spiro who years ago came up with an idea of, hey, what if we put body cameras on paramedics and doctors and then use that footage to educate paramedics, nurses and doctors. And so he's done remarkably well with that. And, and so I called him up. I called Dr. Mark Peel, who's a great pediatric ICU physician, and then of course, Prodigy EMS. And if you've never heard of Prodigy EMS, shame on you. But it's just a great learning management solution for fire departments. And they have just kind of. They've done everything that we've asked them to do. They've been great partners. And so this basically is a one hour webinar vodcast, if you will, where we review actual cases and there's very few slides and all of us are on one big zoom together. So you're not behind the webinar wall so you can unmute your microphone. You can. It's basically like we're all in one room together. But reviewing a live case, and there really isn't anything better than actually reviewing what actually happens in the field. Because all of us know how you practice and then what happens in reality, with the stress of a nervous parent or you have 50 people in the mall watching you, everything kind of changes. And so this is really, I think, great education. And I'm really happy to be a part of it.

This is. This is. I couldn't make this up. I'm sitting here, we're recording this. This is not live. And my tweet just went off and it's rgoodleg saying, I heard Ante, MD talk at Refresh 2021 and it blew my mind. Well done, Peter. Good job. That was totally random. But there you go. Online education, Kelly. I mean, we've had to do it for the last 12 months. I know that of course you are. You know, part of your sort of business model is you're out there teaching. I mean, how's it affected you?

We started leveraging streamed media six, seven years ago in our classes. We probably saw that coming and that people. My employer has long used video conferencing and distance education as part of their educational model because we have such a big footprint, but our workforce is so scattered around the country, at any one Acadian vilt session, you might have people from Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi and Guam, you know, in North Dakota and that sort of thing. So we familiar with that. And we started using a flipped classroom model and hybrid education. But moving to it entirely.

Has been problematic because first of all, here in Podunk, Louisiana, especially post Hurricane Laura, our Internet options are horrible. They suck great big rocks off the sea floor. And I'm praying for Starlink to get up and running so I can ditch my current Internet provider for more bandwidth. But one thing has become apparent is that you can be a dynamic speaker, you can be a polished lecturer and presenter, but you better be really, really good if you're gonna do it online. And one of the things that was nice about seeing some of the sessions of Refresh 2021, you know, and some of these guys, that guys like Pete and Jeff Jarvis and others, really, really shined in a digital broadcast streamed format. But it's a different set of skills entirely to do your shtick via a zoom and a webcam than doing it live. You can be really good live, but you better change your technique a little bit and really turn it up. To 11 if you're going to do it via Memorex. I remember because it doesn't work well.

I remember you saying that actually about it in fact, a year ago on this show where of course the difference is you sometimes are. It's a bit like stand up comedy. You're feeding off the live audience in the live room.

Yes, indeed. I can read a room, but I can't read a zoom chat. Yeah, I can't read a zoom chat. So some of my humor falls flat and I've had to change my shtick a little bit and I've had to make sure that the information I impart is done in smaller bites. Right, but, but and work for more, more structured feedback that you can't. You, you know, you get that sort of thing naturally and organically in a live lecture, but you can't really get it in zoom and you have to work at it. And that's, you know, it's a new set of skills that I learned and brought to the table and apparently other people have. So I don't think that that streaming education and distance education is going away. It's with us forever. But it's nice to go back to something we're comfortable with.

You mentioned Refresh 2021. I just want to plug that. There's now 25,000 people registered and it's still open for that. But Peter, therefore you've talked to an auditorium of 25,000 people and you've cracked the secret sauce of delivering an online presentation. What is that secret source, would you say?

First of all, I love the concept. The people who put it together are incredible people. And I completely agree with you, Rob and what Kelly just said. The secret sauce, I think is to at least what I've done in my office. I carved out a space, we put a green screen. We have, believe it or not, an iPhone that's going at 4K. We have the right lighting, we bought it on Amazon and I have just amazing people who help me with the edits of it. But as an example, we just did fast 21 and I went to the green screen, I gave a talk on ketamine, we put some edits to it and it's just better than me sitting at my desk with my dogs curled up behind me. And we're able to do a little bit more flair. And honestly, it doesn't cost anything extra. You just have to spend a couple hundred bucks on some equipment. But everyone's got a great phone nowadays. So I would agree with both of you and say that all of us should invest because this is not going away. Kelly, I completely agree with you. And I mean some of the people who are making these presentations, who are making YouTube channels and doing these types of things, each one of us have a skill and each one of us could be educators. Get creative, just do it differently. And this is the opportunity Covid has given us, an opportunity to be different. And this has been amazing.

I was heartened to hear from you that Eagles is going to be hybrid this year and we'll be able to watch it live. I've not been able to attend Eagles for some years because for one reason or another, there's something always precluded me going to Dallas and watching it live. But the nice thing about Hybrid and distance education and streaming platforms is it makes education so much more egalitarian. You know, you don't have to spend money and go to a convention city and expend exorbitant prices on meals and hotel rooms. You can do it right from, from your own home. And if the information is, is what you're there for, then it's there for, it's there for the having, if the networking, you know, something is lost. But if you got good information to share, that's great. I'll be able to get it live and in real time rather than, than trusting my, my network of trusted sources who will disseminate what, what they hear at Eagles, you know, and I get to hear it then instead of three, four months down the road when it pops up in somebody's lecture at a conference.

I was going to throw a plug in for another, another video where you can learn some secret sauce. I don't know if you've seen what the AAA did and actually the boys at Prodigy once again helped put us together. But Boris Krutnog, if you've ever heard of Boris, Boris is an actor who owns an ambulance service. And Boris, you may not recognize his face until you watch the Hunt for Red October and he's the third officer on the Red October and he gave a fantastic actor's view of how to talk to the camera and it's fantastic. And actually Boris was also the helmsman of the Enterprise in one of the Star Treks. And also did you see that show Americans where the Undercover. Boris was one of the Russian ministers. But anyway he owns and West Ambulance out here in Hollywood of course, but did a fantastic to camera piece on how to talk to a camera.

Getting back to EMS conferences and interacting with my tribe in person is like oxygen for me. It's something I've been deprived of for 15 months, but it's always a big charge to my career satisfaction batteries. And it's great to be able to go back and share some time with people who are passionate about our profession and what we do.

Yeah. So listen, I'm so happy to connect with you guys. I can't wait to see you all in person. And I will say this. My final thought is I just want to thank everybody out there who are on the front lines, who've put themselves at risk, their families at risk. They've done everything to get us through the pandemic. And, you know, today I had the opportunity to go around to all of my stations in Coral Spring and I just looked everyone in the eye and just, I said, thank you guys for all that you're doing. And the other thought I have also, again, Rob, you started with this is, you know, big condolences to the Settler family. And, you know, again, we realize that every day is precious. Every minute is precious. And, you know, getting together, like Kelly mentioned and having the personal contact, it just becomes more important when you hear stories like this. So hope to see everybody in person. Hope to raise a toast to good health and happiness and a great upcoming year.

But hey, that's what we think. We'd like to hear what you think. If you're enjoying the show, take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. And contact the Inside EMS team at the showms1.com to share your ideas, suggestions and feedback. Or if you'd like to join us as a guest. And for myself, co hosts Rob Lawrence, our international correspondent and EMS luminary and pediatrics guru, Dr. Peter Anteve. Thanks for tuning tuning into Inside EMS. We're going to catch you guys next week.

Sam.