[MUSIC] >> Welcome to The Bone, the podcast that goes deeper. Here we cut through the noise and get straight to the core of the issues that matter. From real stories to raw truths, we dive deep into the conversations that shape our world and challenge our thinking. We're not afraid to dig in and get to the marrow of it all. Whether it's life, culture or business in sports medicine, we're here to break it down raw and real. No filters, no fluff, just to the bone. With your host Shelby Daly, we're getting to the bone. This is a clinically pressed approved CEU podcast. Find the quiz to gain credit at clinicallypress.org/pursence. Clinically press company, making the complicated simple through results that give back. Find out more at clinicallypress.org. Let's get started. Welcome back to To The Bone. Today we're diving into digital innovation and emergency action planning for athletic trainers. I'm excited to welcome Jacob Swisher from EZ-A-P, a platform focused on putting emergency action plans in the pocket of athletic training staff, improving readiness, response times, and ultimately athlete safety. We'll explore how traditional plans have fallen short, how technology is changing the game, and how athletic trainers can leverage tools like EZ-A-P in high stakes environments. So welcome to the show. Awesome. Thank you so much. This is so cool. Yeah. So me and Jacob met at EATA in 2025. So this last winter spring, and I thought this was a great application, and I really wanted to have them on the show because this is where athletic training is moving towards into this technology space. I wanted to pick his brain on how he created this ultimately, and how can athletic trainers utilize this for the best performance on the field, off the field, whatever emergency is happening. So Jacob, can you introduce yourself and tell us how EZ-A-P came to be? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited to talk about all those things as well. But yeah, I'd love to give my background. I have a super stereotypical introduction to athletic training. You know, as a high school athlete, I played football and wrestled and swam, and I always thought athletic training was really cool. I love kind of looking into the athletic training room, even though I didn't want to be injured and go in. I kind of just thought it was cool to look at and everything. And then unfortunately, my sophomore year, I broke my wrist pretty badly, complete break of the radius, and then broke part of my ulna off as well. And so that was during a game. Obviously, athletic trainer was out on the field in five seconds, and then stayed with them all throughout that rehab process. And that's when I really realized like, oh, this is like a really cool job that they do and a really cool thing. And so since then, I got super interested in it, especially with the emergency side. So I was really lucky my school offered an EMT course. So as like part of your coursework for school, you could go to the Career Center and take an EMT class. So I did that my junior year, got my EMT certification, and decided to go to school to study kinesiology. That new sports medicine was really interesting to me, and then also the emergency side. I actually wrote my college essay on how my junior year prom, I brought like a tourniquet and like packing gauze and stuff in my suit, because I was just like emergency preparedness was like my bread and butter. And so got to work with the athletic teams and undergrad as a kinesiology student. But it was always kind of wondering, do I want to go the route of athletic training, kind of do like more sports medicine, or potentially nursing and do kind of focused on emergency medicine. And so ultimately made the decision to go to nursing school and started my master's in nursing with the goal of eventually becoming an emergency room nurse and then potentially doing pre-hospital, so on flight or anything like that. But while I was doing all that, working with the athletic teams, I kind of realized how in the past emergency action plans are, where even the standard practice, the best of the best is using paper, or 911 calling cards, or maybe a Google driver like a team's message or something like that. And so interestingly enough, I actually took a entrepreneurship class at UVA, I just kind of on a whim. And I said, "You know what? I'll just try to solve this problem." And so worked on it a little bit in the class and talked to athletic trainers about it who seemed pretty interested. So I just kept it going from there. And so entered it into little entrepreneurship competitions at school, which went pretty well and gave me some free money to keep working on the problem. And so that was like 2023 and I've been working on it ever since. So what is the gap that you identified within activating the emergency action plan, the emergency preparedness, and that you identified with the easy EAP? Yeah, absolutely. So I would say it more came of seeing an opportunity, because we had our paper emergency action plans and our 911 calling cards, which, when followed, can work well. But I was really interested in kind of like technology as well. And so this was kind of when automating things on iPhones became more popular, using things like shortcuts and all that. And so I saw a video about how you can set a shortcut on your phone where it's like, so you're getting in your car to go home. You can text like your significant other on my way. And then it'll send that automatically pull like the estimated time of arrival from maps and text-specific people like your estimated time of arrival and all this. And I started thinking you know it'd be really cool if I could do something like that for our emergency action plan. So instead of me calling 911 and then messaging all of our emergency contacts, I could build an automation that automatically messages all the emergency contacts. And so I don't even have to think about it. I can just press a button and it'll go. And so I did that and it worked well for me. And then I had a picture of our emergency action plan kind of like in our camera rule, or in my camera rule. But the problem with that is it's not scalable by any means. And it only kind of worked on my phone. And so I started thinking well how can I apply this to like an entire sports medicine department and how can I make this even better. And so that's kind of what I did in the entrepreneurship class to kind of bring technology into emergency action plans to bring them, bring them a step above. But once I really kind of started diving into emergency action plans and looking at the research in the case studies and all that, I found that these EAPs can be so tedious to update when you're updating 911 calling cards and paper and everything where if you have to update one phone number, you have to update all of your emergency action plans and print them all out or email them all out again and make sure everyone has the same copy. And we know that this has led to shortfalls in the past as well. There are a couple of cases out there in particular where maybe the EAP wasn't distributed properly or something like that and people don't know where the AED is and all that. And it leads to very unfortunate scenarios. So once I kind of dove into it more, I started realizing like this, this is something that could make a big difference and really help people. Yeah, well, can you go into the application a little bit more of you said you have the texting, the send out message, and then you can update certain details and it houses all the EAPs. Are there any other applications that are part of it? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so what I mentioned is kind of in the entrepreneurship world, it's called the MVP or the minimum viable product. So it's like the very first thing you use to test your hypothesis. And since then, it's gotten a lot better. So the way it works right now is we have a web portal and a mobile app on iOS and Android. And so typically your EAP coordinator is going to be the one who's in the web portal. So that's on the desktop. They upload all the PDFs of the emergency action plans. And then along with each PDF, you set the address and an alert message. And so the address is what's displayed on screen when it's activated. So whoever's activating it can read that address off to 911 operators. And then that alert message is just immediately displayed on screen. It's sent in the text message. It's sent in the push notification. And that is what you want people to see from your emergency action plan right away. So if you go into the app, you can see that PDF. And then if you activate it, it sends out that mass notification we talked about. So push notification, email, and text message. And in that notification is the address, the type of emergency that alert message as well. And so athletic trainers can use that customizable alert message for different things. Sometimes what's most pertinent is you want people to see where the closest AED is. Sometimes if EMS has to come through like a weird kind of driveway up to your venue and through a gate or something like that, you can put that in the alert message like the gate lock code. You can put the cross street where to meet EMS. And then the thing that I really like that alert message for as well is it's super easy to update. So for example, if you have one of your doors to your venues is under maintenance for the day, you can just put in that alert message. The East doors are under maintenance direct EMS to the West doors. And you save that for that day. And then once the maintenance is done, you can kind of remove that from your alert message. So you don't even have to update your whole emergency action plan. But if someone were to activate the EAP during that day, they see that alert message and they know to direct EMS to the new door and all that. Okay. So is this best used for like athletic departments or can per-DM athletic trainers use it where they're at random places all over the world, all over the place? Could a contractor send this to them depending on where they're at and working that day? Yeah, great question. So that is one of the best use cases for the app is kind of per-DM athletic trainers or anyone who's visiting whether that's a visiting team or for a neutral site game or something like that. But realistically, the way that works is the facility that's hosting the event needs to have easy EAP and their emergency action plans. But it is a very easy way to share it with per-DM athletic trainers or visiting staff. You can invite someone to your emergency action plans temporarily. So for example, I can say I want to add Shelby to our football stadium emergency action plan for the weekend. And then you have access to the PDF. You can activate it to send that mass notification, get those alerts, everything. And then once the weekend is done and your job is over, your access just expires. In sports medicine, we talk a lot about recovery, but not all recovery tools are created equal. Mark Pro isn't just another muscle stimulant. 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Don't let messy, siloed data continue to negatively impact your care delivery initiatives and practitioner value. Unlock the power of your clinical data today. Visit Preventix.com for more information, p-r-e-e-n-t-i-c-x.com. Okay, so on your home page, it says the mission is to aid athletic trainer or athletic staff in ensuring the safety of all athletes with goals like increasing access to EAPs, decreasing response time, and minimizing shortfalls. Can you impact all those and what is the goal of each of those? Yeah, a hundred percent great question. Yeah, like you said, our end goal is to aid athletic staff in ensuring athlete safety. Obviously, getting this software and installing software is not going to make all of your athletes magically safe. That is not what a software does. That's not our goal. That's not what we're aiming for. We're just here to be another tool in the toolkit and kind of make that job easier. And like you said, we do that through those three means. So if we look at those goals and then what our software actually does, so increasing access to EAPs, it allows you to have all the EAPs right on your phone with easy access. So the EAPs you use most often, you can favor it. So as soon as you open the app, they