Chayeisarah

I am like you. Damn it if your going to commit suicide dont piss and moan about your failed attempts, do it right the first time. And whats with the suicide hotline. If they are going to "attempt" suicide they are going to do it with or without the help of a caring and compassinate person on the other line.

I have sent this to half my family. Gives me some ideas for when telemarketers call

As a fellow Illinois EMT our EMS has been fighting the battle for some time and we are starting to make headway. One reason for this "change" is because of test scores being the way they are but the more important issue is that the state "IDPH" used to do the testing. Since they stopped doing the testing funding for the EMS sector of IDPH has dropped and the state is now faced with running out of money for the EMS sector of IDPH. If this were to happen you would find it very had for the EMS systems to functions without charging the individual departments. If you do that in a state were i would have to say 65-70% of the departments are volunteer you were see the citizens in outrage. I mean we ask the taxpayers the help out in our town and you can pretty much expect a town revolt. We are not seen as necessary until we have to respond to your house. Then we don't get there fast enough. We can't win to lose. As it stands now the Illinois EMT test will be back starting with the Paramedic test in April 2007 followed by tests at all levels.

Talk about watching the on scene time go down the crapper. I see doctors in the ER take 5 hours for a broken arm I would hate to see how long they would take in the field. The only thing I could imagine them being good for in making it easily by way of idoits with no "real" emergency outside of needing attention not needing transport. Other then that they would be in the way and a pain in the hindend

If I am not mistaken the turn actually ooriginated from the fact that it was the first bag to be grabbed as you "jumped" off the apparatus at the scene, airgo the jump bag name got coined. My department no longer calls it a jump bag its called a BLS bag but if you ask a non EMS person what a BLS bag is you may get some interesting looks however the jump bag term seems to be universal.

I have learned one valuable lesson in my area. There is not such animal as off duty. You may be clocked out but you can bet that the shit will hit the fan when everyone in the EMS system is sleeping. We are a paid day crew and paid on call at night. So I carry my pager, cell phone, EMS jacket, and jump bag.