EMS WEEK

 In 1974, President Gerald Ford authorized EMS Week to celebrate EMS practitioners and the important work they do in our nation's communities. This week brings together local communities and medical personnel to honor the dedication of those who provide the day-to-day lifesaving services of medicine's frontline. It also provides us with an opportunity to bring together EMS agencies and their local communities to focus attention on illness and injury prevention and raise awareness about issues important to prehospital pediatric readiness. EMS Week falls on the 3rd full week of every May. 

HEAR ME AMERICA, I AM, THE EMT  I see your people as you never see them.  Mighty and small they are beggars before me, their faces all frightened, beseeching, bewildered, and hopeful of help from one more frightened than any...  I see their pitiful nakedness, their limbs twisted, their bodies tattered, their blood on the asphalt, their children crying. They trust me to help them. They know I will help them.  I see their illness too in your big cities. Their fevers I feel as you dream at midnight in little towns. They call to me whose hearts are aching and whose dreams are shattered and they touch me with their weariness.  Sometimes they seek me who are simply alone and who cannot bear the night, and I am their servant too.  Fallen from tractors in fields I find them, and in stilled cars, they are silent and pale on cold rainy nights. The crunching of glass under black heavy boots tells my coming. I fold them in blankets.  My beacons light up your streets as their babies are born. My wail carries down your boulevards, past your shiny glass walls, your stockyards, and quiet farms, and your people look up from their work as I go by.  Time is metered in heartbeats.  I fight the battles to keep them alive. I cover their eyes when they breathe no more.  My partner is a hero, but no one knows his name. 

Author Unknown