8:00 AM – 8:30 AM | Breakfast & Networking
8:30 AM – 9:00 AM | Don’t Lose Yourself: A First Responder’s Mental Health Presentation
Speaker: The Salty Paramedic, Cody Spaulding
Introduced by: Andreas Huber - CEO; First Due
A raw, humorous, and practical session on burnout, identity loss, and mental health in EMS.
9:00 AM – 9:20 AM | Sponsor Spotlight - Zoll Medical
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM | Blood Before the Door: Changing Survival in the Street
Speakers: Michael Scott Dodson, Vice President, EMS Operations, Grady Health System & Dr. Ryan Fransman, Trauma Surgeon, Medical Director, Grady Air
Early blood transfusion in the prehospital setting is redefining trauma care and improving survival for patients in hemorrhagic shock. This session highlights how EMS agencies are bringing blood to the patient sooner, and how meaningful differences in outcomes are being seen—regardless of proximity to a trauma center—along with what it takes to implement these programs in the field.
10:00 AM – 10:30 AM | Break & Vendor Networking
11:00 AM – 11:45 AM | Innovation Presentations-
Innovation Presentations at the EMS Innovation Summit are concise 15-minute peer-to-peer sessions where agency leaders share innovations they’ve implemented—highlighting what worked, what didn’t, and what others can learn from their experience. Whether it’s a new program, process, or partnership, these presentations are designed to inspire practical change across the profession.
11:45 AM – 12:30 PM | Lunch
12:30 PM – 1:30 PM | Roundtables
1:30 PM – 1:50 PM | Sponsor Spotlight: First Due
Speaker: Andreas Huber; First Due
1:50 PM – 2:35 PM | Workforce Wake‑Up: Fixing EMS Recruitment and Retention Before It Breaks Us
The Workforce Wake Up: Fixing EMS Recruitment and Retention Before It Breaks Us is about confronting a hard truth the EMS profession can no longer ignore. We are asking more from fewer people, burning through experience, and pretending that passion alone will hold the system together. In some communities, this is no longer a warning, it has already happened. Services have failed, doors have closed, and coverage has disappeared. The strain isn’t coming only from pediatric arrests or the worst calls we run, it’s coming from the relentless volume of non-emergent calls. Running ten or more calls a shift, many of which may not require an ambulance, creates chronic stress, fatigue, and a sense of futility that is driving PTSD and mental-health challenges in today’s EMS workforce. Recruitment and retention are not HR problems, they are operational, leadership, and safety issues that directly affect patient care and provider wellbeing. This is about changing how we lead, how we support our workforce, and how we build environments where people want to stay, grow, and take pride in the profession. If we don’t address this now, EMS won’t slowly fade, it will fail at the worst possible moment, when our communities need it most.
Speakers: Chad Black, Chairman of Board Georgia EMS Association; The Salty Paramedic, Cody Spaulding; Scott Dodson Vice President, EMS Operations, Grady Health System; Jack Raia, NRP, Electric Medic
2:35 PM – 3:00 PM | Break & Vendor Networking
3:00 PM – 3:30 PM | Agency Innovation Presentations
Innovation Presentations at the EMS Innovation Summit are concise 15-minute peer-to-peer sessions where agency leaders share innovations they’ve implemented—highlighting what worked, what didn’t, and what others can learn from their experience. Whether it’s a new program, process, or partnership, these presentations are designed to inspire practical change across the profession
3:30 PM – 4:30 PM | Stop the Dying: Firefighter Lessons from 200 Intentional Mass‑Casualty Drills
Based on a seven-year study of more than 200 full-scale IMCI drills, this session gives firefighters practical, field-tested lessons for active-threat response. It covers faster rescue movement, law-enforcement integration, rapid hemorrhage control, simplified triage, and command tactics that improved victim survivability and outperformed traditional rescue task force (RTF) models.
Speaker: Dr. Eric Saylors; Fire Chief; El Cerrito
Moderator: Harry Larson; Director of Strategic Initiatives, Rhode Island Medical Reserve Corps
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