fire-ems-logo

Our Team is beyond excited to share with you all that in November we are beginning a new partnership with Charleston County EMS to provide behavioral health training and support to them.  This training, with all CCEMS personnel, will follow with a Peer Team training program in January where we will assist them in developing their own internal peer team supplemented by ours.  Even though our services have always been available to our EMS brothers and sisters, this partnership will provide a connection from which all of us will benefit. Our goal is to provide our resources to include peer and clinical support to all of them.

We have always known that understanding the culture of the Fire Service and EMS is paramount to gaining the trust of those we serve.  We have been blessed with many EMS folks who have shared their knowledge as we have also served EMS over the years.  We recognize the distinct cultural difference between our groups and pledge to all of them our commitment to helping our combined program grow.

Special thanks to Tracy Madden, Ben Brown, Stacy Green and Shonnan McCauley of CCEMS for their commitment in getting this project started.  We also thank CCEMS Director David Abrams for his support of this endeavor.

From a personal standpoint, I am thrilled to be a part of this program.  In 1979, while an Assistant Chief at North Charleston District Fire Department, I trained as a paramedic to prepare our department to provide First Responder support to EMS.  I felt it was necessary to learn the EMS culture if we were to be of support to them.   I was blessed to meet and work with many mentors over those years who shared with me their love of EMS.  Little did I know that those mentors would be responsible for encouraging me as we start this program.  In honor of the memory of Mike Garvin and Pete Hefner, I pledge to do all that I can to help make this project a success.  I also thank Ron Dotson, Steve Lee, Steve Clark, Rich Harvey, Danny Lyons, Kim Dorman, Gail Sartain and many others who encouraged us along the way.  We will do all we can to make you proud as we begin this project.