what's next

The good thing about being forced to change your plans is that it generates creativity. I have been making my own schedule, so to speak, for the last week and a half, and while I have been in low gear for most of it, there are a few things germinating. Much of the impetus came from being called out at the Baltimore conference: "Hey, jackass, if you want to write, then write!" The remainder came from the clarity of not being in the thick of my usual routine, and having a chance to notice that, no, I really hadn't been happy at work for quite a while. Too long.

The first priority for this week is to pass the Research exam, which is scheduled for tomorrow. I have been playing with the books since last July, but I have never given it my full attention. Yesterday, I started reading, and things started to click into place. Let's hope they are clicked securely enough for a good grade!

While I was reviewing qualitative research yesterday, I began to think about designing a phenomenological study to examine the motivations of people who volunteer in EMS. I think it's very doable. Very few people in EMS are doing any research at all, let alone anything qualitative. While it wouldn't have the implications for practice that a randomized controlled study of a clinical intervention would, I think it would still have implications for how we recruit and retain. And it's a weird phenomenon to me that volunteerism has been preserved as well as it has in EMS, so I want to poke at it a little and see if I learn anything.

I could even make it a quantitative study by categorizing people's reasons for volunteering and seeing if they correlate with length of service or some other variable, but I don't think it will give me the depth of information I'm looking for. I think I'd hear something pat about wanting to help people, and I don't think that completely explains the phenomenon.