Episode #178 Samuel Boyer-Groff on PrepMedic, medical preparedness & saving lives!

June 29, 2023 Ian Dawson Mackay ALL PODCAST EPISODES, LEVEL UP YOUR HEALTH, LEVEL UP YOUR SKILLS, REAL-LIFE INSPIRING 1:55:31 0 Comments

TODAY's GUEST IS Samuel Boyer-Groff!

Today’s guest is Samuel Boyer-Groff aka ‘PrepMedic’. 

He is a 🚁 Flight Paramedic and 🦅 Special Operations Response Team

Sam runs ‘PrepMedic’, a channel that is designed to bring medical preparedness to Youtube. He hopes to use his experience as a critical care flight paramedic, reserve deputy sheriff, and tactical medic to help first responders and civilians alike implement evidence based medical care, select gear, and gain insight into EMS and law enforcement.

#SamuelBoyerGroff #Paramedic #Medic #EMS #lawenforcement #stopthebleed #savelives #medicalcare #savealife #helpothers #healing #dangeroussituations

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KEY POINTS, Links & Actions

Here are some key points that I would advise you to concentrate on

  • Sam’s mission is to help and educate his viewers so they can assist injured people in dangerous situations, as he says “… it doesn’t take much to save somebody’s life and you can do most of it with the shirt that you have on you and your hands if you know some cpr and know what to look for.”  
  • It is best to be prepared as you might not always be somewhere with traditional medical infrastructure that can help you and others. 
  • There are basic pre-emergency planning you can utilise like having a first aid box, listing of medication and allergies for people to refer to, risk assessments etc.
  • You can attend a number of training courses, many free to become a first aid responder.  
  • “… I think there is a base level of knowledge that everybody needs and that’s that’s the high yield things that they do so you know every I if I had my way every person regardless of emergency services would know. Ah, basics of bleeding control which is essentially wound packing with a t-shirt and cpr and how to recognize a stroke and a heart attack if you can do all of those things that is the highest yield training. You can have to actually save lives …“
  • “The best way to kind of mitigate risks is to stop take a breath and look around … being able to take a second to yourself and recognize the physiologic response to stress and to this emergent situation and walk”
  • Remember “… C.A.B. … circulation airway breathing. You know, stop major bleeding start cpr make sure they have a patent airway and breathe for them if they need that to happen.”

  • “When things start go in really sideways or I’m flustered somebody is on scene us screaming like you’re trying to control things … what is great in those situations is to fall back on that system … I’ll take a breath (and fall back on the system – in this case the MARCHE protocol for checking) and I’ll say like okay, massive hemorrhage and even though I know that this is not. Ah, this is a stroke this isn’t this isn’t a traumatic situation I’m going to look at and be like all right? No massive hemorrhage all right airway. Do we have an airwave. Okay great. We got that and just really methodically like in my head say that out sometimes even say it out loud because that’s a great feedback to yourself if you say something out loud sometimes it makes your body believe it.” 

