Erik Usher (Flight Nursing, Cadaver Labs and First Responder Family Health) - Episode 1087

Behind The Shield

James Geering

Health & Fitness, Mental Health, Fitness

4.9 • 667 Ratings

🗓️ 22 May 2025

⏱️ 118 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Erik Usher has nearly 30 years of widespread clinical trauma experience and currently serves as a rotor-wing flight nurse/paramedic for Bayflite in Tampa, FL. Erik began his trauma career in 1988 in Connecticut working for a busy hospital-based EMS agency. While continuing to work EMS, Erik obtained his nursing degree at St. Francis Hospital School of Nursing, where he trained in the emergency department of one of Connecticut’s largest and busiest Level I trauma centers.

In 1998, Erik began working for the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas. In concert with working in the trauma center, Erik started flight nursing for Mercy Air in 1998, when he became manager and helped establish the current Las Vegas medevac flight program. Erik also worked in the trauma center and in EMS as a Las Vegas street paramedic.

Erik is an active speaker at national conventions and a lead instructor/dissector for advanced procedural cadaver labs throughout the country. Erik is an instructor for the Trauma Nursing Core Course (TNCC), advanced cardiac life support (ACLS) and the American Heart Association’s pediatric advanced life support (PALS). He has also published many textbooks and medical journals throughout his career.

Erik is also the author of multiple children's books, helping first responder families with both service and Line of Duty Deaths.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode is sponsored by Team Builder, yet another company that's doing great things for the first responder community.
0:07.0	As a strength and conditioning coach myself who also trains tactical athletes,
0:11.0	dissemination of wellness information is one of the biggest challenges.
0:16.0	Now, TeamBuilder is the premier strength and conditioning software for tactical athletes. And there are several features that really impressed me.
0:23.6	Firstly, there is a full exercise library, so you, the personal trainer, does not have to create that within your own department.
0:31.6	Secondly, you can send out programming, but also individualize, which I love.
0:36.6	So you blanket program for everyone.
0:39.4	Now you can tweak based on someone's injury, someone's need to maybe drop some body composition,
0:45.0	rather than having to write a program for every single person on their own.
0:49.6	TeamBuilder also allows you to build custom questionnaires to collate health and wellness data. It integrates
0:55.7	with wearables. And I think one of the most important things is obviously it tracks. To me,
1:01.3	it's imperative that we as a profession start tracking our people from day one and then over the full
1:08.6	span of their career, therefore catching potential wellness issues and injuries before they happen.
1:16.0	Now, if you want to try TeamBuilder, they are offering you, the audience of the Behind the Shield podcast, a free 14-day trial to experience all of the features.
1:26.5	And if you want to take a deeper dive into Team Builder,
1:29.1	listen to episode 132 with Melissa Macardo or go to team builder.com. And I'll spell that to you
1:37.3	because it's not as you think. T-E-A-M-B-U-I-L-D-R.com. Welcome to the Behind a Shield podcast.
1:45.8	As always, my name's James Gearing, and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show,
1:50.5	flight nurse and author Eric Usher.
1:54.7	Now, in this conversation, we discuss a host of topics from Eric's journey into the world
1:59.9	of nursing, pre-hospital medicine,
2:02.9	the idiosyncrasies of flight medicine, cadaver labs, using children's books to educate our children
	...

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