EchoDBravo

on ER returns, or some instance where the pt. is alert and oriented x 7 and really needs a wheelchair van to get home or to the 'seniah home', after Hello, my name is ___ I usually say "do you want to ride or drive?" and that lightens the mood for the rest of the encounter. but if they are grouches, nothing cheeky is said.

hottiemedicmom1020, do they require a high school, nay! a middle school diploma to be a paramedic where you are from? I've seen more coherent thoughts and language skills grading 5th grade on-demand essays.

touch the corner of an alcohol swab to their eyeball. It's in my protocols...

The call was dispatched as "7x year old female circling the drain per caller nothing further". we get on scene, home health nurse who was friend of the family was there, decided before our arrival to give 40mg lasix. She was normally on Nasal Cannula at 2LPM Liquid O2. Nurse put a NRB on the patient. And kept it at 2LPM because she 'didn't have orders for anything more'. Put her on pulse ox, 42%. Rhythm A-Fib at 110. Don't know how long patient was being suffocated by No-Flow 02 via NRB. We transport Signal 9 to Hospital. Sp02 still in the 40's with good waveform on hospital Oximeter. Respiratory went :-k :-k :-k . CPAP followed shortly thereafter. No, BasicBasic crews cannot give lasix. I just didnt tell the whole story. Basic's can use King Airway, ASA, NTG, Albuterol. All ambulances, whether BLS or ALS have a lifepak 12 with Sp02 and NIBP. New things coming: option to take a class on EKG monitoring and interpretation of basic rhythms, with exhibition of competency to medical director for clearance to use the EKG.

I transported a 75 year old patient to the hospital whose lungs were wet bilaterally and a BP of 7030. Being a Basic/Basic crew, and transport time of about 4 minutes, ALS intercept would be out of the question. It was my partner's turn to give patient care. He first sat her all the way up, which helped her breathing. All the way to the hospital the Pulse Oximeter said 42%. Even on a NRB @ 15 LPM and after 40mg of Lasix, SpO2 readout did not change. During the transport, my partner put the Ferno 35-A in trendelenbrg. I get out and go to the back, and notice that this patient is about to look ridiculous being wheeled into the ER sitting all the way up, with knees pinned to her gut. she was shaped in a V. looked very uncomfortable.

"my buddy" tried it in college. I, I mean he just had a flashback of every SINGLE day of his life until the present. And saw in slow motion the thought processes the millisecond before you wake up.

Do you have ANY field experience? If your employer is THAT flexible, maybe do some shift swaps, so you can pull a part time gig as an EMT. Even those nonemergency transfers result in patient contact, and the way you talk to a patient and care for a patient will make you or break you as the paramedic you want to become. I wouldn't want you to be the guy at the station who people think of as a crappy medic. I know some medics who went straight from EMT school to paramedic school back in the 80s, and i can assure you that they weren't golden when they first got the EMS job. The BLS part time gig will either show you, or shove it coldly in your face, how to ask questions in the RIGHT way, giving time for old people to answer, and give you hairy situations to make you think. Yes, having some prior EMS experience will help you. But you start class in september. You say you work alot. Stop working all the extra hours as the Lab Tech, and pull that extra time over at the Fish & Bone Ambalance Service. Get your 'stupid' questions out of the way as an Part-Timer. Learn/Put to use a myriad of styles of Total Body Lifts, Sheet pulls, and the management of certain scenes they may or may not have covered at EMT School. Get patients who need C-Spine Immob. out of bathtubs. Get used to Ambulance Operations. You only have a few months, so I would advise to get as much experience as possible. If not for the patient contact, then for the experience with operations and patient care reports. 1 more question: how does your pay as a lab tech fall with the pay of a paramedic in your area? Evan

that somehow sounds like a bad idea. do you tell the patient they are being recorded?