  • Sam recommends pulling out of the way and letting the ambulance past and staying out of the EMS way at a respectful distance, so you can help if they require assistance, but do not interfere in anyway … and definitely DO NOT film an accident, injuries etc, be a human not a prick! 
  • Sam has a personal review procedure that he uses, to consistently look to improve his skills, be organised and planned for potential incidents – “I have my personal system and then we have ah systems in place as an organization to kind of help us do just that for me, it’s I look at anytime I feel uncomfortable. Ah, so that goes as far as just checking the helicopter in the morning when I’m going through the equipment making sure we have everything if I weigh my hand on something and I don’t instantly know what its indications. Contraindications functionality is when I’d use it how I’d use it. That’s assigned to me to go look it up. Um, or to ask my partner to to take a quick in-service or go on Youtube and watch a video talking about it. There’s so much information. So for me. Ah, discomfort is a sign that there’s something you can’t do or don’t know that you should. That’s a sign that there’s something you could probably do to make yourself feel less uncomfortable in that situation.” 
  • Sam utilises informal and formal reviews and procedures, informally with his work peers to see how things could have gone better, and formal reviews with his management team, and he uses the different feedback from the sources to improve his performance and they offer different perspectives and different levels of insights that one alone may miss. 
  • Sam will make videos that help scratch a professional itch, he will do a video or teach on an area that forces him to educate himself, learn about and improve his skills in this area. What could you do to improve your own skillset, in areas that you struggle with or a complete beginner in?
  • “… the biggest thing is just earn it every day that you can and understand that it’s a lot easier to ruin trust than it is to gain it“
  • “So for somebody walking down the street that doesn’t want to carry anything in addition to their keys and and their phone and their wallet. Ah, you can intervene in almost any situation. So you know first and foremost I would say no cpr that’s such an easy thing and you don’t have to know breathing for them. You don’t have to know mouth to mouth all you have to do. Is be able to identify where to place your hands on their chest and know the rate of compress rate and depth of compressions and like you said it’s either staying alive if you’re a optimist or it’s another one bites the dust if you’re a pessimist. So either 1 works. They’ll give you the same rate. It just kind of depends How you’re feeling that day. Ah for the patient but maybe not singing another one bites the dust out loud that probably doesn’t fill people around you with ah confidence I would say but with that knowing Cpr is huge and what we know is that compression only Cpr and Cardiac arrest is just as effective as doing 30 compressions in two breaths ah with some exceptions if it’s a respiratory issue to begin with but generally speaking you’re going to get very good results from those compressions being able to apply an aed is another one and understanding where they might be located. Now that doesn’t take a genius it tells you exactly how to apply these pads to a patient and then you just follow the instructions. So I think that’s like your your base level knowledge set if you know that you can intervene in a lot of situations and make a huge difference for people.” 
  • “… that bleeding control can be accomplished with just the t-shirt that you’re wearing um or any kind of tight knit fabric and that can be done on any part of the body. So ah, not any part of the body it can be done in parts of the body where that bleeding is controllable in the Pre-hospital Environment so it’s preventable causes of death is the name of the game. So for this um, if you have a wound that is spurting that is pooling blood under the patient. Ah, that is soaking through multiple layers of clothing and continuing to get bigger There’s a lot of different ways to identify life-threatening bleeding. But if you see that and you think it’s life-threatening take your t-shirt and start shoving it in the wound where you believe the bleeding is coming from and this is good to use on junctional sites. So. Ah, the base of the neck. Ah there the armpit and the groin and then on any extremity on any arm we don’t teach wound packing into like the corrannial vault. So if they’ve got some brain showing probably don’t stick gauze in there I hope that’s common sense. We don’t teach that into the chest cavity because you’re just going to be compressing lungs heart tissue and you’re not going to be getting to the source of bleeding. We don’t do that in the abdomen. Ah either. But besides those spots because ultimately there’s nothing you’re going to do for it in in that environment“
  • “Being able to do a basic stroke assessment on somebody … It doesn’t matter the big things you’re looking for are do they if if they smile at you. You have them raised both sides of their mouth if you have one side that is drooping ah unilateral. Ah, one side that’s a sign of a stroke. Cool. We can basically say we’re going to treat this like a stroke until we we can determine. Otherwise if you have them take their arms out in front of them close their eyes and count to 10 are they able to raise both hands does one arm. Fall. Um, and then we can have them ah speak so assuming they haven’t had a bunch of beers at the local bar. Ah, have them speak are they swearing their words are the wrong words coming out. Um, are just sounds coming out. Ah you know are they just really confused. Those are all things that we can say hey this this could be a stroke. We’re going to treat it like a stroke get them to the hospital so being able to recognize that is 1 being able to recognize.”
