Just Plain Ruff

My comments in red.

Yeah but AEDS don't cause a cardiac arrest patient to come up swinging when you take away their arrest.

apparantly it's not a sure thing. So how many more attempts do you get? What were your results? Not the actual fail or pass but what did they say you were weak or failing on?

I'm for it but a little leary about giving this to EMT's with limited other resources to counteract the polypharmacy overdose. I am overwhelmed at work right now with other issues but my thoughts are that you have a polypharmacy overdose and you take away the opiates but you are left with the other drugs which may just be a bigger lifethreat than the opiates.

If you can add 5 numbers together and subtract one number from that answer, then you might just be ahead of 45% of your classmates.

Yes, that's the exception but only if you have MD after your name which in all reality those initials in your case means "major dickhead" ha ha just kidding.

ok, this is the second time you've mentioned "your situation" please if it has that much to bear on your being here, please enlighten us with it, I'm sure that there are more here that have a similar story than you know.

Again, thanks for the accolades MD, but I've never once felt like a hero, not even after delivering a baby on a trailer park couch or saving the child from the cardiac arrest. I do my job plain and simple and that's all it's ever been about. What I'd like to see is in 5 years you come back here and tell us what you have learned from this group of fine people and how they have made you a better provider. Come back and tell us in a couple of years, after you've been a quality poster, the pearls and pitfalls that you have learned from others in your field and the pillars of the EMS community that you have had the pleasure to work with . I would also like for you to take away from the horrible providers and the horrible calls, lessons learned that can help you be a better provider by not becoming one of those horrible providers and that you ahve taken to heart what you have seen and learned from the horrible calls that you will see. If you learn every day, if you take advice where it's offered and you freely give advice in return, it you take the advice given and take the advice that you would give out yourself, then you have learned a great deal. If you ever begin to call elderly patients gomers or transfers "bullshit" calls, then you haven't learned a thing. If you call the frequent flyers and the drug seekers nasty names then you have not learned anything. It's up to you to take a compilation of all that you learn and put it in your brain to become the best provider that you can be. And the minute that you stop learning something, it's time to start looking for another career or line of work because EMS and medicine overall is always changing and if you stop learning, you become stagnant and if you let it stop for long, you become a dead provider. Just my 2 cents.

MedicDelta, as long as you get those pre-requisites in that have been mentioned. A good chem class, several high level math classes, an anatomy class and a separate physiology class and the dreaded English Composition(yes that's very very important because you will be writing legal documents that WILL go to court) and being able to form concise sentences is a must. Get a good foundation of basic courses and you will be WAY WAY ahead of most students in your course.

According to the KC Local news, Johnson County Med-Act covering Johnson County Kansas is the first in the area to go away from Long Spine Boards moving them into the 21st century. Good on them. they have always been a very forward thinking system, I worked for them for a short stint before I realized that my practice style didn't fit into their's so I left and went back to rural EMS. But I am very proud that they have taken this step.

i have a single bag, it's my bug out bag, it's in the back of my Sequoia SUV. It has 3 days of supplies in it and enough for my family as well. Firstaid stuff and medicines of mine that I need for my diabetes and personal health issues. That's it. No specific medical bag.

Dude, you aren't listening, Chemistry and or physics are sort of pretty important classes. So Batman, what college courses will you be taking or will you just focus on the following classes How to jump over tall buildings with a single bound without breaking a nail 101 how do drive the batmobile through a building wall and still maintain that just waxed shine 204 How to mend your superhero suit without the assistance of Edna Moles 220 From zero to hero in less than one college course 100 Just in all seriousness, what college courses will you be required to take? Actually your statement was "I'm going to talk to my guidance counsellor about math" so you didn't actually answer the question about math.

Honestly I've never once felt this way. To me it's the job I do. But thanks for the appreciation.

Damnit Mike, we've had this discussion ad nauseam, What other profession allows you to be a hero and do it for free at the same time. EMS and the fire service that's who. It's a win win for everyone. The community gets it the services for free and the providers get that warm fuzzy feeling of being that hero when seconds count. You just need to get with the program and admit it when you are wrong and just say in a stepford husbands voice "I want to be a volunteer so I can be a hero and I'll do it for free, hero for free" Now if my trash collector and dentist/physician/hospital would only volunteer their services for free so I wouldn't have to pay those bills I would be out of debt in no time.

Actually now that I think about it, I was 21 when I got my first EMS job and I was driving. My driving record was spotless and that helped with the insurance carrier. If you had any points on your license you had to either get them cleaned off or you couldn't drive till you hit 25 or 0 points. Any accidents and you were automatically denied driving privelidges for a year. If you had a dwi on your record you were unhireable If you had any sort of driving conviction other than a speeding ticket, good luck getting on with the company. They used the failsafe driving system and we hated it but I was always in the top 3 drivers in terms of low numbers. I ended up teaching all the new hires the company driving policies and they had to pass my and one other guys road test. We were tough.

