Redcell19512

Geez, pretty bad when the union president thinks the workers are unrealistic. Looks like there was a second page to the article but I coundn't view it for some reason.

When I was in high school I volunteered with the local BLS squad and yes, we were allowed to leave school to go on call. You had to be an EMT, 18 years old, have a certain grade in all classes (I don't remember the particulars but we used the same standards that the athletic dept used), and....you could only leave if the squad was about to fail to respond (a driver only situation). So call is dispatched, driver shows up, second dispatch, nobody shows up. Driver gets out of ambulance, calls the school office, office calls your class, you leave, wait for ambulance to pick you up, 25 minutes later the elderly lady who lives 2 blocks from the ambulance station gets her ambulance. One of my HS Vice Principle's was a long time volly member of the ambulance and a Grand PooBahBah of the Lion's Club (who happened to own the ambulance). I'm sure he was instrumental in getting this policy in place. I disagree with this type of thing 100%. You are in school to learn. Run fire and EMS calls during your time off. If the system relies on a senior in high school to leave class to attend an emergency then the system is broken and needs to be fixed.

So he's not a member of Megaforce?

I had hypnotherapy many years ago for stress reduction. Check the yellow pages under psychologists/counselors. You may have to make a few phone calls. Explain your problem to the receptionist and what you're looking for treatment wise and they'll try to match you up with a therapist within their group that can help you. I'm sure the larger practices will have at least one person who does hypnotherapy. They may also suggest some other method of treatment. Good luck to you.

We work 12 hour shifts. Two 12 hour days, two 12 hour nights, four days off. In some 7 day periods we work 36 hours, some 48. Last year on our short weeks we'd have to pick up an "extra" 12 hour shift to keep us at 48 hours, lest we lose money from our paycheck. Management realized that with our rising call volume the employees were getting burned out. To help relieve this we went to the BELO plan (I don't remember what it stands for. Basically, we work our four 12 hour shifts then get four days off without any extras. The company figured out everyone's annual salary at 48 hrs a week (that's 40 hours straight, 8 hours of OT) and and split it up so that we get the same pay check every pay period throughout the year whether we do a 36 or 48 hour week. If we do happen to sign up for an OT shift, that shift is added on top of our "BELO" pay. In the end I'm working an average of 42 hours a week and I get four days off between tours but I'm getting the same pay as last year at 48 hours a week with those nasty "extras" in the middle of my time off. The longest we normally allow anyone to work is 18 hours straight. We do have a policy that allows 24 hour shifts in the event of an emergency. We enacted that plan one time in the last 10 years for a massive blizzard. Personally I think 18 hours is too long. If we're in a bind I'll do my 12 shift on the street and maybe pick up a 3 hour football standby but that's about it.

If by "slap" she drew her hand back and let loose with a decent amount of force such that you could hear the skin on skin contact across the room...well then that's a bit much. If the slap was more of a tap, like you might tap someone on the shoulder to get their attention, that's different. I generally stay away from the face. Pull on an arm hair or do a finger stick for the blood sugar check (if they're unconcsious I'd be doing it anyway). Sounds like he let her have it pretty good, concussion, hearing loss, vision damage...ouch.

Sadly I can. There are many areas in my County that either don't have 24 hour police coverage or they have no police dept at all. These areas end up being covered by the State Police. Example, Heidelberg Twp and Hereford Twp. both rely on State Police coverage. One trooper will cover both of these Townships (as well as several other townships in addition). It takes a trooper 45 minutes to an hour to drive from Hereford to Heidelberg "emergency speed". Now imagine that you live in these areas and you're calling to report a robbery in progress at your home. 45 minutes would be a looooong wait.

So would you then agree that obese employees should be next?

So the next logical step here is to also not hire anyone who is overweight, right? Isn't obesity the new epidemic in the US? I'm not even going to get into the whole invasion of privacy issue.

The only "tactical medical" team in our county is unarmed. I know a number of them went through a what amounted to an armed security guard course that under state law would allow them to work as, well, armed security guards. That never actually translated to the medics or EMTs carrying weapons while working the tactical scene. An informal survey of my co-workers finds that about a third of us are armed off the job (PA has concealed carry laws so those of us who carry do so legally).

I'm not always conscious of the fact that I'm doing it but yeah, I do it on every patient. ME: Hi sir, how are you today? Patient stands up and shakes my hand: I'm in bad shape buddy. If we dont get this catheter unblocked my bladder's gonna blow! Now, druing this exchange am I thinking "ABC...ABC...ABC...". No, but I'm still checking, even though it's not running through my brain. I've never enjoyed practical skills stations and these competitions. I dont do well in that kind of environment. I was involved with an Explorer program years ago and we would run them through little scenarios. They'd do the whole, "is the scene safe?" and I'd reply, "I don't know, is it?" We threw a little curve ball to them. On first glance the scene was safe. But when they ran through their assessment they found a toy gun tucked in the patient's pants. In the real world there's no instructor at the door telling you that the scene is or is not safe, you gotta figure that out for yourself. Guess what, sometimes a safe scene becomes dangerous and you need to react accordingly. Sadly this is an area of prehospital training that is lacking (not an ALS vs BLS thing...it's found in all aspects of EMS).

The above post is true and by true I mean false. It's all lies. But they're entertaining lies and in the end isn't that the real truth. The answer is no.

