EMTScrub

Not that I'm disagreeing with what all of you are saying, but Calgary EMS uses LifePaks not Zolls.

Work to rule means that thw workers do not do anything beyond the absolute basics. The job description for the Paramedic is what the Paramedic does. No more no less. That means they don't go out their way to help anyone out, they don't do anything not required of them, and of course, they don't do any overtime. Now, I don't work for CEMS, but I do know that a lot of the workers do pick up extra shifts, either because they need the money, or because CEMS is desperate. The work to rule itself will have a huge impact on everything.

The city of Calgary has a tendency to not like to negotiate with unions. As mentioned before VERY few Calgary EMS workers want a strike. It happened once before in this city, and I think everyone involved is trying to avert a strike. For those of you who are making a big deal of the "high" wages of these employees should probably take a look at the current cost of living of Calgary. The AVERAGE price of a house in this city is nearing a half million dollars. That's just an average house. The cost of gas has been well above $1/litre for months now. Interesting, since the oil is extracted on our front door. That's not to mention the cost of health care (which is not fully funded in Alberta), the cost of day care (if you are lucky enough to find a place), the land taxes, and many other factors. As far as the $75,000/year as an average...no one has any idea where that even comes from!! I don't know of many paramedics or EMTs in Calgary that only have one job. Maybe combined between the two or three jobs they hold down, they might hit that mark... Finally, Calgary EMS has been without a contract for the past year. That means the union, which could have taken action long ago, chose to try and settle things without going to this extreme... Just my 2 cents.

I work not only as an EMT, but I also work on what's called a lift team. We work exclusively in a hospital, and are paged to go to different patient rooms and, well, lift them. Fortunately, the advantage of working in the hospital is we often have mechanical lifts, so we don't have to lift the patients manually all the time. However, there have been some individuals who exceed the lifting capacity of many of our lifts. In these situations, we call in an extra lift team, and get the help of RNs and NAs. In one situation, we had 8 people lifting an individual that I estimated to be about 700 lbs, just long enough to slide an X-ray board below them. Many of patients that I encounter are ashamed of themselves for letting themselves get so large. In fact, many of them appologize to us. The fact of the matter is, many of them have some deep rooted physical or mental issue which contributes a great deal to their weight gain. Perhaps if more people would focus on this, then there wouldn't be so much negativity directed towards such patients.

That game is AWESOME!! Thanks for posting it.

Hey everybody. I'm new to this site as well, but have been keeping an eye on it for quite some time. I finished my EMT course this fall, and just finished writing the ACP exam (which I passed). I'm really looking forward to getting into the EMS world!