Fourth of July considerations in Emergency Medicine with Stephen Wood

World Extreme Medicine Podcast

In this session our newest podcast host Sarah Spelsberg speaks with Stephen Wood about emergency concerns and preventive warnings heading into the Fourth of July holiday in the US – a holiday renowned for increased trauma, burns, and explosive injuries - as well as how he balances his extreme/tactical medicine careers with his leadership, research and academia. Stephen proves that you really can have it all in your career.

Stephen is an acute care nurse practitioner and program director for the acute care nurse practitioner program and the new Extreme Medicine program at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. He is also the Field Operations Director for the US for World Extreme Medicine. He is currently working clinically in the ED at Carney Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Previous to this he was the director of advanced practice providers in the division of pulmonary and critical care medicine at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center from 2021 - 2023 and the director of affiliated providers in the division of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Carney Hospital from 2020- 2021 during the COVID Pandemic. Prior to this he spent 11 years practicing as a nurse practitioner in emergency medicine. His roots are in EMS, and he has over 30 years of field experience, including nine years as a flight paramedic. Most recently, he was a medic for a regional SWAT team and an event EMT for the Boston Red Sox. His EMS involvement currently includes his work with the FDNY EMS fellowship and with training various fire departments in Rescue Task Force. He is a former fellow in Bioethics at the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School and a current visiting researcher at the Petrie-Flom Center at the Harvard Law School Petrie-Flom Center for Health Policy. He was the associate director for the BIDMC Disaster Medicine Fellowship for five years and worked with the Be Like Brit orphanage in Haiti both on-ground and doing telemedicine. He holds a Master of Science in Nursing as well as a Master of Science in Toxicology. He has also been a podcaster and conference host for World Extreme Medicine. He has a number of scholarly publications including book chapters, peer-reviewed articles and blogs. His hobbies include writing, reading, magic and lobstering.