That lecture should be played on the first day of training of every med school, PA school, nursing school, paramedic school, and EMT school. And it should be played again on the last day of training before those folks head out to apply their skills on their fellow man.
Wow.

Thud thud wipe wipe Cliff! Pure class as always.

[…] motivational talk from Dr. Cliff Reid (@cliffreid) at SMACC 2013 via the EMCrit podcast. Great advice for life and emergency […]

Hello, Great stuff. I meet a hero the other day. A nurse at a small community hospital had a very unstable patient that exceeded the hospital capacity. However, the Internists did not want to transfer the patient. The nurse called a consulting service at the local teaching hospital that has been see the patient for years. They were very concerned that they were unaware of how ill this patient was. They called the Internists and transfer was arranged ASAP. For the nurse there was no personal gain and a good chance of irritating a Physician at her hospital. But, it… Read more »

I have been onto your blog for a bit, Scott, but just delved into Cliff’s lectures via your site. Amazing, inspiring, timely, relevant, hilarious, I could go on. I have shared links to both your blogs and FB pages, hope I did it the right way and gave sufficient credit. Thank you so much & keep up the good work.

Fantastic talk. With the rehearsal of critical situations beforehand, we can mentally prepare ourselves to be the one who takes a stand for the right thing. I use these concepts when teaching paramedics and firefighters. I am so intrigues by the psychology of first responders and critical care clinicians.

[…] listened to Cliff Reid’s ‘How to be a hero’ talk about a dozen times now (https://emcrit.org/podcasts/how-to-be-a-hero/). I get choked up every time when he talks about his heroic mate Mick. It’s an inspiring, heart […]

Hi Scott – I’ve been working my way through the archives of your podcast and just listened to this lecture today. It was really moving and awesome, until……the utterly sexist and inappropriate comment/joke about pediatricians. My jaw literallly dropped. Really?!?!? Female physicians still have to deal with this crap in 2017? I found this comment offensive for 2 main reasons: 1. It assumes that all pediatricians are female (and thus carry handbags) and 2. It belittles that we don’t have a serious job or can’t handle serious problems….and implies that is the case because we are women. Bulls&$t. I am… Read more »