  • “… in my twelve years and I know my coworkers are much the same thing bystanders have made the biggest difference on survivability on massive bleeding and cardiac arrest so you don’t need anything for either of those things and if you have just a little bit of training even if that’s just going watching one of my videos or somebody else’s. You can actually like save somebody’s life and saying save somebody’s life doesn’t do that justice like you are allowing somebody to continue to be a father. You’re giving a child their mother for many more years you’re like letting somebody live their life and that that is super profound and that is not something a Cardiothoracic surgeon needs to do that is something that you can do with a t-shirt and the knowledge that you have if you have just a little bit of physicality where you can do compressions for 5 minutes until an ambulance arrives. So I think that would be the biggest thing is to understand you don’t need to. Be a specialist. You don’t need to have a huge knowledge but knowledge base or huge kit list or you know maintain all of these things you can do a a lot and make a profound difference with very very little“
  • “… a heart attack is actually a blockage of the coronary arteries in the heart which can cause the heart to stop. But that is not always the cause of a cardiac arrest so in a heart attack. This is ah chest pain This is pain radiating to the jaw ah down usually the left arm but it could be you know to the back or even to the right arm. Um, and it’s usually pain that doesn’t change. On position or ah, necessarily movement. It might get worse on exertion. But it’s not going to change whether I’m sitting up or laying down now that we have those things those are the big life threats that that a bystander can intervene with“
  • “The biggest teacher has just been repetition …“
  • Don’t be an idiot and plan ahead if you are going to do something new, or potentially dangerous. Check the weather. Check the websites on what to bring. Over-prepare, bring a torch, bring some additional clothes, gps phone, suitable gear for the area eg walking boots etc.
  • For the kit you have, keep it organised, make a simple tracking sheet to monitor your kit and replace items as they expire or are used, keep it clean and out of heat and cold, don’t leave in your car all year around etc. 
  • You will make mistakes, every one does. You need to review, them, understand what went wrong and how can you fix them and not let it happen again. “I think the first part of it is is dropping the ego and dropping your defensiveness towards somebody calling you on a mistake. I am where I am today and I am the provider I am today because of mistakes I’ve made not necessarily because of the triumphs I’ve had so for me, those are the biggest learning experiences. Um, so really looking at mistakes or times where you feel in your gut that was not good. And looking at it objectively or taking somebody’s criticism and not taking it in a way that offends you but in a way that you can bring away action steps to not let that happen again. Um, the reason I carry a lot of what I do in my everyday life is because I’ve been in situations. Where I have felt completely powerless where I haven’t known what was going on or haven’t been able to intervene and I looked at those situations and thought I really don’t want to feel that way again. I really did not like how that made me feel I really didn’t like how that followed me. So I’m going to take these steps I’m now going to carry a tourniquet I’m now going to carry some kind of cpr mask with me because I don’t want to be in that situation again. Um, so that’s how we look at it and like in the professional setting. We do a really cool thing. It’s called just culture so as long as I don’t conceal anything. I can come to my boss or our medical director and say and say hey I made this huge medication error. Um I recognize I did it and they’re going to ask me why and they’re going to look at it from a holistic standpoint and look at all the factors that went into it and we’re going to try to address.”

LEVEL UP Time WITH THIS KEY LESSON!

“… bystanders have made the biggest difference on survivability on massive bleeding and cardiac arrest so you don’t need anything for either of those things and if you have just a little bit of training even if that’s just going watching one of my videos or somebody else’s. 
You can actually like save somebody’s life and saying save somebody’s life doesn’t do that justice like you are allowing somebody to continue to be a father. You’re giving a child their mother for many more years you’re like letting somebody live their life and that that is super profound and that is not something a Cardio thoracic surgeon needs to do that is something that you can do with a t-shirt and the knowledge that you have if you have just a little bit of physicality where you can do compression’s for 5 minutes until an ambulance arrives.”

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About the Author
I’m a podcaster who interviews great examples of people to discuss and highlight the methods, hacks, tips and procedures you can use in your own life to help you develop and better your life. I would definitely not consider myself an expert, so to improve, I ask them and action it in my own life! My personal journey has been marked by awkwardness and awesomeness, OCD and ‘OMG’. I have suffered with depression, shyness, unhappiness and lack of focus and motivation so I know what’s it like to feel lost and hopeless. Back then, I wished I had a podcast to listen to and find actual fixes and concrete action steps and not just unobtainable suggestions and promotion of their products but couldn’t find it … so I made my own!

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