Just Plain Ruff

Is EMS in the schools a thing in your area? What kind of PR events do you do?

My one (at least that I can think of right now) piece of advice to me would be Don't let your NREMT-P lapse

I remember your posts MariB and to see the person you have blossomed to be, let's hope our new excited poster becomes half the person you have become.

ok, I'll ask the question that no one ever asks Why did you drink and drive? But that question aside - You will find many of us on this site, myself included that you won't get much support from in your quest to become an EMT. The reason why I say this is one of the worst things we see is the senseless disaster that are drunk driving accidents. They are 100% preventable by the DRUNK who decided to get drunk and then get behind the wheel of the car and drive, then hitting a family or a kid or whatnot and killed them or maimed them. Again, this is 100% preventable and we in this business are tasked with picking up the pieces of this 100% preventable disaster. So this is why we don't have much sympathy for anyone who comes here with stories of having been arrested for drunk driving and wanting to be an EMT. Now that being said, you need to call your state EMS licensing bureau and talk to them directly and ask them about your situation. They and only they can tell you if you can get an EMT license. Then if they say Yes you can, then you then need to call the prospective EMS Agencies you might want to work for and ask them if you can even get insured by them as a 21 year old emt with a previous reckless driving charge on your license which for the places I have worked, reckless driving held just as much NASTY connotations as a drunk driving charge and that person application who had that history on their driving record was immediately placed into the circular file and shredded. I hope you never make the stupid decision of drinking and driving ever again. And yes it was stupid and I hope you learned your lesson. hopefully you know it could have been a lot worse than just getting arrested and ticketed like you were. But I do wish you the best in your future endeavors. But I also do second MedicGirls question, why do you want to be an EMT when you have a degree in Microbiology. I'm sure that degree can get you more money than a 8-10 dollar an hour or so EMT job.

Just be very very very careful Dont let the inmate get between you and the door Don't be left alone with the inmate keep it professional (I know you will) but don't let them pull you in to their sob stories. and above all, please please please please, be very very careful. Get some self defense courses too.

If Turd watch or Rescue 911 or even Emergency showed what we really did on a day to day basis, then they would have only lasted one episode. If those reality shows on right now showed what we really did on a day to day basis they would be on for 1 episode People don't want to see that we may spend the entire day taking dialysis patients and nursing home patients back and forth to the hospital and their houses on one day and then spend one day taking care of a heart attack victim and a couple of sick kids and then the rest of the shift we sat on our butts waiting for a call. People want to see that we are out saving lives, fighting the big 5 alarm fire, saving kids, doing field amputations and delivering babies. Throw in a water rescue and a lady completely covered in Ice in her basement with just her mouth and nose protruding out of the ice and saving her life and then top it all off by going down into the sewers and doing a hand stand defibrillation on a guy in a flooded sewer all the while your partners are holding on to the pipes on the cieling of the sewer. Damnit that's what the public wants to see. And what's really cool to top it all off, everyone of those people, wouldn't you know, we save em. Nobody ever died on Rescue 911. But to be completely honest, the last couple of shifts that I worked prior to pulling my arms and legs into my turtle shell and moving on to my IT career where I don't have to do hand stands, I sat on my rear end and binge watched the walking dead until the last call I got was a transfer from the ER to KU medical center for a post MI patient who honestly was healthier than I was and really could have walked to KU.

I'm with Medicgirl These are the steps i'd follow 1. find out if there's a settlement coming? sounds like he''s been in the LTC facility for a while so he should be getting some sort of settlement unless they didn't sue or something like that. 2. Find him a receiving facility where he's going. That task is on his folks. 3. Start calling the transfer services - they are going to want to know a lot of info, such as distance, if he's on Oxygen, what kind of care he needs, does he need meds and all that stuff. If he doesn't need meds then a basic crew would be fine to take him. If he's on oxygen, the crews will need to make arrangements for replacement oxygen tanks. It looks like in the picture he might need it. 4. Will the medical director sign off on such a long trip, especially when you are going way way out of state. You will need to find a service that specializes in those types of transfers. Not your local 911/transfer provider. AMR or Rural Metro would be my first call if they are local to your area. I've transported a patient from KC Mo all the way to Seattle and we made arrangements with Apria healthcare so when we got low on oxygen, we just called their 800 number and they told us where the next town was with an Apria in it and they took care of us. don't forget bathroom and food breaks for the guy, Kind of difficult to transport someone who has a very special diet so you might be looking into a specialized transport unit with someone who can take care of this guy's needs. Not sure if the transfer ems crew is ready to change diapers and all that. Our patient was a 26 year old cancer patient going to a specialized cancer treatment up in Seattle. Needless to say, this is a terribly long trip for anyone to take this guy on. He's likely not to tolerate it very well. Not sure if I remember how far he was needing to go but back when we did our transport it was nearly 2000 dollars and that was 1992. I'm sure it's at least double or triple or even higher.

