Showing results by author "Orlando Rivera" in All Categories

You didn’t start like this. But nursing changed you anyway. The Nurse Who Sees Too Much is not a burnout book. It’s a recognition book. This is for the nurse who notices everything now. Who can’t turn their brain off. Who scans rooms, people, exits, tone. Who jokes darker than they used to. Who feels more guarded, sharper, quieter and doesn’t know when that happened. This book names what nursing does to your mind without romanticizing it or minimizing it. Inside, you’ll find why: Normal stopped feeling normal Caring started to cost you Relaxing feels impossible Sleep doesn’t ...

Cardiology for the Streets What Paramedics Actually Need to Know Before the Hospital Steals the Patient Most cardiology books are written for classrooms and hospitals. This one is written for the street. Cardiology for the Streets is a practical, experience-driven guide to cardiac decision-making in prehospital and frontline emergency care, where information is incomplete, ECGs are often nondiagnostic, and the most important decisions are made before labs, imaging, or cardiology consults exist. This is not a protocol manual. It is a book about judgment. Written by a registered nurse, ...

You don’t lose your career on the obvious calls. You lose it in the gray ones. The EMS Decision Bible is a professional reference for EMTs, paramedics, and EMS leaders who know that judgment, not checklists, determines outcomes. This is not a memoir. This is not anti-protocol. It’s a field-tested framework for decision-making, documentation, and clinical judgment when protocols stop being enough covering high-risk call types, refusal and AMA language, gray-area patient assessment, and narrative phrasing that holds up under review. Written by a veteran EMS clinician and healthcare leader...

Before You Choose Nursing The Honest Teen Guide to Nursing Life Nursing looks good online. Scrubs. Coffee. Aesthetic routines. But that is not the job. This book answers one real question every future nurse needs to face early: Do you want nursing, or do you want the idea of nursing? Written for teens considering nursing and for parents who want the truth, Before You Choose Nursing pulls back the filter and shows what the profession actually feels like before you commit years of your life to it. This is not discouraging. It is clarifying. Inside this honest guide, teens will learn: • What...

You Can’t Chart Gut Instinct is a field report from the back of the bus. Written between psych calls, refusals, overdoses, and the kind of trauma that doesn’t leave visible bruises. It’s not a guide. It’s a mirror.

The EMS Judgment Workbook Training the Decisions That Define You Most EMS education teaches protocols. This workbook trains what actually saves you when protocols stop helping: judgment under uncertainty. The EMS Judgment Workbook is a scenario-driven, mission-focused training tool designed for EMTs, paramedics, EMS students, FTOs, and clinical educators who want to sharpen decision-making in the moments that matter most. This is not a protocol review. It is not a test. It is not a feelings journal. It is a structured system for practicing how you think when information is incomplete, ...

EMS does not have a burnout problem. It has a recognition problem. The Medic’s Unfair Advantages reveals why hard work, overtime, and loyalty stop paying off, and why medics consistently undersell skills that other fields quietly pay for. This is not a motivational book and not a side hustle guide. It is a translation manual for judgment, risk assessment, decision-making under uncertainty, documentation, and calm under pressure. If you feel competent on scene and invisible everywhere else, this book explains why, and what changes once you finally have language for what you do.

They call it just one more shift. As if it’s temporary. As if it doesn’t accumulate. As if nothing ever follows you home. One More Shift is a powerful, unflinching book about emergency medical services, loss, and the quiet cost of staying in a job that never truly lets go. Written from inside EMS, this is not a how-to manual or a collection of war stories. It is a reckoning with what happens when the job takes one of its own and keeps going anyway. When the radio goes silent. When the locker stays closed. When the calls don’t stop out of respect. This book explores the lived reality ...

You’re Having a Heart Attack What No One Tells You Until It’s Almost Too Late Most heart attacks don’t look like heart attacks. They look like discomfort. Fatigue. Indigestion. Anxiety. A bad day you plan to push through. They look almost normal until suddenly they aren’t. Written by Orlando E. Rivera, a former EMT, paramedic, emergency nurse, cath lab nurse, and cardiovascular quality leader, You’re Having a Heart Attack exposes the uncomfortable reality behind cardiac emergencies, survival, and what happens after the hospital saves your life. This is not a feel-good health book....