My thoughts are that you are more discomforted by the family being so disaffected than your personal reactions. It sounds like this lady was on her way out and it was not an unexpected thing was it? If that's the case then the way the family dealt with it was they way they dealt with it. I've been involved in the passing of many in my family and friends and it's always more difficult for me to watch the reactions of those said family and friends. You run the gamut of emotions and responses from cold emotional detachment (I never go to funerals, not even family members(rare exceptions)) all the way to blubbering fools crying their heads off. I was fortunate to be called to a house where a family member was taking their last breaths. The family called 911 because they didn't know what else to do, they were given poor advice by medical care givers as to what to do with grandma when she was on the way to greener pastures. They produced the valid dnr but our protocols state that once we are there that we have to wait till the patient is dead. So wait we did. We cleared the FD and waited. I got to hear some really wonderful stories and only one person was crying the others were remembering grandma. I also remember the slow and easy passing of a 3 year old who we were called for, he also had a valid DNR (genetic disorder, fatal) and it was only the childs parents and no one else as they just moved to the area. We also sat around and waited. This was extremely difficult for me but it was also a very good exprerience to be with the family. You learn things about life and death and that no matter what, you can't get away from it. You do the best you can and I guarantee that this will not be the last time you will be in a situation like this so your take away should be to take this experience and tuck it away and use it for next time and keep adding to your repertoire. I guarantee that even though the family didn't thank you for being there, they more than likely were thankful you were there.

I've been involved in both sides of the coin, family members and friends family members who have passed. As a medic, the first couple of these types of deaths I did look at things clinically rather than personally or emotionally, still do to a point, and I realize that the first time can be a significant affront to someone who has not gone through this before. We need more info as to why you were so affected?

Mine was a rhetorical comment, we all know the causes of a less than one year old with a c-spine fracture but of those causes, they should really never happen if we are truly really careful or non-physical with a child. It was just a shake my head moment.

Do you employ Nurse Jamie Doc? If so she can straighten my tackle anytime of the day. OF course it's all medically necessary and insurance approved of course.

That Chris or maybe with my reading up on this that it could be a nasty blood clot to the region. This could be pain caused by the clot. Did we do a US on the vasculature area? I can't recall. High troponins are not always caused by MI's are they? Can the D-dimer be elevated due to the clot in his butt?

How the hell does a less than one year old get a C-spine fracture? Just aint natural. Pts in the NEXUS study ranged from <1y/o

This was posted on a fellow paramedic/friends facebook page- I know this is sort of rude but hey, it's terribly funny. So a little funny that I witnessed yesterday. While standing at the nascar track amongst all the other people avoiding the rain, this drunk or should I say this individual that was under the influence of some type if intoxicant of which 4 cans of it was in 4 beverage holders screwed to a #3 baseball helmet that was painted by krylon. So he is trying to swoon these ladies as he is doing this hillbilly Olympics on the stairwell. Well the obvious happens and he eats it, and eats it hard. So his hillbilly friends that was once encouraging all panicked and was screaming for EMS or a doctor. So it appeared he kinda knocked himself out, but wasn't really out just kinda dazed. So the vendor gets on the radio and summons the EMS and Police lol. So as I'm watching this all unfold I hear this lady yelling, "I'm a nurse,,,,,I'm a nurse let me through I'm a nurse" So I step aside and let her come rumbling through. She sits her beer down on the step and starts snapping her fingers in front of his face yelling "sir,,,,sir,,,, come out,,,come out,," Mind you his right ankle is either broke or dislocated, and I'm going with both. It literally took 20 min before EMS arrived just because of the people inside. So a FHP show up with in minutes and was standing beside me and I said well apparently she's a nurse and is helping, and we both chuckled, he said well what's she doing trying to encourage him to come out of the closet to all the on lookers. I literally laughed out load. So finally the rescue team arrives and the crew goes down and she's holding his head with a wet paper towel on his forehead and here is the funniest part. She advised the medic that she is a Nurse and is here for them. You can tell the look of "oh great"on his face. So he says what kinda nurse are you, with a sarcastic down grading tone said, "I sir, Am a Certified Nurses Aid" and with out missing a beat he says," Well unless he needs his diaper changed or and bath you are not needed here." The trooper and I about died laughing.

no worries, Yeah inferior MI, I didn't fully flesh out my thoughts as I was posting on my work computer and they frown on me being on the web at work. But I'm a rebel, I'm on it now at work. Booyah!

Even though he's overall sick sick sick, could this pain to his buttocks just be cause by his trying to get up from the couch and he herniated a disk. The other question I have is this, is he a bike rider? Did he recently go on a very long bike ride and then not cool down from that bike ride? Did he come straight home and catch the newest episode of CSI and NCIS? My thoughts are that he is a new onset bike rider or exerciser who overdid the exercise, went straight home, sat on the couch like all of us usually do and now he's screwed. And on to the second section of my post, I've done a thorough google search for scrotal straightener and Doc I think you're nuts, there's not a single site out there that offers this service. I know you have had it done because you tout it so highly on your private facebook page, so what's the phone number to your private physician who straightened out your scrotum????

I believe one of my posts said elevation in 2, 3 and AVF