SA_Medic

Blunt = cigar hollowed out and filled with the green stuffs. We do after all have the good stuff here apparently. LOL My sarcasm wasn't aimed at yourself, it was mostly just a venting session at the idiocy of our governments who do not seem to really care about the citizens that placed them in their high and mighty positions in the first place. Never mind me though, it's just on of those days where I feel like sitting on the side walk and using the tar road to slit my wrists. Seeing as we have been having more and more cases of measles being reported in recent months, and here I though they at least managed to get rid of that, yeah right!

Am I missing something or is it just Africa missing something? Oh hang on, the paper containing the reporting statistics was used by someone to roll a blunt! Of course we are not reporting, it's all part of the African culling system. Only the strong survive to a ripe old age on this continent. On a serious note though, it's interesting reading everyone's comments and views on this (even though this is probably the 100th thread on the topic). Especially seeing how the rest of the world seems to take this little issue so serious with providing people with HAZMAT suits and spending millions of $$$ inoculating everyone and sundry. In Namibia we have had (if memory serves correctly) 25 confirmed cases. One which was flown by a colleague / competition of mine who eventually ended six feet under. The transport remaining a story for another day Either way, it would have been nice to see some positive and pro active response in contrary to the normal "african mentality" that we have to deal with daily. I will continue reading all the threads on H1N1 and try as I am doing to institute some form of first world response to this scourge that has the rest of the world well and truly alarmed.

Now that's exactly what we call a vacuum mattress. It works excellent for the long haul (+2hr) road transports and obviously the flights we do around here.

We still have no inoculation program in place here in fact, I am told we have no vaccine available. The only program we have in place right now is simply treating the confirmed cases. With the amount of stupid tourists and French people we fly around the country here (they have the habit of driving where they look on the gravel roads) after having a vehicle roll over it's a matter of time before a member of the medical fraternity tests positive. I suppose then things might move towards a vaccination program.

having done the H2S Tech course in Kazakhstan some years ago due to the high concentration of H2S in the wells they were drilling, I for one would be watching this topic closely. The course scared the s*%t out of me in regards to H2S. My main concern here would be seeing how they plan to ensure lethal limits are not exceeded and the person administering it does not end up just killing the patient. In my personal and humble opinion, I do not see this happening within my life time. The risks would be to high on this as well as the actual control of it. I would most probably refuse the use of this had I had a choice. Thank you for the link to this, it made for seriously interesting reading.

Its interesting to see how many of you are not in favour of this type of system. In South Africa, in fact most of Africa that does have medics run a "rapid response" vehicle with the ALS on it. In Namibia for instance, we have a total of 5 ALS staff actively working in EMS, this to cover the whole country. The Ambulances (not the specific built trucks you have) are manned mostly by BLS crews as there's even less ILS staff in the country. The "rapid response" vehicle is dispatched together with the Ambulance and will in most cases arrive first on scene and start treatment. Obviously once the Ambo arrives the BLS crew will assist me or the other ALS where needed. It seems to work perfectly fine for us, but then again, I can't compare our situation with where you guys work, I am after all in darkest Africa.....

OMG! I generally defer from reading topics that do not appeal to me when it gets to the topic itself. In this case, "Lifeline" is something that has no meaning to me since we do not have anything similar to it where I am from. Then I started "hearing" the chatter about this topic in the chat rooms and decided to read it. In my honest opinion it was a complete waste of time. The first few posts actually had something to do with the original posting then it just turned into the usual "I am this" and "You are that" posting. It always seems to be the same people that hi jack threads and turn into their own little personal kingdom and domain. Why is it so hard to stick to the original posting? Why does someone always have to start questioning the others methods, professionalism, ethics, training or ideas on this job? When will you people actually start realising that we are in the same business, however we do not work according to the same protocols nor do we work according to the same set of rules. Freaking hell, this is supposed to be a site for adults and professionals to discuss issues relevant to the job.

From one lost and found soul to the next, Welcome back dude... Oh and sorry about the tri nations and super 14...

Same here, being South African and having grown up and studied in Johannesburg, I moved to Cape Town because I got tired of all the crime and crap in Johannesburg. I never thought that Cape Town would out rank Johannesburg on the world scale. I suppose if you look at the gang related killings it should make sense

I am still trying to find an updated list. It seems this year they are slow in releasing the stats and lists.

In September last year, a website called Foreign Policy posted the 5 murder capitols of the world. I am not sure whether anything has changed in the last year and some odd months, but this is what the website says: Number 5: Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea Population: 254,200 (2000 census) Murder rate: 54 per 100,000 (2004 official figure) Number 4: Moscow, Russia Population: 10.4 million Murder rate: 9.6 per 100,000 (estimate) Number 3: New Orleans, United States Population: 220,614 to 312,000 (2007); estimates vary due to displacement of people after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Murder rate: Estimates range from 67 (New Orleans Police Department) to 95 (Federal Bureau of Investigation) per 100,000 Number 2: Cape Town, South Africa Population: 3.5 million Murder rate: 62 per 100,000 inhabitants (with a whopping rise of 12.7% between 2006 and 2007) Ladies and gentleman, presenting the 2008 murder capitol of the world *Drum roll* Caracas, Venezuela Population: 3.2 million Murder rate: 130 per 100,000 residents (official) - (some speculate that its murder rate is closer to 160 per 100,000.)

It actually saddens me to see this type of thing. I to like most of you that has aired their views here spend more than just a few hours in the air when the call arises. I suppose the main difference here would be that we don't have helicopters. I am not lying when I tell you that it takes in excess of 7 hours to arrange a chopper should we need it. The last mountain rescue I did, it took in excess of 12 hour to find a suitable civilian helicopter to assist us with the extraction. I would rather you say thank you for having access to this resource than bickering and fighting. But, that's just my humble opinion from the dark continent...

So let me get this straight. Me being Afrikaans, or the next person being Hindi, Russian whatever that has difficulty in using grammar properly makes me unprofessional and an idiot? I personally take offence to the stance and claims in the above posts. No-one has the right to judge me or anyone else for that matter on their professionalism based on the mistakes they make here. If anyone wants to be so near sighted and childish as to base their professional opinion of someone else's professionalism on spelling and grammar, shame on you. I still fail to see how someone not being able to spell a word or use the correct grammar (which still remains to explain which spelling or grammar is being referred to, US, UK, Aus, SA English??) has anything to do whatsoever with the persons ability to do what he or she has been trained to do, alleviate pain and suffering.

The wise man with the best advice yet.

As I said, it's possibly a case of a temporary shift of the vitreous humour. If memory serves, it does not cause permanent / lasting vision problems. I know the flashes can also be associated with migraines, obviously that's not it or you would have noticed it by now.

We have no inoculation system in place here and treat patients on a case by case basis as they are reported and tested positive. As it is, we are having to import the treatment as there's not enough available. Ah the joys of Africa, only the strong survive here....

Oh man, send some of what you are smoking to me! It could be caused by a shifting of the vitreous humour?

It seems we all pretty much follow the same procedures when it comes to spinal immobilization. I will however concur with everyone above thus far, it's a complete waste to go through the motions and do a spinal immobilization and not follow the same precautions on the C-Spine. In my service we have the good old Scoop (can't remember what you guys call it across the waters) and the LSB (sadly it's still wood, apparently it's illegal there???) I personally prefer using the scoop with the spider harness. We also have access to vacuum mattresses, I have used them on more than one occasion on flights in and around Namibia brilliant piece of equipment if used properly. the part I like about it would be the fact that it forms to the patients body when suctioned.

I am one of the guilty parties with regards to spelling, grammar and sentence structure. What I would like to state though, is that this site has become more and more international. Not everyone in the freaking world speaks "American English" in fact, not everyone speaks English in their daily lives. Looking at my daily work live as an example, if I spoke 20 words English in a day, it's lots. Sadly, there's more than one English "dialect" in this world. How you, as a professional, feel you are qualified to judge someone an idiot based on their English proficiency and therefore judge them on a professional basis even though you personally do not know them is beyond even my "idiotic" grasp. As for AK's msg on the new shorthand, agreed 100% with you dude. It seriously gets my back up, I do not have the time or energy to even try and decipher what the person is trying to say. For interest sake, if you use Firefox as a browser. It has a built in spell check facility.

I can attest to the that, I have been trying to get them to give me the info on what we will need and the requirements to get ourselves registered as an AHA training facility for the past 2 months. Several phone calls and loads (I gave up keeping track) emails later, I am still awaiting the information.

So does this mean if I drive like an idiot I can blame my parents? Man these people seriously know how to waste money on crap!

People with a particular gene variant performed more than 20 percent worse on a driving test than people without it -- and a follow-up test a few days later yielded similar results. About 30 percent of Americans have the variant. "These people make more errors from the get-go, and they forget more of what they learned after time away," said Dr. Steven Cramer, neurology associate professor and senior author of the study published recently in the journal Cerebral Cortex. This gene variant limits the availability of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor during activity. BDNF keeps memory strong by supporting communication among brain cells and keeping them functioning optimally. When a person is engaged in a particular task, BDNF is secreted in the brain area connected with that activity to help the body respond. Read more at this link

Oh man this is brilliant! Had it been intentional I love it! Brilliantly thought through, I need some of those skills on my patient reports. LMAO

So very true, some of them are seriously funny to.

Has anyone seen this website yet? It's called Post Secret, it allows you to send your secret to this dude in complete privacy on the back of a post card. I read through some of them, man some people have serious secrets they are hiding! Regards S