Registered Nurse · Former Fire Chief · Writer
I'm Scott Nicotera — a nurse for 23 years across flight medicine, the ICU, and the operating room, plus years as a fire chief. Two uniforms, same lesson: the hardest part of the job isn't the skill, it's the call. I write two newsletters about exactly that. Pick the one that's yours.
Two newsletters
One for the clinicians, one for the fire service. Both built on the same idea: the hardest decisions happen at the edge, with incomplete information and no time to spare.
Clinical leadership from the frontline forward.
For nurses & clinical leadersThe leadership lessons they skip in nursing school — written by someone who's stood at the sterile field, recovered open-hearts, and run a unit.
"Competence keeps patients alive. Judgment keeps teams together."
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Command judgment for chief officers.
For fire service chiefsThe politics, budgets, and people problems that hit after you make chief — the stuff the fireground never prepared you for. Written by a former fire chief.
"The fire's out in an hour. The politics last for years."
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About Scott
I'm a registered nurse with 23 years in high-acuity care — paramedic, flight nurse, ICU recovering open-heart patients, and now the operating room with a cardiothoracic focus. I've worked as staff, manager, and director.
Before all that, I was Fire Chief of a department in New Hartford, New York. That command experience shapes how I think about everything: calm under pressure, comfortable with chain of command, used to making real-time calls with incomplete information.
Both newsletters come from the same place — the gap between knowing your job and leading people who do it. That's the part that's hard, and that's what I write about.
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Both are free. Read one, read both — whatever fits the work you do.