It's good that you want to become an EMT but you shouldn't be stressing over this. Why are you stressing over this? You should get an anatomy and physiology course over the summer, that would give you a good understanding of the human body and why it does what it does. A good english composition course would be a good idea, if you are tasked with writing reports you will need good grammar and spelling skills, not what you have been taught in college unless you've been through college level composition courses. Next I would think about working your upper body and lower back strength. You will need to be able to lift very heavy patients and sometimes you may just be with your partner. Conflict resolution skills and basic self defense skills are a must in this line of work as well. That's what I would do during your summer break. See, nothing to stress about.

The best thing that I think one patients wife do was give her husband an aspirin and his nitro prior to our arrival. One other thing was not remove the scissors from the man's chest. he was walking across the dining room and fell. The scissors he was carrying ended up in his left chest, causing a closed pneumo. He wanted to pull em out but his wife refused to let him. This probably saved his life.

Julia, you didn't disappoint. don't forget to eat your veggies

Ok, we've all seen the stupid things a patient do or a family member do for a patient. Let's discuss something a little different. What is the smartest thing you have seen a patient do for themself or a family member do for a patient. This could be something that someone did for a patient that saved their life or helped save a life or even just made your role as a rescuer easier! Come on, blow us away with smart people or smart things done by people out there, come on, I'm sure theres at least one or two instances of Pure Genius.

Dude, hats off to you as the Immigratino and border protection officer. I had a friend (long time ago) go down to the border, I think he ended up near Natches or (similar sounding name city) Mexico or Texas, he lasted about 9 months and then left. He told me it was the worst 9 months of his life. He's now working in the oil industry over in the UAE making 3.5 mil a year. How things changed for him. I haven't heard from him in about 5 years. I hope he's still doing well.

feel free to email me ruffems@gmail.com with whatever you wanna chat about, drop me your phone number and whatever and I'm happy to brain dump whatever I can for you. I still think you are Julia, or maybe I'm julia

Are you Julia?

I meant Syphillis But she's also Like Janice from Friends, she kept coming back to see Chandler.

i hear that phone call to the supervisor isn't very fun though.

Julia's post count seems to be picking up as well.

Oh my goodness, she is like herpes, she keeps coming back.

hope you find the person you are looking for.

our service makes all trauma patients walk, no matter if they still have their legs attached or not. Just kidding. I'm not currently working so I'm not a good reference.

really, I may have dropped off the facebook emtcity site. I'll have to go look again.

Absolutly Admin, If we could get more regular posters and more engagement I think this site could become better. Facebook is great for immediate feedback and that's also it's biggest weakness. here posts can be cultivated and we can have great discussion, even it it takes longer to get that discussion rolling.

Welcome to the city

hey, I don't remember you but you are right, people always bitched about a post, I unfortunately fell into that habit at times. Unfortunately, this site is a shell of what it used to be, seems that Facebook EMS groups has taken it's place. I am still here though.

I've been in a situation on a uncontrolled airway on status seizures. IT was awful, the mother was right outside the room when she heard the physician(local general practitioner) and a CRNA saying "I can't intubate her, we're losing her" IN the end, we were able to get the tube but not after some very very tense minutes. She never lost oxygenation but we paralized her and then had a very difficult time intubating her. Took about 10 minutes to fully secure the tube but all her numbers and color was what you would expect from oxygenating her well. This patient made the CRNA earn his on call pay. But I was sure we were going to code her. But someone was watching over her that night. She had no negative issues based on our intubation attempts except for some scratches on her soft palette. She should be about 15 years old now.