come right up. Let's say you're the wrestling athletic trainer covering softball practice for the day, you can just go into your organization, find that EAP and favor it for the day. So increasing access to all of your EAPs, but then also for your entire staff. So not just athletic trainers knowing where the EAP is, but also your sport coaches, your strength coaches, your dietitians, your sports psychologists, and the high school setting administrators, school resource officers, school nurse, there's everyone having access to that emergency action plan. Yeah, well, I keep saying athletic trainer. And this is really access to the whole team. Exactly. You know, I always keep thinking when I'm there, it's usually the athletic trainer's really community communicating very tightly, and then you're just including other people as necessary. But this really does create the team environment when an emergency emergency situation does arise, which is great. And I think, you know, as an athletic trainer, we always try to do the trainings with the different athletic teams, and well, this is what's going to happen. You're going to do this or even just the managers admin, but nobody really fully pays attention, which I think having this creates more accountability for everybody that's involved with the event, which is, I think, great and something that gets brushed over a lot. Yeah, 100%. And that actually guides us perfectly into the next one as well of decreasing response time. And the way that really looks is if we think about, we can use a high school, for example, here, but if we say a baseball or a softball coach out on the field, kind of by themselves, maybe the athletic trainer is at the soccer game or something like that. If that coach has an emergency, typically they'll call 911 and call the athletic trainer. And so the athletic trainer will be getting over there as fast as they can, and then 911 obviously has their own response mechanisms there. But with the app, it allows them to press one button to notify everyone you set as a contact. So that athletic trainer is getting that text, that push notification, potentially that email as well. But so is your school resource officer, your school nurse, all of your administrators. So even if they're not responding to help provide a medical care, they're at least helping to, or responding to assist with that 911 response, maybe getting the rest of the team to a safe place or something like that. And that's where we kind of come into to make that response easier with with the response time. Yeah, it all makes sense, especially when you have security on campus, and they're not really at the event. So now this is awesome. Yeah. And then the last one as well. Yeah, sorry. No, can't go on. Yeah, just the minimizing shortfalls, a big part of that for us is just having the up-to-date information in the palm of your hand when you need it. So instead of having to go dig through to find that piece of paper or whatnot, you have that PDF, but then also the alert message we touched on earlier. So in the text and the push notification displayed on screen, you have the gate lock code, you have the cross root where to meet EMS, where the closest AD is. So like I said, those things you need to see right away, you have to hopefully prevent any kind of shortfalls or anything like that. Yeah. Well, I'm sure you've done your research, but have there been any lawsuits for people not following their EAP directly or changing it and causing worse outcomes than if they just followed the EAP. I haven't really followed a lot of lawsuits, but I'm sure you've somewhat kept a pulse on that. Yeah, there's been some very unfortunate ones, unfortunately. Some of them I touched on a little bit where maybe there is construction. So there's a new gate EMS is supposed to go through. So there's a delayed response time of EMS. There have been cases where like a new wing of a building has been made. And so there's an AD in that new wing, but nobody kind of knew it was there and the EAP wasn't distributed. But yeah, there has been, I believe, we're past 30 million dollars of settlements in division one football alone in the past. I want to say 20 years. And that's not even all of the public settlements. There have been settlements that have happened behind closed doors that we don't know the numbers of as well. But yeah, there have been, there have yeah. So I mean to me, this seems like an amazing product. Great need it today. From your experience, like what are some of the biggest resistant points or you know, some of the hesitancy of implementing this into a department? I find that typically athletic trainers are very gun-ho. They see the product. They live this problem. Like they know this problem. They know emergency action plans. They know the need for it. Where we sometimes kind of hit that speed bump is once it kind of climbs up the ladder to administration. Administration doesn't always really know too much about sports medicine and athletic training. Sometimes they, you know, they might know that need. They might, they might be very proactive about it, but sometimes it takes some more convincing on what it actually does, why it's needed, how helpful it is. Like we talked about like what potential lawsuits or, you know, accidents it could avoid. That's where we definitely find the, the kind of friction there as well. And then when the administration needs to go into their budget as well. So what we find is in the bigger universities and kind of the pro teams where sports medicine has their own budget. It's a lot easier to get that approved and go through in kind of the high school level when we have to go through the athletic director, like the principal. That's when it just takes more time and explanation and all that. So I know you can't share real world examples, but you talked about the construction issue. Could you share some examples or case studies where easy EAP could be the difference in the sport or the emergency action scenario? Yeah, absolutely. I think the biggest examples here would be when the athletic trainer isn't necessarily on-site with the athlete directly. And so I think a lot of times when we think about EAPs and prevent medical meetings and emergency preparedness and all that, we're typically picture a football game. Or at least that's when I talk to lay people who are an athletic trainer is that's what they think of, which is great. We need to be prepared for football games like Jamar Hamlin, the key examples, yes. But at those big NFL power for football games, you have, I don't know, five plus doctors, maybe 10 athletic trainers between the two sidelines, you have x-ray technicians and EMS is on-site and everything. You need to be coordinated. You need to know who's doing what in that response. But that's not necessarily where easy EAPs can be making the biggest difference. Where easy EAPs going to be making the biggest difference is if we think about a strength coach in the weight room with the soccer team and they have an emergency and they need to send athletes to go find the athletic trainer and someone has to go get EMS. If they can just click a button, the entire sports medicine is staff is notified. So whether they're next door in a locker room or in the athletic training room, they know, oh, hey, the strength coach is having an emergency in the weight room. You know, I'm not even the soccer athletic trainer, but I'm going to grab the AD and go help with that response. And so that's where kind of minimizing the barriers to who can help with that response is going to be key. And then when it comes down to it in cardiac arrest, obviously, we're looking to decrease time to compressions and time to defibrillation. So that's where the key really lies. Yeah. So we talk heavily on athletic events. Can this be used in other settings like the industrial setting, office setting? Does it have to be athletics for this platform to be utilized? So right now, we are kind of tailored towards athletics, especially when you activate an EAP, you select the type of emergency. And so right now, we have the most common emergencies for athletics. So like head and neck and spine, cardiac arrest, breathing, those types of things. To transition into like the industrial setting or the OSHA space, that is something we're actually actively working on. I know we might talk about updates to our software later on in the show, but that is something that we are yeah, talking to athletic trainers about, which I think is really cool that athletic trainers are transitioning into that space because they know the athletic space really well. They know athletic EAPs. And so they've been very helpful to us in saying, all right, you've made this software for athletic EAPs. This is how it would be helpful in the industrial EAP setting. And but these are the edits you're going to have to make. And so yeah, that's something we're developing right now. And we're really excited about. But if any industrial athletic trainers are watching this or tactical athletic trainers or anyone who's in another setting and you're thinking, you know, this could be helpful if they did X, Y and Z. Reach out, let us know. Maybe we can build it for you. You work hard. You train hard. You take care of everyone else. But when was the last time, you treated yourself. That's where Sorso comes in created by athletes for athletes. Sorso is an all natural recovery soap that helps wash away sornice inflammation and fatigue. With ingredients like peppermint, eucalyptus and activated charcoal, it's basically self-care disguised as a shower. Whether it's after a long training session, a tournament weekend or just a tough day. Sorso helps you reset, recover and smell amazing because taking care of your body shouldn't stop when you leave the gym. So go ahead. Treat yourself. Head to Sorsoap.com and use the code TTV15. That's TTV15. For 15% off your order because recovery starts with you. 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Are there any locations settings so that the person that activates it, it gives a little bit more direct path to if maybe it happened in the bleachers behind the bleachers in the locker room, you know, not the common places where a regular EAP is supposed to be stationed. Are there any parts of the application that help with directing people to where your normal EAP isn't directed? So part of that is determined on which EAPs are uploaded. So when you upload an EAP right now, it's all venue specific. And so you could have like a general EAP or kind of an EAP kind of tangential to your athletic venue EAPs. But we are actually, it's funny we come back to this. We are working on adding in some really exciting location service features. So it could tag where you are. So if you're not exactly at the football stadium, but you're right next to it, everyone getting that alert can see. All right, Shelby is, you know, 500 feet for the ride or something like that. See your location on the map, potentially see locations of like AEDs on the map as well. So we know not just where the closest AED should be, but where the closest AED actually is and all that type of type of stuff. Again, not out right now that's in the works, but some some exciting stuff is certainly coming. Yeah, well, I just was thinking like a cross country course where it's miles of yeah, path. And it's like, well, they're right in the middle. Yeah, they're so far from where the actual medical tent is. How do you get someone out there? So no, that's really cool. And I think that'll be very helpful. I guess what other future features are you guys working on that you can disclose at this time? Yeah, so those are probably the biggest ones I would say that we're talking about right now is the adding in location services, hopefully, and the in the near future. And then whatever edits the industrial athletic trainers are looking to add for their setting as well. Yeah, those those are probably the biggest still. Yeah, well, and so this obviously helps streamline services for an emergency, but would you still recommend that people practice their EAP on a regular basis? Well, yeah, a hundred percent. I know the the National Athletic Trainer Association position statement says every year for updating and practicing these EAPs. And I think that's actually followed pretty well in practice. The thing