Today the weather could not have been better.
Seventy five degrees with a bit of bright sunshine. Really just enough breeze to keep the Arkansas heat from feeling too hot and to occasionally remind a golf ball that it will go anywhere BUT going where it was told. Today, Johnathan and I found ourselves standing on the first tee at the Osceola Municipal Golf Course in Osceola, Arkansas.
For most people, that probably sounds like an ordinary day. For two guys in EMS though, it was something we don’t get to experience nearly enough. A full on genuine break.
Not a day off spent recovering from the shift we just got off of. Not a weekend devoted to conferences, committee meetings, or EMS events.
Not another conversation about staffing shortages, reimbursement challenges, EMS leadership issues, huge equipment purchases, or the future of healthcare.
Just two dudes on a golf course. And honestly, I would argue that might have been exactly what we needed.
If you work in Emergency Medical Services, especially in a rural community, I bet you know how difficult it can be to separate yourself from the job. EMS has a way of becoming more than a job. It actually becomes your entire social circle. It becomes our conversations. It takes over your social media feed. Your hobbies.
Your whole identity can become lost to the EMS universe.
Many of us work together, train together, attend conferences together, and spend our days off talking about the very thing we spend our workdays doing. It gets tiring for sure.
In rural America, especially out where I am, the separation becomes even harder. The people we serve are not strangers. They’re our neighbors. They’re our classmates. They’re our local church members. They’re even our family friends.
You will run into patients at the grocery store, there’s no doubt about it. You see community leaders at local events. The nurse you gave report to yesterday might be sitting next to you at a high school football game on Friday night.
One of the things I absolutely love most about rural EMS is that very connection. But that connection often comes with a challenge. The job follows you everywhere.
Eventually, if you’re not careful, EMS stops being something you do and starts becoming everything you are. That’s where hobbies matter. Not because golf is magical (it kind of is though). Not because fishing cures burnout. Not because photography, woodworking, hunting, gardening, music, or restoring old cars suddenly fixes every problem in healthcare. They don’t. What they do provide is something equally valuable in my opinion. They provide Perspective.
The Osceola Municipal Golf Course is one of those places that quietly serves its community without demanding a lot of recognition. Like many small town golf courses across America, it provides way more than a place to play a round of golf. It provides a connection. It provides recreation. It provides an excuse to spend a few hours outdoors for once instead of staring at a screen. Just walking around the course, it’s easy to appreciate how much effort goes into keeping a place like that alive. The fairways don’t maintain themselves. The greens don’t magically stay perfectly cut. The many tournaments don’t organize themselves.
Even the pro shop plays an important role. Most golfers see the pro shop as a place to pay greens fees, cart fees, buy a sleeve of golf balls, grab a cold drink, or check out a few shirts before a round. In reality, it serves as the economic heartbeat of a local golf course. Revenue from the merchandise, equipment, tournaments, and daily operations help support the course and that creates an environment that consistently keeps people coming back.
The more I thought about it, the more it reminded me of EMS. Most people see the ambulance and the flashing lights. They see the crew doing what they do best. What they don’t see are the dispatchers, mechanics, billing specialists, educators, administrators, support staff, community partners, and countless others who make it possible for that ambulance to even respond when someone calls 911.
Both golf courses and EMS agencies rely on people doing important work behind the scenes. Both serve as great community assets. Both are stronger when communities invest in them.
As Johnathan and I worked our way through nine holes, occasionally finding the fairway and occasionally discovering parts of the course we probably weren’t supposed to be exploring, I noticed something. We hadn’t talked about EMS in nearly an hour. That may not sound significant to most people, but for first responders, it’s huge.
Healthcare has a culture that tends to celebrate constant commitment. We praise people who pick up extra shifts. We admire the provider who seems to pretty much live at the station. We all tell stories about working long hours fueled by caffeine and determination.
Somewhere along the way, we started confusing availability with dedication. I’ve realized they’re not the same thing. Being dedicated to EMS does not mean every conversation has to revolve around EMS. It doesn’t mean that every interest has to somehow benefit your EMS career.
In fact, some of the healthiest and most effective providers I’ve ever met have passions completely unrelated to healthcare, which to me just sounds so wild. I’m guilty of falling into the trap. I live and breathe EMS, and that may sound brave and honorable to most of you but when you truly investigate it you find out that it’s a little on the sad side. Those healthy and effective providers? They have interests that belong only to them. Not to their employer. Not to their community. Not to their profession. It strictly belongs to them.
The hobby itself doesn’t matter nearly as much as what it accomplishes. It reminds us that we’re more than our certifications. We are more than our titles. More than our uniforms.
Healthcare really asks a lot from people. It asks us to witness tragedy, celebrate victories, absorb stress, make difficult decisions, and carry emotional burdens that most people never see. I’m here to tell you those experiences shape us, but they should not consume us.
A hobby provides balance. A hobby provides a place to learn. A place to fail without life or death consequences. A place to challenge yourself in ways that have nothing to do with patient care. Most importantly, it reminds you that you’re still a human being beneath the uniform.
The older I get, the more convinced I become that every EMS professional needs something outside healthcare. Something that makes them forget about radios, reports, staffing schedules, and reimbursement rates for a few hours. For me lately, that’s been golf.
For someone else, it might be photography, fishing, stained glass, gardening, music, running, hunting, cooking, or any number of other things. The specific activity isn’t important. The freedom it provides is.
When Johnathan and I finished our round in Osceola, the ambulances were still there. The community engagements were still waiting. The staffing challenges hadn’t disappeared. Healthcare hadn’t magically fixed itself yet.
But for a few hours, none of those things mattered. And when we eventually return to work, we will come back refreshed, recharged, and a little more prepared for whatever comes next.
Healthcare is what we do, but It should never become the only thing we are.
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