ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the senses and intuition are part of the invention process that communicators use during unpredictable situations. In recounting the scene size-up, it utilizes notational marks in brackets to indicate how emergency medical services (EMS) professionals use multisensory invention. The chapter also utilizes the codes that emerged during data analysis, to show how EMS professionals engage their senses and intuition to assess a complex situation. These codes include mediated hearing, mediated sight, unmediated hearing, unmediated sight, touch, smell, intuition: experience, and intuition: gut feeling. The chapter expands how invention facilitates workplace communication practices by pairing invention with the senses and intuition. In the EMS workplace, participants analyze the rhetorical situation of a response—its exigencies, constraints, audience, purpose, and objects—to determine what to communicate and what actions to take. The chapter suggests that EMS training could benefit from teaching EMS students how to tune into and rely on their senses and intuition.
