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In stark contrast to Tactical Pants Blog, Rogue Medic has mucho gravitas.

Infusing dozens of citations and studies, blogger Tim Noonan provides deep, meaningful analysis of processes and procedures in the EMS field.

To be honest, some topics discussed on his blog go right over our head — but not all. Noonan’s use of charts, tables, quotes, sources and commentary helps even dilettantes embrace medical research.

While he has only blogged for a little over two years, Noonan’s paramedic experience spans almost two decades. Last year his blog was even nominated as a Fire/EMS Blog of the Year. He kindly took a moment away from his growing body of study to answer a few questions for us.

Why did you start blogging?

I have been writing on various email listservs for a while. One of the medics I know from the listservs started a blog and has been very successful. A Day in the Life of an Ambulance Driver. I blame him.

What is the inspiration behind it all?

Writing on a blog allows me to format the topic in a way that may help me to make my point more easy to understand. Or it can allow me to just write something that is long and tedious. I do both. I don’t really try for long and tedious, but sometimes I can’t help myself.

Your blog is extremely thorough and at times pretty research heavy. Have you always been interested in formal research?

Pretty much. I find that the most effective way to convince medical directors to change protocols is with well-done and relevant research. I am trying to let people know what research is out there.

By looking at the research and understanding what conclusions can be drawn from any particular study and what may be reading too much into a study, we make progress in providing the best care for patients. If we aren’t doing this to provide the best care for the patients, then we might as well just go home and consider a different line of work.

How did you become a part of Research Blogging?

Research Blogging has their own rules for participation. As long as you follow their rules, you can blog through them.

Basically, they are looking for posts that provide some commentary on a study; something more than just reprinting the abstract or cutting and pasting from the paper. If you look at some of what others write for research blogging, they tend to be shorter than mine, which is not surprising.

I also write for Paramedicine 101, which is run by Adam Thompson. He asked me if I wanted to participate and maybe it was the way he phrased it, maybe it was that I was in a social mood, I don’t know. I try to post once a week there. Sometimes it works out to once a month. Other times it works out to several in a week. I have posted for some blog carnivals: Normal Sinus Rhythm, The Handover and Skeptics’ Circle.

I do not have any specific posting schedule. I try to post something two or three times a week on my blog. I also occasionally participate in some podcasts EMS EduCast, EMS Garage and MedicCast.

You list many quotes on your page—what is your all-time favorite?

I don’t have any particular favorite. I tend to add quotes now and then.

I put a new quote at the top of the blog, since I am trying to focus on pain management research for a while. It is an old quote from Albert Schweitzer: “We must all die. But that I can save a person from days of torture that is what I feel is my great and ever-new privilege. Pain is a more terrible lord of mankind than even death itself.”

One thing I like about quotes is that they get people to think about things differently. Many times people think of Nobel Prize winners as serious people who would never encourage any kind of “disobedience.” But the truth is that they often came up with the concept that earned them the Nobel Prize by being disobedient, non-conformist and rebellious.

For example, teachers are frustrated by hearing constantly that Einstein did not do well at math, yet look at his success. They might be more upset by this quote: “Never memorize what you can look up in books.” But what Einstein was saying is that we need to understand, rather than memorize. It does not matter how much we memorize, if we do not understand how to use what we have memorized.

I like to use quotes to get people to think. Too much of EMS is about discouraging thinking and just following orders. Do you know anyone who says, “I want a THOUGHTLESS EMT/medic/nurse/doctor”? The same is true for any of the emergency professions. Fire fighters, HazMat, police, FBI, any branch of the military, et cetera.

The thoughtless person is the customer service person, who takes up an hour of your time for a simple fix but provides the wrong fix. These are the people who provide material for comedians. This is not being all you can be. This is not what we want our children to grow up to be. This is not what we want when we have to deal with an emergency.

That may summarize my blog. I try to get people to think about things differently. It is only by seeing things differently that we develop the insight to make truly significant changes. The only time we can claim that we do not change is when we are dead. I will be there soon enough. I don’t need to treat my mind as if it is already dead.

How long have you been a paramedic? What attracted you to the profession?
I’ve been a paramedic for 17 years. I was going to be a father and figured that I needed to know what to do to deal with emergencies. I would never be able to forgive myself if something happened to my daughter, and I could have done something to prevent it.

I had watched Emergency! in the 1970s and liked the show, but every time I was around an injured person, I would look worse than the injured person. I learned to deal with that and found that I like EMS.

What’s the most frustrating part of your job?

The useless limitations on appropriate care. The pay. The benefits. The respect. The hours. The working conditions. Depending on when you ask, I’ll give a different answer.

And the most rewarding?

Helping people. Whether it is helping a patient directly, helping a student/coworker to understand something better, so that they can help patients better, or helping to change protocols to allow for better patient care.

For an interesting perspective on this, David Konig has written This Job Is Not About Helping People.

We hear that some medics do, in fact, wear tactical pants on occasion. Do you wear them? What’s your uniform like?

Yes. 5.11 Tactical Series. These are my uniform pants, and I like them.

My uniform is tactical pants, a polo shirt, boots and a belt. And underpants—they’re tactical pants, not commando pants. I like this uniform. I have no desire to wear anything even remotely formal. I have spent too much time wearing a suit to ever want to wear one again.