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Date Published: April 28, 2025 Date Updated: March 17, 2026
National Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Week, observed annually in May (May 17–23, 2026), is a week-long celebration to recognize and thank the emergency medical services personnel who serve our communities around the clock.
President Gerald Ford first authorized National EMS Week in 1974 to celebrate and recognize the vital work of EMS professionals in communities across the nation. At the time, EMS was a relatively new profession, and this proclamation highlighted the important role EMS played in emergency medicine. In fact, that sentiment is reflected in this year’s EMS Week theme: “We Care. For Everyone.”
Whether arriving at the scene of a medical emergency or helping displaced families during a natural disaster, EMS professionals bring clinical expertise, compassion, courage and resilience when minutes matter most.
Emergencies — like an accident that causes serious injuries — highlight why EMS Week (sometimes referred to as EMS Appreciation Week) matters. Emergency responders often work in fast-paced, high-stress environments where every second counts. Their training allows them to act quickly and effectively — while their empathy helps people through some of the hardest days of their lives.
Their ability to assess injuries, manage chronic conditions and navigate high-stress environments makes them invaluable during emergencies. Many EMS professionals extend their lifesaving work beyond ambulances and hospitals by volunteering with the American Red Cross. These dual-trained responders bring clinical expertise and calm reassurance to disaster shelters, evacuation centers and recovery sites — where traditional EMS services may not always reach.
Their work exemplifies the spirit of EMS Week — meeting people in moments of crisis and helping them begin the road to recovery. Whether in ambulances, shelters, neighborhoods or disaster zones, they are driven by the same mission: to help others in their time of greatest need.
All right, we are live and ready to talk about EMS. Welcome everybody to the American Red Cross Training Service's live event today, where we are here kind of proceeding National EMS Week and to recognize this occasion, we are putting together an event with two of my colleagues, Lindsay Smith from San Diego Fire Rescue, and Matt Miller from Salem, Oregon Fire Rescue. We've had a lot of discussions about all the different Salems out there, so figured clarifying would be a important point.
Lindsay, Matt, welcome. My name's Owen. I'm gonna be the host for this live today. I'm the director of emergency services training for the American Red Cross, and have the pleasure of getting to host this event and work with these two individuals on a day-to-day basis.
Lindsay, if you don't mind, would you mind just introducing yourself to the crowd and letting us know kinda what your role is within the San Diego Fire Rescue Department?
Yeah. Hi Owen. Thank you so much for having me.
I'm excited to be here. My name is Lindsay Smith, and I am currently the EMS training coordinator for San Diego Fire Rescue Department out here in California. And I am responsible for managing all of the continuing education hours for our EMTs and paramedics that work in our system, both on the fire side and the transport side. So thanks for having me.
Yeah, thanks so much for the time, and super excited to be talking with you today. I think we're gonna dive into some of those things that you said, so we'll wait and let Matt introduce himself as well.
Matt, do you mind?
Yeah, thanks Owen. Great to be with you here. I sure appreciate it. My name's Matt Miller. I'm the fire EMS training officer here at Salem Fire Department in Oregon, as you said, and I focus primarily on EMS for both our fire and single role personnel. I've been here for 19 years, I've been a paramedic for 23, and love teaching, love training, and look forward to the opportunity to be here with you today.
Well, thanks so much for being here, and I'm really excited both of you to kind of dive into both aspects of your career, you know, how you've gotten to this point. Well, it is very different. We're gonna talk about that today. But really excited to look at both your operations portion of the career, and now your time spent in training, where we have the ability to interact with you guys so frequently. So thank you so much for being a part of this.
I also wanna remind everybody that this is a live event, so if a dog starts to bark or, you know, a window flies open, we can't control that. We'll just roll with it. But we'd also love to make this as interactive as humanly possible. Our goal is to try and get your engagement during this.
So please drop your questions in the comments, drop any comments in the comments, I guess that would make sense. And then also if there's anything that you'd like to see us cover, please don't hesitate to throw it in there.
Lastly, wherever you're from, we'd love to know, we'd like to know where we're watching from. Lindsay and Matt have the West Coast pretty well represented. I have the East Coast pretty well represented. But anywhere in between and beyond, we'd love to know who's with us today and where you're coming from. So drop that in the chat if you don't mind.
We're gonna kind of go back and forth on some questions here, just to get to know you guys better and really explore EMS as a profession, and the development of the EMS professional over the course of what can be a very fulfilling career.
And Matt, I wanted to start with you. I know when we had talked kind of offline, you said you started your career and I believe was it exercise and sports science? And now you're in EMS. Seems to be somewhat of a fit, but curious of your pathway to get there. Was it straightforward? How did you end up here? Why did you end up here? You mind just telling the audience a little bit about that kind of navigation to your career in EMS?
Yeah, absolutely. I finished college with an exercise degree and had a couple careers afterward that weren't terribly fulfilling. I was really searching for, you know, what am I supposed to do that feels significant, feels like I'm really helping, but I also wanted something that would challenge me mentally as well as physically.
