Jump to content

Dustdevil

Elite Members
  • Posts

    8,965
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    33

Posts posted by Dustdevil

  1. The first place I worked it was nearly impossible for a woman to get in or, if she could, to do well only because there had been a couple of women that played the harassment card not long before. Not that anyone would treat them poorly on purpose, it's just no one wanted to be anywhere near them if they could help it as there is no defense against the sexual harassment charge.

    Saw plenty of that. Rare to see a female last a year because of it.

  2. Never been a fan of encouraging students to memorise acronyms instead of understanding physiological and pharmacological concepts. It ends up encouraging them to just start working their way through the steps of a checklist instead of competently evaluating their patient and his or her needs.

    If your school leaves you needing acronyms just to do your job, then your school sucks.

  3. I always wondered how this would work in a protocol-centric state like NY.

    99.99 percent of all the patients you see will present with complaints outside of your scope of practice. Coughs, sore throats, headaches, nausea, vomiting, the sudden surprise of menarche. What are you going to do? If you don't have them transported to a medical facility, you are violating the law, subject to criminal and civil liability, not to mention the loss of your cert. If you do have them transported, you're going to be fired in the first 24 hours.

    Only an idiot would take this job without first getting strong guarantees from the state and the medical director of the camp.

  4. I believe you and I have been to this dance before. Would you agree with my position that 9-1-1 is a victim of it's own success?

    To a great extent, I have to agree! When you dumb everything down for simplicity, you have to expect a dumb and simple result.

    • Like 1
  5. Case in point, on a critical chest pain call, working the patient up and getting ready to go and many of you will send a fireman or first responder to get more oxygen or another piece of equipment. All the doors are locked. The compartments are locked also.

    The person finds all the doors locked. Delay in patient care right?

    If so, I'm firing the medic for not being properly equipped in the first place. Firemonkeys are for carrying your equipment back to the ambulance, not to the patient.

    Do the responding agencies know how to unlock your rig?

    Yes. They know how to ask me for the key. They passed a civil service exam, so I give them that much credit.

    So locking the doors is a deterrent but it's not the end all of security.

    That's why you put Shatterguard film on the windows, just like in my car. Nobody will be getting in fast enough to not get caught (and shot).

  6. Agreed with Squint - not a hope in hell that I am going into any situation that may require and firearm to protect myself. That is the job of law-enforcement, just as my job is to pick up and glue the pieces back together after the shooting stops.

    Bullshyte. 100 percent of all medics who have been injured by on-scene violence will tell you that it was completely unexpected. There is no possible way for you to avoid all such situations. You're only avoiding the obvious ones. That only lulls you into a false sense of security. So when you get hurt, you can thank your woman's intuition.

  7. Dust, it was a blatant 911 abuse call. The point of my story is valid.

    Patients don't cause EMS abuse. EMS causes EMS abuse by giving the public one number to dial, and no options.

    Don't blame the public for the failure of YOUR system. Especially if you are doing nothing to fix it.

  8. Not to mention...how do you explain to the non-critical patient, "I'm bored and will now be switching with my partner. It's been fun, though."

    Tell them it's the law. Thanks to the news, most people are accustomed to there being legal limitations on professional drivers, pilots, train motormen, etc... They'll be glad you're being careful.

    • Like 1
  9. When you approach the patient, and the first thing that comes to mind is:

    • JESUS!
    • HOLY S#!T!
    • OH F##K!
    • DO YOU HAVE ANY BLOOD LEFT
    • I WISH I HAD TWO MORE HANDS
    • WHERE'S THE REST OF IT
    • ET AL, ETC...

    You should probably use a tourniquet.

    Big rep points for that excellent answer! That should be in the textbook!

    I was using tourniquets for a good 20 years before it became the latest fashion. And getting yelled at for it too, of course. But -- as usual -- I turned out to be right.

    • Like 1
  10. My phone woke me up at noon today with alerts about this. Crazy! You never hear of anything going on in Norway. I figured frostbite was their biggest threat. But anyplace you have a "labour party" with "youth camps," you're bound to have problems. That's how the Nazis got started.

    • Like 1
  11. Reporting is very rarely an issue for EMS. If it hasn't already been reported to police when we were dispatched (after all, 911 takes the calls for both of us), then the hospital will be notifying them when the patient arrives. I can't remember many times in 35 years that I actually had to pick up a phone to notify PD. If I did, it was usually because I needed cops on-scene ASAP, not because I felt some duty to spend a quarter.

    What I am saying is that, aside from some really unusual circumstances, it would be a relatively unbelievable scene for professional EMS to call and report a suspicion. Of course, "professional" does not include small-town volunteers, or other such whackers.

  12. He talks about RA's, and yet refers to his ambulance as a Bus (NYC terminology)......

    I'm begining to wonder if he's not watching too many of the 'whacker shows' (Trauma, Third Watch, Rescue Me......)

    Yeah, that's the impression I get. Television overdose. Had I not lived 5 years in California, I never would have heard of RA either. It's just a firemonkey thing, just like Dallas FD calling their ambulances MICUs. They can't handle the truth.

×
×
  • Create New...