Just Plain Ruff

This is the once in a lifetime fire for most firefighters. Plus it's a great time to work on rehabbing hot exhausted fire fighters. http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/200...?category=Crime I was actually at that Fire as a onlooker. It was incredible. You could feel the heat from 5 blocks away. I've only seen one other fire like that and that was several years ago in KC MO. It was a fun night.

and it's amazing what you can do with Photoshop or another good document editing piece of software. i'll bet that AMR didn't have a clue. With 2-4 even 6 year renewal cycles it's not surprising that he got away with it for that long.

So they used small words then?

so when is this fine piece of television art going to air? I think I may watch it too. Do the same thing as suggested in an earlier post

I completely agree with you. The one guy was just a freaking moron. This was not molestation it was rape. As for the bringing of a chaperone along, unfortunately most services will allow you to let riders only sit in the passenger seat of the ambulance and they can't see everything. Just don't give them any opportunity to accuse you. unfortunately once the allegation is made then the accused is usually F*&**#&cked. The court of public opinion is very very mean. If a young girl says it happened the by golly it happened even if she recants publicly. You just do what you are trained to do and unfortunately this is a risk that we have to accept.

Firedoc, that medic didn't get Burned so much as found out. What the hell is his partner doing? Don't they look in the patient compartment mirror ever? The mirrors that we had on our trucks at one service could see the cot and the patient. This is a fine example of cameras being needed in the back.

this is old news, not that the disabled firefighters were victimized by this so-called charity but this has been happening over and over again, year after year. The bad thing is that well meaning departments often get screwed while trying to the right thing.

This show caters to the lowest common denominator in our society. It's as bad as this new swingers show on ABC. I have turned the networks off except for CSI Miami and NCIS for the most part. I won't even let my son watch cartoons on the networks or even the kids networks because they are all negative influences. The only one that has some redeeming qualities are the cartoons on QUBO network with Veggietales but even that has been so dumbed down it's outrageous. If you are not familiar with Veggietales the show had before it went Networkized, it had a uplifting Christian message and now that it is networkized any mention of God is scrubbed out of it. We are heading down the wrong path here people. That's all I'm gonna say.

Do you really believe that load of crap? If you do go back to your regularly scheduled internet chat sessions. Sure I do it for the money, hell it pays the bills which is of course why EVERYONE works. What you are saying in essence is that every volunteer has enough money to do their hobby and do it for free. What a load of BS you tried to push under our noses.

HOLY CRAP

optimum is to have at least 2 dispatchers. ONe takes the call, addy comes up on the screen, as soon as the person says I need a bambulance then the 2nd dispatcher starts the ambulance. Once more info comes in like complaint then they put that out. That would be ideal, fast quick and to the point but it takes 2 dispatchers to do it

as for the not wanting to go to classes to get ahead. I put myself thru a 18 course masters degre program while working full time one job and part time at several other services. I clocked well over 100-110 hours a week working and studying. I did this for over 2 years. Along with everything that classes and work required I also had a wife and a child who needed my attention and my being there which was few and far between. About 1/2 way thru the course work I got a new job which required me to travel to and from a distant city each week and work/study during that time too. So if anyone wants to bitch and moan about having to get 200 or so additional hours come back when you can keep a straight face when complaining. If you do this right you will be a better provider, a better caregiver and a smarter person for the 200 hours you spent.

I'm sorry, many many nurses in the doctors office setting have not done any type of nursing assessments for many many years. They know that A comes before B and so on but that's about it. You get a critical or very sick patient in their office and their sphincters plug up, they start to cluck like a chicken with no head and can't wait to get you in there and out of there. The physicians also do not want critical patients in their offices because it makes their other patients uncomfortable. So chalk this up as your first experience with a physician office nurse and consider the fact that you helped the dude so it all worked out.

First thought comes to mind is this, what level provider are you? I assume that since you are complaining about 200 hours that you are an intermediate. If you are an emt then maybe you need to go to medic school if you can? AS for the 200 hours, thats 12 hours per week (a saturday all day and one weeknight from 6p-10p ought to do it) for a whopping total of 16 weeks. Not bad for 4 months. Heck, all you are talking about is a 16 week class. So you just bite the bullet and get the skills and training. It's not just about skills, it's about what you can learn. Since you are a volunteer, can you tell us why your volunteer service has not gone paid?

LT, he took his time to get the ball rolling. He's like the Slowsky's on the Comcast high speed internet commercials. They take their time getting things done. It took the Slowskys 7 years to meet their neighbors so I guess it took this guy 6 years to get this looked at. Regardless - response times are dismal, morale is low and attrition is bad. Can it get any worse? Yeah it can, just ask the families who have to wait 20 minutes to get an ambulance. I propose this. Let's get a small core group of people on this forum, have a business meeting and form our own EMS consulting group. Charge less than the current yahoo's who aren't providing value and begin to revamp the entire EMS industry. I'll start the ball rolling, I'll offer KC MO as the first meeting venue. Who's up for this?

