Discussion forum

Hello Everyone,

I am the Region 1 representative on the Society Board of Directors.  I just wanted to take a moment to welcome everyone and introduce myself on the new forum.  We have some amazing people in Region 1 and I hope we can help each other to achieve all of our goals and continue to provide top notch education.  Please use this resource to network, ask questions, provide suggestions, etc.  If anyone ever has any comments, questions, or concerns, please feel free to share them with me and I will certainly respond.  Tom, the new forum looks great, and I hope to hear from other Region 1 ICs soon. 

From my experince, everything worked flawlessly, Tom.  I will bring my check to the meeting in December, assuming I remember.

For everyone, there is a Board of Directors meeting on December 5.  If you have any Region 1, or any region for that matter, issues you would like addressed or discussed, please let myself or any other board member know.  We truly are here to represent you and your wishes.  Also using this forum is a great way to keep communication lines open when there are issus at hand (like accreditation, NREMT, EMT-S, etc), so please take advantage of it.

Joseph Moore wrote:I just found this forum, and I thought I would bring up a topic or two.  But, first of all, I have a question or two.  Beaver Island is in Charlevoix County.  Is this county in Region I or in the UP?  What was the determining factor in this decision whatever it was?

Now, accreditation is an issue that distresses me.  If the NREMT will not test anyone who has not completed a program from an acredited agency, what will happen to the many smaller, yes rural, agencies that do not have the time, the money, or the resources to go through this process?  Where does the Society stand on this issue?  Is not the approval process for initial education sponsors enough proof of the ability of a program to provide effective education?  Where is the State of Michigan leaning on this issue?

Please email me at medic5740@yahoo.com with any comments that you don't want to post here.

Beaver Island is in SMEMSIC region one.  Keep in mind that the State of Michigan just updated its regions but SMEMSIC is stay with our current State regions as they are in our bylaws and determined representatives to our board of directors.  You may click here to view a map that shows the current SMEMSIC regions. Many years ago, SMEMSIC adopted the then State regions as the SMEMSIC regions.  I am not sure why Beaver Island was placed in region one at that time. 

SMEMSIC has developed a position paper on the accreditation issue after it was voted on by the membership.  A copy of the position paper and documentation of the voting by members is available in the members only section of this web site under member documents.  You can find the links on the left side of this page if you are logged in as a member.

Thanks for posting on the new forums.  As more members renew their membership for 2009, they will have access to the forums and participation will increase.  Let me know here if you have any additional questions.

There will be a meeting for Region 1 (all regions certainly welcome) ICs Wednesday February 17, 2010 at 4PM at Great Lakes EMS Academy in Grand Rapids.  Please spread the word and consider attending. 

There was a meeting of IC's in Grand Rapids today.  There was discussion about holding a CE day for providers in the future.  It was also decided that the group would use the SMEMSIC Region 1 resource web page to share presentations with other IC's in West Michigan.  In fact a number of presentations were submited at the meeting and have been posted on the region 1 resource page.  If you are a SMEMSIC member, you can access the Region 1 resource page by clicking here.  Since this group is meeting in Grand Rapids and many in the group are SMEMSIC Members, it might make since to hold a SMEMSIC Region 1 meeting in the north part of SMEMSIC region 1.  Let me know if any of you have a site in mind.  The next meeting in Grand Rapids is schedule for April 21 at 4pm.  If any of you would like to submit files or presentations to share on the resource page just email me and attach the file or I can give you an address to send them on a CD.  You can also bring a CD with your files to the April meeting or to our Spring Conference in Traverse City if you are attending.