Peter Canning

I was honored to be asked to write an essay that was included in the new anthology –Voices from the Front Line: The Pandemic and the Humanities edited by by Katherine Ratzan Peeler and Richard M. Ratzan and published the University of California Health Humanities Press.

Here is the description of the book from Amazon:

What are the limits of one's duty as a healthcare provider to render care during a peacetime pandemic when that care is often life-saving for the patient yet concurrently life-threatening to the provider? Does it matter if the provider is still in training? How was the COVID-19 pandemic informed by past pandemics, for better or for worse? Voices from the Front Lines: The Pandemic and the Humanities is a time capsule: it seeks to illuminate the behind-the-scenes emotions, reflections, and actions of healthcare workers and medical humanities experts during the tumultuous first few years of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. In this collection, Katherine Ratzan Peeler and Richard M. Ratzan bring together 45 voices in essays, poetry, and photographs from frontline healthcare workers, medical educators, healthcare administrators, journalists, anthropologists, historians, ethicists, and more. The contributors wrestle with questions of triage, conflicting patient and family needs, personal mental and physical health struggles, and bioethical and societal questions about how to live, and assist others, in a world-altering pandemic.

Reading through the wide-ranging essays was fascinating. COVID seemed so long ago now, but it was really only a couple years ago that we were gowning up in full suits and masks and stripping in the garage when we got home at night, and I at least worried with every cough and tired joint that maybe the little COVID bugger had purchase in my lungs. When I finally did get COVID, it was after the epidemic had largely ended. I was able to fight it with Tylenol, fluids and just a day in bed. Still I remember many those people who died, or who are still sick from the damage the disease did to them. I hope we are more prepared the next time a pandemic strikes and hope that that pandemic is a long way off.

It's great that the editors have collected these voices to preserve this period of our history for the future readers.

My essay for the book includes parts from the many posts I wrote on this blog. Those posts can be read here:

https://medicscribe.com/category/covid

I recently worked with the New England High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Health and Public Safety Analysts to put together a Naloxone training video aimed at Connecticut first responders, the type of video that can be played during roll call at the start of a shift. It was great working with the HIDTA people and the filmmakers from Quinnipiac University.

The novels, Mortal Men and Diamond in the Rough are now available in paperback.  They can be purchased at Amazon.com or ordered from your local bookstore.

In August I participated in round table with United States Senator Senator Blumenthal to discuss the opioid epidemic.

Audio: clinicians call for stronger response to overdose epidemic, fentanyl's impact

I am pleased to announce my blog Streetwatch: Notes of a Paramedic has been redesigned and is on a new secure server.  Check it out for new posts.

My new book Killing Season: A Paramedic's Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Opioid Epidemic was published in April 2021 by Johns Hopkins University Press.  

Amazon has named it one of the top 10 nonfiction books of April 2021.

You can watch a presentation of the book on C-SPAN books.

CSPAN Books: Hartford, Connecticut paramedic Peter Canning gives an inside account of the opioid epidemic.

Hartford Courant: Overdose deaths surged in Connecticut during the pandemic. The problem may get worse.

UCONN Magazine: Double Jeopardy

Hartford Courant: Paramedic chronicles the daily tragedy of drug overdoses in Connecticut before and during pandemic

ABC News: Dying of Loneliness: What COVID-19 has taught us about the opioid epidemic

BBC Interview with Kasia Madera

Channel 8: This Week in Connecticut with Dennis House: Local paramedic’s first-hand look at the deadly toll of drug use amid the pandemic

EMS World: Book Review

The Addiction Podcast-Peter Canning

Interview with WGVU Public Media

Douglas Coleman Show Interview on YouTube

Top Of Mind BYU Interview

I post reguarly on the COVID-19 epidemic from the perspective of both a paramedic working in the field and an EMS Hospital Coordinator.  Follow the posts on my blog at Street Watch: Notes of a Paramedic.

I spoke at a gathering in Hartford convened by U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal to address the sudden rash of overdose deaths in Hartford likely caused by fentanyl-contamined crack cocaine.  The story was covered by the Hartford Courant.

I was recently interviewed by NPR's Casandra Basler about the opioid crisis in Hartford and the EMS overdose tracking project I helped develop.

I recently wrote an op-ed in the Hartford Courant about the need for safe-injection sites to keep users safe.

I swam for the US in the 55-59 Men's Age Group at the 2014 FINA World Masters Swimming Championships held in Montreal Canada.

Now available from Amazon for download to your Kindle is "The Ballad of Billy Johnson."

I now work part-time as the EMS Coordinator at UCONN Health Center (John Dempsey Hospital) in addition to working full-time as a paramedic.
- August 2008

This summer I completed six sprint triathlons, which include a 1/4 or 1/2 mile swim, a 12 mile bike, and a 5K run. My goal is to complete an Olympic Triathlon (1 mile swim, 24 mile bike, and 10K run) next year.
- December 2007

I have started a blog called Capnography for Paramedics as a clearinghouse for information about a new technology that I believe will change the way we practice in the future.

-May 2006

I'm just returned from another Medical Mission in the Dominican. See link below:

-May 2006

I recently spent a week in Gulfport, Mississippi doing 911 calls as part of a company deployment to help out our Southern Mississippi Division. My accounts can be found at the links below.

-September 2005

Katrina Journal

I just returned from an eight day medical mission to the Dominican Republic where I was part of a 33- member surgical team providing care to people in the mountain town of San Jose de Las Matas. The trip was sponsored by Medical Ministry International. It was an amazing experience, and I would recommend any paramedic who gets a chance to do a trip like this to jump at it. I worked in both pre-op -- assessing patients and starting IVs -- and post op -- monitoring patients and giving meds for pain and nausea. I also served as one of the translators.

To read more about my trip and about Medical Ministry International, click the links below:

-May 2005

I am now posting excerpts (Street Watch) from my EMS Journal online at the link listed below.

I continue to work full-time as a paramedic in the Greater Hartford Area. For the last several years my primary assignment has been as a contract paramedic to a volunteer service. As an employee of American Medical Response, I work forty hours a week riding on the volunteer ambulance in their uniform. I also routinely work overtime shifts each week on AMR ambulances in the city. While I miss having a full-time shift and regular partner in the city, I enjoy being in the suburbs and working with the volunteers. We average four or five calls in routine 12 hour shift. When we're not doing calls, we can relax at the headquarters, read, write, watch TV or surf the internet. I don't think I could work the hours I do each week if I had to stay cramped in the ambulance all day. It beats you up after awhile.

In addition to my field work, I serve on the North Central EMS Regional Medical Advisory Committee. It is very satisfying to work with the physicians and EMS cordinators on the committee to upgrade the paramedic protocols, and then to go out on the street and actually get to use the new protocols. Several years ago I was involved in the successful effort to change the state law which had prevented paramedics from giving controlled substances to patients on standing orders. Now if a patient is actively seizing or in severe pain from a fracture, we can provide them relief without the often lengthy delay involved in contacting medical control. I am as proud of that effort as anything else I have done in EMS.

-September 2004