Many of the e-mail discussion lists for EMS have a poor signal to noise ratio — lots of noisy low value chatter and not enough substantive information. This has kept many EMS professionals from participating in these forums. Sensing the need for a higher level of professional discourse on topics of current interest to the EMS community, NAEMSP launched an e-mail discussion list called the NAEMSP Dialog. It is open to everyone with an interest in high quality discussions about EMS – you do not have to be an NAEMSP member to participate.
You may participate or monitor this discussion group via email or by accessing the website where messages are archived. To enroll for the active discussions on the listserv, please visit
http://groups.google.com/group/naemsp-dialog and follow the instructions to join the group (NOTE: This is a Google Groups forum).
The Editor/Moderator for the NAEMSP Dialog is Mic Gunderson. He has been involved in EMS for over 35 years in various managerial and clinical roles with a wide variety of organizations. He has served on the editorial boards for
Prehospital & Disaster Medicine, Annals of Emergency Dispatch and Response, Prehospital Emergency Care, Journal of Emergency Dispatch, EMS Management Journal and others. He has also served as a chapter author and co-editor for several NAEMSP texts including Medical Oversight of EMS. Mic is currently the Executive Director of Kent County EMS system based in Grand Rapids, MI and is the President of IPS, a EMS consulting firm. Mic is an adjunct faculty member for the University of Maryland—Baltimore County in their master’s degree program for Emergency Health Services.
EMS Response Interval Standards (
conducted in December 2009-January 2010) – The selection of a target or standard for emergency EMS response intervals is an important issue in EMS system design. It has a significant impact on costs, and may have an impact on clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction. The presumed impact of response intervals on clinical outcome is often cited as a rationale for where response interval targets and standards are set. But what science is there to justify where the response intervals are set? What conclusions can we draw from the available literature? What further studies need to be done, if any, to better guide these decisions?
Invited participants in this discussion were two well known EMS physicians - Tom Blackwell, MD, and Peter Pons, MD - who each have published original work in this area.
EMS Response Time session page
Dialog discussion page on Google Groups