Kim rigden, associate director of accreditation - iaed
Kim Rigden has worked in emergency services for more than 30 years. She started as a paramedic with BC Ambulance Service on a small gulf island and worked and in both urban and (very) rural areas as well as a Continuing Education trainer for the Justice Institute.
In 1999, Kim became an Emergency Medical Dispatcher in the Vancouver communications centre and saw EMS from the other side…and LOVED it. She worked as a paramedic as well as an EMD until 2002 when she focused solely on dispatch. Kim was also a CTO and a volunteer Critical Incident Stress Peer Support Diffuser for paramedics and EMDs.
In 2005, Kim was promoted to the position of Quality Improvement Coordinator and in 2006 took over managing the quality improvement program for the province of BC.
2008 brought many changes as Kim and her family re-located to Ontario and Kim became an EMD Instructor for IAED. In 2009, she added software instructor and EMD-Q instructor to her tool kit. Kim work as a consultant and instructor for IAED and enjoyed travelling to locations all over North America and abroad to train and consult with agencies. Kim also started her own consulting company, Kim Rigden & Associates and provided inspirational training sessions and consulting to Police, Fire, and Medical agencies.
During this time, Kim also began volunteering as a member of the ED-Q Task force, the Editorial Board of the Journal and Board of Accreditation ACE reviewer.
Kim returned to Comms in 2013 as the Commander of Education and QI for the Toronto Paramedic Service (the largest paramedic service in Canada). In this role, Kim restructure the QI and Education department as well as oversaw the re-accreditation of the communication centre.
Kim accepted her dream job as Associate Director of Accreditation for the IAED in November 2016. Since then she has been working very hard serving the amazing ACE agencies and assisting new agencies to become ACE. She has an incredible team of reviewers working with her! She is also on the ED-Q Curriculum board and created Strengths Based Feedback for call takers to reduce the negativity associated with performance feedback.
Kim is also an in-demand conference speaker at Navigator in the US, UK, and (virtually) in Australia. She has been the keynote and speaker at NENA and APCO conference and presented her research on Strengths Based Feedback at the Canadian Positive Psychology Conference in Montreal.
Kim is married with 2 adult and 2 teen children. She volunteers for the Kids Help Phone Crisis Text Line and also works at the local COVID Vaccination Clinic on weekends to ensure everyone in her community gets immunized. She has an honors degree in psychology, is addicted to her Peloton (KimRB22) and will start her MBA in September.