Who writes this, why it's called what it is, and how the site is laid out.
The Critical Vector is written by R. E. Suscitate, a pen name.
I spent fifteen years as a flight and critical care paramedic, including ECMO transports. Along the way I ran skills fairs and simulation labs, teaching surgical airways, pericardiocentesis, and chest tubes. Critical care transport during COVID is what sent me to medical school. Now I'm a medical student, learning the parts of the continuum I used to hand patients off to: the emergency department, the operating room, and the ICU.
The road here wasn't straight. I was dismissed from college at twenty, took an EMT class, and found out I was good at it. Paramedic school, critical care, and flight followed, then a degree finished years later, then medicine.
Much of the site, the tools especially, is built with A. Systole, the pen name for the AI model I work with. I set the direction and check the clinical content against cited sources; A. Systole drafts, codes, and cross-checks.
I write anonymously for now. The work should stand on its sources, not on who wrote it.
A vector has direction and magnitude. In resuscitation, naming what is wrong is often the easy part. The harder questions are which way to move and how hard to push. Most of what I write here comes back to that gap between diagnosis and action, and between protocol and judgment.
The Continuum follows patients across the handoffs: prehospital, emergency department, ICU, operating room. Cases and commentary that don't fit one specialty, because real patients don't either.
The Workshop holds the tools: pocket guides, offline web apps, and procedural education built for the bedside or the field.
The Evidence Locker is for research: paper breakdowns and case reports worth reading closely, not just citing.
From the Flight Deck is opinion and editorial, written from the prehospital side, about the rest of the continuum and the systems and policies that shape it.
The Stack lists the outside sites, podcasts, and databases I actually use.
Nothing here is medical advice. I'm a trainee writing to work through papers and cases I find worth the time. Clinical claims are tied to cited sources; check them against your own references and local protocols before acting on anything.
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