Schwaa

I've only left one thing on scene. The glucometer. It was 4:30am and we had an unresponsive pt. My medic and the ambulance crew took off to the ER. It was my job to wrap up all the gear that was left on scene and meet my medic and the ambulance at the ER. I had thought I had picked up everything. The pts husband rode in with the ambulance and locked the doors behind him. I took my time, drove to the ER 5 miles away. I had walked in just as the husband was being let in to see the pt. He gets my attention and says something along the lines of "I found a little black thing, I dont know what it is but I thought it might be important. I left it on my counter..." . It was an easy fix though. He gave us his house key and we went back and got it. He just told us to leave his key under his mat Lesson learned.

You're not the only Medic student who's in that boat. I am now 2 months and 1 week from finishing medic school. I just started my ride time and I feel as if I am truely not ready for the street, but I do have 280 more hours of ride time.... I am ALLWAYS second guessing myself. I guess the confidence will come with time. Good luck!

Sunstar is a private EMS company(Paramedics plus) running under a county contract. The word on the street is that the county contract is comming to an end soon and that the county FDs(individual cities) may be taking over transports(will save tax payers $24million/year, which only comes out to $25/person per year). I beleive Paramedic hourly pay is around $12-13/hr and you can not work 24 hour shifts. http://www.myfoxtampabay.com/myfox/pages/H....1.1&sflg=1

Have you looked into university towns? Tallahassee Florida I believe is run by Leon county EMS. I don't know anything about their system but there is no place better than the capital for a single guy 8) Im not f---ing kidding on that. I was up there a little while ago when school wasnt even in session, the place was heaven on earth. I cant even imagine what its like when school is in session. I live in pinellas, but I don't work for sunstar and I never had the desire to. I'm in medic school now and half of the students work for sunstar. I have yet to hear anything positive about paramedics plus/sunstar. The sunstar contract is up soon and the idea of going to fire based ems/transports is in the air(but that may never happen). Sunstar also does interfacility transports, another negative for you. Fire is really the only way to go in pinellas if you want to live comfortably, or you can work in a hospital(3 trauma centers, Tampa General-1, St. Josephs-2, Bayfront Medical center-2) Thats my rant/opinion.

I should probably wind up putting some thought into my posts before i ramble on... That would be the type of rescue I am referring to. Sorry for the spelling errors, I was typing a little quick this morning. As you may allready know, that is almost the same system in place in Pinellas, except the contracted ambulance is ALS(sunstar).

Florida dosnt have ILS, so no ILS engines. Sunstar is the trasport company for pinellas county. Susntar is being run by paramedics plus, before that it was AMR. The lowest bidder wins. Every engine in the county is ALS and over 75% of the calls are medical. 2007 stats: Emergency EMS calls - 165,457 NON- Emergency EMS - 101,773 Fire Calls - 18,727 Those Non-emergency EMS calls are calls determined to be non emergent after being received by the 911 center, they dont get an engine lights and sirens. Most likely they will get a sunstar ambulance(ALS) non emergency. NOT EVERY CALL GETS 3 MILLION UNITS RESPONDING LIGHTS AND SIRENS Want to talk about redundant. The system in which the author talks about, Hillsborough County Fire Rescue, is no better off. Hilsborough county has mostly all ALS, besides some trucks just like Pinellas. They also have Rescues that are capable of transporting patients. Say Hillsborough gets called out for a DIB. Automatic ALS engine and ALS rescue. Rescue and engine get on scene and determines its a BS call. So thats 2 units that are allready on scene. What does the transport capable rerscue unit do? Requests a contracted BLS ambulance on top of the Egine and Rescue allready on scene. BLS ambulance 15 minutes out? recue says ok, I dont feel like waiting, Send then lights and sirens. What to talk about a F--- up system? If any of you want any specifics on either systems, so that you arnt forming your opinion on this biased article, feel free to pm me and i will see what i can do.

Just the fact that this guy interviewed Chief Graves from Seminole Fire Rescue makes me wonder what this author really knows or how much research he has actually put in. Lets talk to a guy in toronto about Pinellas' EMS system? WTF? How about when Sunstar runs out of units? Is fire necessary then? Almost all Fire units are ALS in the county, except for a few trucks. As for Hillsborough: A lady falls down in a nursing home? Guess what? She gets an ALS engine also! Hillsborough and Tampa are no better off than Pinellas. Blah blah blah blah blah thanks

To my understanding under all circumstances for reciprocity, you will have to retake the NREMT-B. Thats even if you are allready NREMT-B certified.

Thats what you get for working at AMR?

Don't forget about after she pulls the stylet out with her teeth and says "Damn I'm good." Anything for TV.

I've also about this on other sites. It seems the media isn't telling the whole story. Ipod, Car stoped in the middle of the road, etc. Don't make your judgements on this article alone.

I gotta remember to read before i comment :roll:

Well I finished my first week and I have to say I probably screwed myself over. For the first month Im taking AP2 and a world history course which takes up a lot of my time. When I'm done with those I have to start Pharmacology which I should have taken in place of my history class so I had it done already.. I never knew that I would have to cram so much stuff into so little time. For the first semester we only need 2 shifts at our level 2 trauma center, 8 ER shifts(for 25 sticks), 3 OR shifts (for intubations), and 1 shift at a respiratory center. All of this plus work and study time is crazy. When I have time before class, im at OR clinicals. When I have time after class, I'm at ER clinicals... When I have Fridays off, Im at the ER or Trauma center. Saturdays are work(24) and I have sundays all to my self.... and my Medic/Pharmacology Books.... But It will all be worth it in the end. (now back to studying)

EMSers dont want to fight fires FFers dont want to do EMS For those of us stuck in between, who gives a crap I work for a private EMS service in centralish florida and work along side some major fire departments. The biggest problem I see if the Fire Fighters not wanting to do EMS and bitching about it. They knew when they joined the FD that they WERE going to be doing EMS and since 75%(or more) of calls these days are EMS I dont think it would be a bad idea to make Paramedic mandatory and slash the EMT's. Hell some departments are allready switching to Paramedic/Fire Fighters instead of Fire Fighter/Paramedics. My little bit, havea nice day.

Im starting paramedic school in early april at St. Petersburg College(small community college in florida) and to be honest im somewhat freaking out. I really have no idea what to expect. I've searched the net and talked to friends who recently went through paramedic school to get an idea of what its like. Pretty much all the answers I've come across have been that its going to be hard, Im not going to have a social life for a year, and its going to take a lot of studying. The program is 3 semesters long- Summer(which starts 6 weeks early and over laps the previous spring semester)--->Fall--->Spring. Pre req/co reqs for the program are EMT-B, AP 1, AP 2, and Pharmacology. So what is it really like? Am I going to have any time off? How hard is the curriculum?(compare it to AP?). How many people in your class passed/ how many have dropped out so far? What helped you through it? Any advice in general? Help me :oops: