MedicAR

It's not like that at all. I think you're all taking it too broadly, which is my fault for the way I put it out there. It's not a lazy thing or superiority thing. The senior crew member still works and pulls their fair share. There is merit in doing the menial tasks. For example, we share quarters in a hospital for one of our stations. We have to know where certain items are in order to do our job, such as the dumpster. Our city has some bizarre ordinances about hiding the dumpster from sight, so it's important to not only teach the new hires where it is, but make sure they remember it too because it's not obvious. I had three huge bags of garbage in the bay one morning, so I mentioned that it needed to go out before they off-going crew left. They said it had piled up because no one knew where the dumpster was! That much trash is a minimum of three shifts, and in reality, probably twice that. Looking back at the schedule, no vets had been there in that time frame. Only crews with six months (yes, that's months) or less. They get the information in orientation, but there's no reenforcement at all. Plus, there's no penalty if things aren't done.

Works great on paper, but most new hires won't even see you do it unless forced, and they're not forced anymore. That's where the recliner thing comes in. I understand where it could be viewed as a superiority thing, but part of it too is making the new hires find something to do. They are simply disconnected and won't do the side work when shown, much less if you expect them to learn from example.

Your solution is as plain and simple as it gets. It's logical and obvious. And as ridiculous as it sounds, that seems to be the exact reason my management won't implement it. We have a training officer in name only. Our dispatch captain puts on the maps class for new employees and takes pride in making the class nigh-impossible to comprehend. It doesn't work on reasonable or intellegent folk, but those folk no longer apply to my organization. There is no real testing or scenario based achievement except to be released to work on the street. When that situation comes up, everyone fails the first time around because it's the "Kobyashi Maru" scenario (Star Trek fans will get it) where there is no right answer. It's just ridiculous and frustrating. Seasoned, intellegent, creative medics won't make it, because if they manage to pull it off, the shooter (it's a shooting/OB/traumatic injury scanario) returns and kills a member of the crew because the "scene wasn't safe." Are we alone? Are all services this screwed up?

That's exactly where we're headed! What changed to make it better? Our management has actually told us that it's good for the company to lose the more senior employees, so they don't have to pay out as much in wages and benefits. :roll:

Absolutely. The new guy does the dishes, takes out the trash, shines the chrome from bumper to bumper (even between the lug nuts....heck, especially between the lug nuts), doesn't sit in a recliner for the first year, watches a few public demonstrations then participates in them, restocks everything, checks expirables, etc. Then there was my favorite. Your partner gets a big thermos of coffee, a small styrofoam cup and mop. Then you go for a ride. The cup is filled within about 3/4" of the top, set in the floor of the patient compartment, and the rookie drives. If they spill the coffee, they mop it up, fill the cup again and start over. It helped them learn the area, learn the rough spots in the road and especially helped them learn to drive smooth. No joke. It took me at least two hours and three times as many thermoses of coffee, but I got it. No horseplay. It was a part of the training. It seemed sadistic at the time, but now I really understand the how and why behind it all. It was called "hazing" but now I realize it was more what Spenac said, "earning their spot."

You're probably right, hazing may be the wrong word. But you did hit the nail on the head with your examples. so many of our new employees have no idea what they're doing and we tend to get sideways with management if we try to correct it at all, much less the way it used to be done.

I'm looking for a way to fix this problem, not just vent about it. So any suggestions are more than welcome. My management team is what I call "touchy feely" in that there is no hazing anymore. I'm not talking about pranks or anything like that, but just basic entry-level tasks and such. The rookies are responsible for the lowly tasks and take a lot of grief when they screw up. It's how I was trained and it worked. It weeded out the ones that lacked the proper attitude. It removed the "solo artists" and made everyone a team member. It ejected the incompetent fools that never should have gotten an interview. And all involved were better for it! Now we have damage to one of our rigs about every two weeks. No one can read a map book. Even worse, no one knows what scene safety is anymore. It's a matter of time until someone is seriously hurt or killed due to a lack of responsibility on the part of our entire organization. I know that the Gen Xers are part of this, with different work ethics and different value systems, but we're a public service. We need to be better than the rest of the working world. There's a lot more that I would like to see change, but I'll start here and see what happens.

My problem with this isn't based on opinion, but personal experience. My service keeps hiring 18-20 year old EMTs. They can't comprehend a work schedule, can't drive safely, can't seem to be trained to perform in a professional manner, don't seem to care about the welfare of their patients (much less the general public), and get angry with us "dinosaurs" for trying to bring them up to speed.

Oddly enough, we had a large patient yesterday! Rollover MVC, "entrapped" (don't get me started) in the middle of nowhere. I work for a service that covers a large rural area as well as a small city (90,000 give or take in the city). Anyway, we arrive on scene to find the local first responders pretty much just standing around. They tell us they have the patient out and on a backboard. Okay. Fine. "Where is he?" "In the field." Oooookay......weird. I walk around the overturned vehicle to find one of the larget patients I've ever encountered. My next question is what about a backboard? I can't see any straps holding him on, nor is there a c-collar. As fate would have it, the patient is so large, that he completely covers the LBB! He hangs off of all four sides. We call for a second rural department which angers the first responders' chief. Not that I care, I can't move the guy with two 70 year old firefighters, an 18 skinny year old kid and my partner. The other department was on the way anyhow, and I knew them and the three they had on board are some strong guys. By now, the county officer and state trooper are offering assistance too.......assistance from law enforcement! Another sign of the impending apocolypse.... Long story short, we finally got the patient loaded and on the way to the hospital, we're giving report and letting them know we'll need help when the patient tells me.....get this....he weighs 300 lbs! :roll: His driver's license says 250 :bs: I put him at a minimum of 450, an that's being nice. We did manage to move him without injuring anyone. My back hurts today, but it has to be psychsomatic. We wound up with enough help that no one had to strain at all. In fact my back hurts more as I write this and relive the whole thing!