Mike Shertz is a dual-boarded emergency medicine and EMS physician, a former U.S. Army Special Forces medic (18D) and the founder of Crisis Medicine. He is both the company’s Chief Medical Officer and lead instructor. That means he does research, design, teach, and continually refine and update the online courses using evidence-based medical and scientific literature. His military special operations, tactical law enforcement, and civilian EM/EMS experience has shaped his approach to teaching TECC/TCCC courses.
He sat down to tell us about his company, how he teaches and his take on the challenges facing hazmat.
What inspired your initial idea?
The idea behind Crisis Medicine was born out of a clear gap: the need for tactically relevant, scientifically grounded medical training that could be applied in high-threat environments by military, law enforcement, fire, and EMS personnel. Many existing training models were too rigid, too theoretical, or lacked context for real-world application under duress. Crisis Medicine was created to bridge that gap. I want to teach students to care for the casualty in front of them, making sure they keep both themselves and the casualty safe, and provide the right care at the right time.
How did that idea evolve into what we see today?
Crisis Medicine began with in-person training for more than a decade, but friends and students kept telling me I should film the courses to offer online courses for agencies that couldn’t afford to send people to training. My wife likes to take credit for the idea. My best friend from elementary school happens to be an independent filmmaker and when we discussed the idea with him. He was both 100% on board and gave me a smoking deal on the technical aspects of the original project.
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The initial idea rapidly evolved into a full complement of online courses to increase accessibility without sacrificing rigor. The goal was to maintain the depth and realism of live instruction, but make it available globally and on-demand. Our course offerings now include classes that incorporate both the Tactical Emergency Casualty Care and Tactical Combat Casualty Care guidelines, and specialized courses like the Tactical CBRN Casualty Care course, which helps responders manage casualties both traumatically wounded and in chemically and radiologically contaminated environments. Most of the CBRN courses I looked at were too theoretical and too academic. This is a place where students really need to know both the what and why of what to do, as well as the how to do it best.
What did you learn from early failures?
One of the early lessons was that even highly motivated students can struggle to complete online classes, especially with some of our courses topping 10 and more hours. Although we’ve tried to make the online training translate directly to operational relevance, students training in between calls sometimes had trouble completing modules. This year, we’ve entirely revamped the curriculum dividing segments into shorter blocks, and thus more accessible. We’ve included new visuals to impact the ability to remember crucial aspects and have added even more hands-on, close up skills stations to try to bring the in-person course feel to an online platform.
What have you learned from taking your product into the fire service market?
The fire service is an incredibly mission-driven community, but training time is at a premium and the personnel serving in these roles are inundated with training requirements, most of which is of poor quality. Firefighters need training that is engaging, flexible, doesn’t waste time, and directly improves their ability to save lives. We learned that the key to success in this space is providing modular, self-paced “television quality”, as one student described it, online learning that’s backed by scientific rigor and can be immediately put into practice during multi-agency responses — including CBRN hazmat incidents.
What has been the most profound story you have heard from a customer?
Two of our students let us know they had received life saver awards after taking our online classes. Both law enforcement, one had never laid hands on a casualty and was a new officer. At a shooting, when other officers had secured the scene, she rendered aid to a casualty with a chest wound and was able to provide aid and correctly identify the problem to responding paramedics when they arrived. A second officer had never used NPAs on a human, but had watched our airway training blocks and provided aid to a critically wounded motorcyclist at a crash scene.
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We are always grateful when students who have trained with us in-person later take an online class and contact us saying “it was just like being in the classroom with you.” That’s our goal, and it reinforced our belief that high-fidelity training can save lives — even when delivered online.
What’s the biggest misconception about Crisis Medicine’s role in emergency response (specifically hazmat)?
That we’re just another online course provider. In reality, Crisis Medicine is the only accredited training provider offering fully online, science-based tactical casualty care courses — aligned with both TECC and TCCC guidelines — that also integrate the complexities of hazmat and CBRN environments. Our CBRN course is specifically designed for responders who must operate in PPE and navigate casualty care in contaminated zones. It covers real-world scenarios and equipment not addressed in most civilian or military training programs. It goes beyond just the theoretical and chemistry into the practicalities of dealing with chemically contaminated casualties, especially when they are also traumatically wounded.
For a hazmat team, what’s the biggest barrier to entry to using Crisis Medicine’s training?
Institutional inertia. Many teams are used to in-person, classroom-based training, even when it limits participation. Some decision-makers may not yet realize that online, on-demand tactical training can be equally rigorous and often more effective — especially for specialized teams balancing irregular schedules and high operational tempo. Students can train individually at their own pace and we’re able to provide accountability and completion updates to command structure.
What problem keeps you up at night?
That responders will show up to complex incidents — like a mass casualty in a hot zone — without the training to manage care in those conditions. It’s not enough to know just the medicine; you need to know how to apply it while wearing PPE, working under time pressure, and dealing with limited resources. Although most providers have some training in these topics, it rarely provides clinically actionable information that can be applied to the casualty directly in front of them.
What does the near-term future look like for your company?
We’re expanding access to our CBRN and tactical medicine training to more fire and hazmat units across the country. That includes agency discounts, department-wide access, and continuing to update our courses to reflect real-world feedback and emerging threats.
We’ve also started a Tactical-CBRN Journal watch, much like the Co-TCCC Committee’s TCCC updates so responders who want to keep their reading of the applicable medical literature up to date can do so in a relatively streamlined way — saving time and staying trained and up to date. It’s published roughly quarterly and available at our website.
What does the long-term future look like for your company?
We plan to continue leading the field in online tactical medicine training by continuing to update our courses, adding new, realistic scenarios to reinforce knowledge. We’ve undertaken a major update of the website so students training in under-resourced areas can access the website efficiently and train with us.
What’s your boldest prediction for the future about how first responders will learn when it comes to hazmat and emergency response?
So much of the current TCCC guidelines has been shaped by the global war on terror and our experience in the Middle East. With the war in Ukraine, we’re back to WWII wounding patterns, which are very different from Iraq and Afghanistan. Then layer increasingly complex drone use and stagnant front lines and you have a replication of the tactical environment that led to chemical warfare use in WWI. I fear with increasing hostilities in the world, we may see CBRN casualties with more frequency again.