I keep a medical kit in my trunk and barf bags in my glove box. This stuff is for my kids, not for whacker patrol. No lights, radios, bumper stickers, etc on the car. When I come home from work my EMS jacket gets hung up down in the basement (no way I'm wearing that germ infested thing off duty). My father always felt it was important to keep a low profile and to never stand out. I guess I have him to thank for keeping me out of the whacker phase. Of course he would also argue with squirrels and often made ridiculous statements. During career day he told my entire class that he was the one who turned dogs and cats against one another. But I digress....

I heard Dust :twisted: lures children into his ginger bread house. That's about all I got on him.

It's Yiddish, PLOTZ: To burst, to explode, "I can't laugh anymore or I'll "plotz." To be aggravated beyond bearing.

If I hear one more provider parrot off that mindless phrase "BLS before ALS" for no other reason than it sounds like the right thing to say....well I'm just gonna plotz.

Umm, we teach our wheelchair van drivers to do that in a week. Got anything a bit more spectacular? P.S. I used spell check and guess what it said jackass....

Well, the smart ones go on to bigger and better things...medic school, nursing school, RT school, or perhaps they get a teaching degree. The drones do nothing. They go to work everyday and complain about how there's no chance for advancement and complain that the pay sucks. They hope that the State will create a new Advanced Scope EMT certification so they can do the same "neat" things medics do....but instead of a year and a half of night school/internship they'll expect to be able to knock it out in 4 weekends.

Like, the other day, I was in the ER with a patient that had a ruptured AAA. I know it was ruptured cause I went to night school for 10 months and they learnt me to know that stuff. Anyway this idiot doctor thinks that he can tell ME i'm wrong just because he went to school for 12 years. When the patient dies i'm going to testify on behalf of their family and I'll be on the cover of JEMS as a hero. Disclaimer: the above statements should be read with lots of sarcasm. (you probably already knew that but hey, some people are a little slow).

All the hospitals we transport to offer full service cardiac care (I feel like I'm talking about a car). We started transmitting 12 leads this year. We do the 12 lead. If we have a STEMI or if the medic isn't sure we transmit the EKG and call in to speak with a doctor. The doctor will then decide whether or not to call an MI alert. Either way it has no effect on the hospital destination. Case in point: Two weeks ago we had a woman pull into the shopping mall parking lot with chest pain. She called 911 after waiting 15 minutes for the symptoms to subside. The medic arrived, did a 12 lead, transmitted the 12 lead, hospital called an MI Alert. Call dispatched at 1255. Patient at the hospital, through the ER, to the Cath Lab, and into the OR for bypass by 1400. Case in point (not so good): EMS crew responds to the same address for the second time in one day. Elderly, female, diabetic, laying in the bathroom screaming that she's going to die. When asked to clarify that statement all she can say is that "something's wrong!" The medic calms her down and encourages her to slow her breathing. She is transported to the hospital, BLS. Several hours after she arrived in the ER a 12 lead was finally done and revealed that she was having an MI. She died in the hospital a week later. (Medical director is doing a case review on this, I'll post more when he's finished). Regionally we've just adopted a protocol that allows the use of a helicopter to fly STEMIs to cardiac centers and CVAs to stroke centers when the time of onset (for strokes) is known. This doesn't effect my service but it applies to plenty of services along the outer rim that don't have access to specialty centers. I still have more than a few medics who don't bother doing 12 leads on ANY patients because "duh...it won't change my treatment none....duh". Frustrating but ever the optimist I'm still trying to help them see the light.

Wait, so I get a 5% whacker rating because I own a cheap ass littman select? Maybe I should buy one of those $10 double tube jobs and just pretend I'm listening to breath sounds.

The paid guys would ensure coverage during the day when most of the volunteers would be at work. As far as leaving the pot hole truck behind....I have no idea. I really don't think this plan went any further than discussions at council meetings. The details were porbably never worked out. We're talking about a small town here anyway. This fire dept probably does 100 calls per year with most of those being automatic fire alarms and vehcile accidents. The smarter move would be for the dozens of fire companies in the area to merge and form regional services rather than continuing the notion that every town needs it's very own fire department.

How about Public Works based fire dept. There is a small municipality in our area that wanted to get away from it's total reliance on volunteer fire fighters. To justify the expense of hiring paid fire fighters the elected officials decided that when not on fire calls the paid guys would work on the street crew filling pot holes and fixing broken water mains. If a call came in, they'd make a mad dash for the fire house. To date this dream has not come true. Isn't that a shame?

Our county is in the process of building a "SWAT team" and we've already been unofficially asked to provide them with "tactical medics". Now, there's been no discussion of what role our medics would be playing or how much training would be required. To do it right I'm sure there would be A LOT of time spent in training which leads me to the end point of the discussion. We have a manpower shortage right now on a day to day basis. Some days we have trouble putting four ambulances on the street to take little old ladies with chest pain to the ER. There is no way we would be able to pull two medics from our normal rotation to do "swat duty" on a regular basis. What happens if the "tactical medic" is working on an EMS rig and there's a Swat call out? Am I supposed to put one of my ambulances out of service so my medic can travel to the other end of the county to an area that isn't mine to cover? Somedic's position makes sense to me and since he seems to be a 'been there, done that' kinda guy I'd be inclined to listen to him. But that's just me. Train the police to deal with BLS level trauma care. Have a MICU standing by at a reasonable distance away.

As long as the prisoner's are all CEOs and accountants there for white collar crimes, no problem. However I have a feeling there are people in federal prison system that would make Charles Manson say "damn, that dude is messed up".