You are not “just an EMT.” And the system depends on you believing that you are. This book is for EMTs who arrive first, carry the weight, and disappear from the story. For the ones told their role is temporary, entry-level, or just a stepping stone. For those who feel the exhaustion, frustration, and quiet anger but have never had language for it. Written by a former EMT, paramedic, nurse, and flight nurse, this book exposes the unspoken realities of emergency medical services: hierarchy without protection, responsibility without authority, burnout without recognition, and the ...

Nurses are leaving the profession in record numbers — not because they couldn’t handle the job, but because the job stopped protecting the people who do it. You Can’t Chart Moral Injury is the book nurses have been waiting for — and the one healthcare leaders can’t afford to ignore. Told through journal entries, reflections, and searing commentary, this powerful work gives voice to the trauma, silence, and survival that define modern nursing.

Some people don’t leave relationships. They just stop arriving. You Can’t Love Me Like This is not a self-help book. It is not a relationship guide. And it is not written to make anyone feel comfortable. It is a raw, unfiltered look at what high-stakes professions quietly take from love, intimacy, and the people who wait at home. Written by healthcare leader and former frontline clinician Orlando E. Rivera, this book explores what happens after the shift ends, when the sirens stop, but survival mode doesn’t. It names the patterns most couples feel but rarely talk about: emotional ...

You Can’t Chart the Future: Why Broken Systems Make or Break Tomorrow’s EMS and Nursing Leaders Healthcare isn’t broken by accident. It’s broken by design. And those paying the highest price are the ones wearing the scrubs. From empty ER chairs where leaders should be sitting to the silent suffering of nurses and medics crushed by impossible systems, You Can’t Chart the Future rips the curtain back on the truth most won’t dare to say out loud. Dr. Orlando Rivera, a paramedic turned flight nurse turned executive, has lived it all—from blood-stained trauma bays to boardrooms ...

What if the most dangerous patients are the ones who don’t look sick? In emergency medicine, nursing, and prehospital care, decisions are often made in seconds, under pressure, with incomplete information. Experience sharpens instinct, but it also creates shortcuts. Familiar stories feel safe. Certain patients feel predictable. And sometimes, that certainty arrives too early. The Patient Who Didn’t Look Sick explores how clinical judgment is shaped long before tests are ordered or diagnoses are made. This book examines cognitive bias, premature closure, labeling, authority influence, ...

They said you were too emotional, too slow, too distracted, too much. This book says they were wrong. If you’ve ever sat in a nursing lecture holding back tears, wondering why your brain refuses to work like everyone else’s… this book is for you. If you’ve blanked on an exam you studied all night for, shut down during clinicals, or been told you’re “not nurse material”—this guide is your lifeline.

Most of the work in emergency services never shows up in a report. It happens before anyone speaks. Before a decision is voiced. Before control is tested. This book is about that work. Written for EMTs, paramedics, and EMS professionals, this book explores the unseen discipline behind calm scenes, defensible decisions, and professional restraint under pressure. Not protocols. Not algorithms. Not what anyone sees. But how experienced providers think when certainty is incomplete and judgment matters most. This is not a how-to guide. It is a recognition of the internal skill set that develops ...

Read This Before You Get Blamed A Survival Guide for When Everything Goes Wrong This is not a book about mistakes. It is a book about what happens after them. When something goes wrong, facts do not decide the outcome. Narratives do. If you have ever been told: “Explain your thinking.” “We need clarification.” “This is about accountability.” This book was written for you. Read This Before You Get Blamed shows how blame actually works inside organizations when a decision fails or looks bad in hindsight. Not theory. Reality. You will learn: Why blame is assigned before facts are ...

Welcome to The Eggflation Diaries—a brutally honest, laugh-so-you-don’t-cry survival guide for anyone trying to live, parent, work, and stay sane in an economy that’s cracked beyond recognition. This isn’t a finance book. It’s a field guide for the financially fried. It's for the ones doing mental math in the checkout line, the parents skipping meals so their kids don’t have to, and everyone who's ever screamed into a pillow after checking their bank app.