that I think is really important to remember is in between that year, if any changes happen. So we talked about construction, but I would knew student athletic trainers or a new coach or maybe you're using a new type of AED device or something like that. Those are all times when the EAP needs to be rehearsed again and needs to be practiced. And it doesn't need to take a whole day. You know, you can practice these EAPs in 10, 15 minutes, but definitely need to be revisited. Software is by no means a replacement for any of that. Yeah, well, and it's even just staff changes and new staff, old staff. How often would you recommend somebody to check their EAPs on the EZ EAP application? Yeah, so we recommend checking at your pre-event medical meeting just before practice, before your game, making sure everyone's logged in and ready to go. You stay logged into your device for up to 90 days. So typically within a season, if you check it a couple times, you should be good to go, but you want to make sure that you have the right EAPs favorited. You have a good cellular connection if you need to send those alerts that you're checking it just like you would with any other EAP. You're making sure you have your 911 calling card or what not. So with this, is there anything else that you want to hit on? That would explain the app better if people are still confused or things that we missed so far? Not with the app I would say. I mean, we have pictures on our website and all that. You can take a look if you'd like. I think one other thing I'll touch on as well as we just released a new feature allowing athletic trainers to use QR codes as well. So if you have that example where you have pretty in athletic trainers or cross-country tournament or something like that, you can make a QR code for specific EAPs. So not just one EAP, but a group of three EAPs if you'd like or four or five or however many. And then whoever scans that QR code can then log in and have access to those EAPs and so activate it deactivate it all that as well. And so we're refining that the most helpful right now is like I said with like the cross-country tournaments, but also what you can do is you can make say like a visiting basketball emergency action plan or charitable link. So they have access to not only the court they're going to be playing on, but also the locker room. If they have like a small athletic training room for the visiting team, if they're going to be in the weight room at all, practicing before or after the game. If they scan that QR code when they show up to campus, they have access to all of those EAPs for however long you set. So one day to three, five days, however long you want to give them access. So anybody that's listening that's interested in the product, how do they get in touch for possibly a demo, learn more, look at pricing, all that type of stuff. Yeah, so all of that's on our website. It's just easy-ep.com. You can also reach out to me as well. I'm happy to meet with anyone in the email. My email is super simple. It's just
[email protected]. So you have to feel free to reach out or anything like that. Yeah. And then for a takeaway, what's one thing that athletic departments should do this week to improve their emergency action readiness if they don't have the easy EAP already? Yeah, it's the biggest thing is just like we said, practice, practice, practice. I think that is really going to be the biggest factor. And I think I have an interesting perspective on practicing EAPs and emergency response from nursing school as well. I don't know if you've ever seen the practice labs in nursing schools, but I recommend athletic training departments. Like if your school has a nursing department, reach out to your nursing department because they tend to have insane technology just because they have so many more students. So it's easier for them to get it. But in nursing school, you practice emergency response. Like it, it's the real, I mean, it's crazy. I remember we were doing a scenario where I was like listening to breath sounds and I looked up in the patient's lips were blue. And it's a robot. It's like crazy technology. So practicing that emergency response truly like it's the real thing is just a complete game changer. And I would say with that one of my biggest pet peeves and practicing those emergency scenarios and nursing school and all that was when people would say, well, in a real emergency, I would XYZ. Well, we have the facilities. We have the setup to do it. Like it's a real thing right now. And I think it's very similar to athletics where I hear coaches say a lot, you practice how you play. However, we do it when we practice is what we're going to do on game day. And it's no different with athletic trainers. The way you practice the emergency response is what's going to happen when the adrenaline is rushing and someone's life is potentially in your hands. So yeah, definitely. Well, thank you so much for being on. I'm hoping to have you on when you do the next upgrade and are providing even more services for athletic trainers. So let me know when that happens. And we'll have you talk about that. Yeah, I would love to. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. That's it for today's episode of To the Bone. I hope we sparked some new thoughts, challenges your perspectives or simply reminded you to dig a little deeper. Remember life isn't just about what's on the surface. Sometimes you've got to cut deeper and get to the bone of what really matters. To the Bone podcast is a product of daily LLC. It's hosted and produced by Shelby Daily ATC and Randy Dale. No clinical decision making should be based solely on one source. While care is taken to ensure accuracy, factual errors can be present. For more on the show, visit www.ToTheBonePodcast.com. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, rate, and leave a review. Get involved in the conversation. You can find us at www.ToTheBonePodcast.com. Drop us topics, suggestions, or be a potential guest. We're all about connecting with you, our list. Until next time, stay curious, stay grounded, and keep cutting deep.
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