And I struggled, like I said, for a couple different paths, and then decided to go speak to my local fire agency and just learn about their volunteer program. Talked to a 20 year lieutenant there who kind of gave me the quick and dirty of the fire service. Recommended I look into their volunteer program, which I did, and then I went back to EMT school, was super excited about everything I was learning there.
It just really triggered that science part of my personality. But certainly the fire rescue side, you know, getting to do something as a team, dynamic, something very difficult, very challenging that most people can't do. It just really, really got me excited about a further path and a further career.
And then shortly after that, I got my first fire job after I'd put myself through paramedic school, got my first fire job, and then moved over here to Salem a few years after that in 2006. And then I've been on an engine company for the last 18 years, and then moved into training just this last year.
I'd been teaching at the local community college in their fire EMS programs as well for about 13 years now, and I just love teaching and mentoring and helping people, so.
Yeah, helping people is often a common theme we hear why people get into this industry, right. But now it sounds like you get to help people help the people and that seems like double fulfilling.
So we're gonna dive into that in just a little bit. But that's neat that you were able to kind of come out of college, know that you had a very science way of going about life or a science driven way of going about life, and then you were able to tie that to a totally different career subset that caught your interest.
So really, really neat to hear that pathway to where you are now, Matt, and thank you for sharing.
Lindsay, something similar that we wanna know about you. I'm curious what prompted your career decision into EMS? I don't know a lot about your background prior to EMS, but as you came into that field and made that decision, I'm also curious, was there anything that you were surprised about as you navigated your way through a career in EMS?
Yeah, so I took a little bit of a different path than Matt did. I finished high school, was living out on my own, attending college courses at the community college, not really having any direction, and one night I watched a show on Discovery Health called "Paramedics." Those of us who are old enough to know that show.
And it was just really interesting. I come from a very medical family. We have doctors, nurses, dental hygienists, and so medicine has always been a part of my life, veterinarians. And so it caught my interest, and then I was like, wait a second, let me go see if this is something that would interest me.
And I went and I did a ride along, and it was a ride along that had all of the fantastic calls that we all want and that we trained for, and I was hooked at that point.
I wanted to be a paramedic who showed up when people were sick and injured and didn't know how to help themselves, so they called a stranger. And so I went to EMT school, then six months after that, went to paramedic school, finished paramedic school, and then I was lucky enough to get hired with San Diego Fire Department pretty soon after finishing paramedic school.
And I've been with the department over 20 years now and worked my way through the ranks from firefighter paramedic, to engineer paramedic, and now captain paramedic.
And something that surprised me was just how much I enjoyed the fast pace adrenaline of it, essentially. And it worked with my brain very, very well as the limited short amount of information you get in making super critical decisions in that amount of timeframe, and then providing the treatment or the fix, and then you pass 'em off into somebody of higher care, and then you're onto the next one.
And so I was surprised how well that worked just with my mentality and the way I like to live my life, so.
Our portfolio of lifesaving first responder training courses helps EMS professionals respond with confidence when lives are on the line. The Red Cross Resuscitation Suite™ portfolio (brochure) includes comprehensive lifesaving techniques which meet resuscitation training and continuing education requirements throughout the United States.
Our newest course is Neonatal Advanced Life Support (NALS), showcasing our commitment to improving newborn care. The NALS Foundations and Comprehensive courses provide emergency medical services (EMS) providers with the critical knowledge and skills to manage a newborn resuscitation in an out-of-hospital setting. Participants are presented with cases that require them to quickly assess the newborn, analyze the data presented and determine appropriate next steps. EMS-focused cases bridge the gap between theory and practice to encourage more meaningful learning that builds skills and confidence.
One meaningful way to make a difference is to be prepared to respond in an emergency, before EMS gets to the scene. Learning basic life-saving skills will give you the confidence to act until medical help arrives.
By equipping yourself with these essential skills — from cardiac arrest to trauma injuries, you become part of a stronger, more resilient community — ready to step in when every second counts.
Red Cross courses to consider include:
The Red Cross also offers specialized courses to increase your emergency preparedness:
Thursday, May 21, 2026, marks Stop the Bleed Day, a nationwide initiative to raise awareness about handling life-threatening bleeding. Severe bleeding is one of the most preventable causes of death following trauma. Learning to control it in the critical minutes before EMS arrives can make all the difference.
EMS Week is more than a celebration — it’s a call to action. We honor the professionals who serve on the frontlines by recognizing their contributions and doing our part to build safer, more prepared communities.
By taking a Red Cross course, you’re equipping yourself with the tools to respond, assist and potentially save a life — just like the EMS heroes we celebrate this week and every week.
Training Services is a division of the American Red Cross. Our mission is to advance lifesaving education so you are better to prepared. Our robust training curriculum includes CPR and AED, First Aid, Basic Life Support (BLS), Babysitting and Child Care, Lifeguarding, Water Safety and more.