One thing that galls me all the time is this statement, if EMS was under fire they'd arrive faster. Here is a quote from the article "Petre openly admits that he wants to see paramedics get out from under Denver Health. But he insists that the move would mean as much to the people using the paramedics' services as to the paramedics themselves — by putting a stop to the ever-lengthening response times. The fire department has units strategically placed at 31 stations around the city, which allows a response time that, on average, is two to five minutes faster than that of paramedics. If the paramedics division became part of the fire department, Petre says, ambulances could arrive just as quickly" This is just a stupid stupid statement but the dumb public will eat it up. The reason it is a stupid statement is this. it assumes that the ambulances will always respond from the fire stations or from their home base. What about the ambulances that are at the hospital. What about the ambulances that are out on calls already, they surely don't have ambulances lined up at the fire stations ready to roll out. LIke a pez dispenser, one ambulance (pez) pops out on a call and the next ambulance (pez) moves up to fill that place of the first one. The arrogance of these people is amazing. If EMS was only fire based all the worlds problems would be fixed. you can polish a turd but in the end it will always be a turd.

Just another fine example that things rarely get done until it directly affects someone in power. In this case the president of the city council's sister waited for an ambulance and she died. (she would have died anyway probabaly but just for sake of argument, the wait helped hasten her demise). Now this guy is president of city council and he's remembering that incident. Denver general has been spun off into the housing department, which of course is the correct agency for it to be under, as the housing department surely knows how to take care of the projects and section 8 housing so let's let them run the ambulance service instead of allowing the ambulance service to run itself. (which sounds like in this case was an even worse idea). Now they are re-evaluating DG's contract and have urged DG to hire an independent EMS consultant - FAT CHANCE when that independent consultant will report the inefficiencies and problems, no way is DG gonna do that, that would show that they are inept and this president of the city council is really looking for something to hang em for is what they are thinking. There is much more to the article and it's really well written but the bottom line is this...... Too few resources and too few ideas. It's time to hold the people who make these decisions accountable and not blame the ems workers which happens so frequently.

MY EYES MY EYES Oh My god, what the F is that? He's a slippery little bugger aint he? He looks like an alien!!!!! "Here's Johnny!" Oh my god, oh my god Oh my goodness Look at the size of his ..........

Does anyone see which way they are travelling?? They are riding directly towards the car. How didn't they see the car? The car is coming right at them. If they didn't see the freaking moron in the car then WTF??? I would think bikes have a easier way to get off the road than the car. Were the bike riders so intent on their ride that they weren't looking forward?

Getting an MBA is simply a process of applying to graduate school and completing the courses. You graduate from your MBA program and you have an MBA. It's no real different than paramedic school that you apply to the medic school and you take the classes and you pass and you are a medic. If you have no business experience or EMS experience the value that you bring is diminished somewhat. Sure you have the clinical or the exposure to others who have real world business experience but until you get some time doing the job under your belt you are really just a new grad. Sure there are people with MBA's that have royally mucked up things, as there are medics who have royally mucked up things. The real test is when you get in the trenches (business world or EMS world) and prove yourself. Hopefully your school provided you enough education to be at least initially successful to not kill patients or not waste the clients or the employer's money. It is up to you to take what you learn and apply it to your situation. You have to start somewhere. MBA is not rocket science, paramedicine is not rocket science. I'm not saying a caveman can do it nor am I saying that anyone can do it but you either get it or you don't. Hopefully you have good mentors, good educators, a good support system and your employers understanding that everyone makes mistakes no matter what the level of education. You cannot expect it to be perfect everytime.

EXACTLY would you want to hire me???? I wonder how many didn't catch the error?

If the prospective employee is going to be writing run tickets then a spelling and grammar test is imperitive. If they cannot spell Pneumothorax or hematoma then well you get my drift.

When we arrived, anything short of 4-5 mm of elevation was regarded as uninteresting. I would bet that the patient didnt consider that level of elevation to be uninteresting. My suspicion is that there are a few if not more than a few medics in your overall county system that cannot read 12 leads but rely on the interpretation. The hospital sees money down the drain when they call a cardiac alert only to have it not be warranted. I always say, better safe than sorry but the hospital sometimes will eat the cost of a mis-called cardiac alert because the patient disputes the bill for all the extra personnel that are activated yet not used but the patient still gets billed.

It appears that having a physician call them is not a bad idea especially if there were lots of trauma alerts that were called which never never should have been called. All you can do is recommend a trauma alert or give the doc what you have and let him make the call. If he doesn't call the alert and things go sour for the patient then who's butt is on the line, not yours unless you didn't give him all the info. Vent, I think the above is important - if EMS gives a good radio report with the trauma criteria listed out and the physician doesn't call a trauma alert then who's issue is it. But what I was thinking is what if there was a study done that looked at this. Number of trauma alerts called by EMT's versus the number of Trauma alerts called by paramedics.

Holy Crapola this hit a bit to close to home with the adoption aspect. You did well grasshopper. I have a pm coming to you.