Dustdevil

Hey Man, welcome to the City. I just missed you in the chat room. I'll catch up with you soon.

You can't swing a dead cat around here without hitting a paramedic. They're a dime a dozen. Even the fire departments that don't run ambulances still have most of their people trained to the medic level. Half of them are busy scheming behind the scenes to take over the ambulance service, and occasionally they succeed.

I don't have any experience with that particular model. But Icom does make quality, heavy duty handhelds.

You're the only one here who knows what your operational requirements are and what specifications and features you might need. The F-11 is a pretty bare-bones model without many features, but as long as it meets your requirements and the price is right, you won't go wrong quality wise with Icom. Unless there is some reason that you are dead set on that particular radio, I would definitely not spend my money before I checked out similar Kenwood products and did a comparison.

The medics in my area use the LP12 with pads. Interestingly enough, the pads that we use on our AED's are not compatible with their monitor. Everytime we work a code we have to rip our pads off when the medics get there.....

You'd think somebody in that organization would have the common sense to just buy some adapters! A lot cheaper than using two sets of pads on every patient! :?

What AED are they using?

The service that I am with uses a Powerheart g# Pro with Pads. I actually preffer them as there are less things for some idiot to try and steal.

Hmmm... seems to me that people would be a lot more likely to steal a little mylar packet of pads than a hardwired set of paddles. :?

Anybody in the warmer climes having trouble with drying pads, like the EKG patches sometimes do?

And are y'all keeping the pads sealed until you are ready to use them, or keeping them pre-connected to the machine?

Hmmm.... it does sound psychogenic. It is not uncommon for people to get so worked up over worry that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Plenty of people actually make themselves sick just worrying about getting carsick or airsick, before the journey even begins. Lots of medic students who have gotten sick at autopsy or gross anatomy classes probably would have been fine had they not been so worried about it. So indeed, your anxiety is most likely contributing to the problem.

Assuming you check out physically, it sounds like you simply need some relaxation techniques. Do a little searching online, and ask your doctor about them when you discuss the medical workup.

Relaxation is the key. I wish I had some magic pill for you, but really the best I can say is that this ain't rocket science. BLS is just darn hard to screw up in any serious manner, so relax, take your time, and concentrate all your focus on the patient, not on yourself. As long as your mind is occupied on your patient and the care you are providing, your mind doesn't have time to dwell on worry and doubt. That's why people who get sick at autopsies usually don't get sick while working on a patient in knee-deep blood. Same reason that some pilots get sick when they are passengers, but not when doing the flying themselves.

Remember, thousands and thousands of people who weren't half as smart or strong as you have passed this way before you. There is no reason that you are not up to the task.

Good luck!

Junkies seek narcs through complaints of chronic pain. Back spasms. Migraines. They know better than to try and fake acute injuries, as they have found out very fast that it doesn't work if we don't find any signs. And they are pretty easy to pick out too, since they are always "allergic to Stadol and Nubain." That's why they show up at the ER instead of calling an ambulance. Failing to find anything, the doc simply writes them a script to get them out of his ER.

Good points, guys. Two runs from the past stick out in my mind.

I picked up a middle aged male from police custody outside of the burning meth lab that was his home. It blew up as it was being raided, and once he was in custody he began complaining of chest pain and SOB, so we were called. He had a history of prior MI, chest pain unresponsive to nitro, stable VS, and symptoms which strongly suggested another MI. We were 20 minutes from the nearest hospital. I gave MSIV. The doctor who had to wake up in the middle of the night to come to the ER made one of those smart-ass remarks about me wasting MS on somebody with nothing wrong with them. Ten minutes later, after seeing the 12 lead, he personally apologized to me.

Then there was the elderly lady with the broken hip on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night. She was in severe pain and any movement only aggravated it. I called medical control (obviously a different system from the above case) to request MS prior to packaging and transporting the patient. The A-hole doc quickly said, "I don't believe in that. I'm busy. I gotta go." and walked away from the radio. "I don't believe in that?" WTF is that supposed to mean? He didn't even stay online long enough for me to ask if he might be more comfortable with Stadol or Nubain. When we got to the ER, I was sure to point that doctor out to the patient and her family and let them know that HE was the one who didn't "believe in" pain medicine for hip fractures. And I made sure he heard me tell them.

A lot of docs make asinine, off-the-wall statements like that during patient presentations, instead of shutting up and listening like they should be doing. And I can't count the number of times docs have smarted off to me about the use if narcotics in the field. Don't worry about it. When it is his mother lying on the bathroom floor in pain, he'll suddenly have a whole new perspective.

Unfortunately, our idiotic "war on drugs" mentality in this country has created a popular culture within the medical community which places "just say no" over the care and comfort of their patients, and it's retarded. Fortunately, there is also a counter-movement within the medical community which is gaining in popularity which advocates compassionate pain management. The science is on their side. They just have to overcome all the hard-heads with the archaic attitudes.

Werd, I think that they could better used figuring out how they are going to pay for our schools then banning latex...

I don't want my tax dollars wasted on either one!

I love that RNs aren't mentioned anywhere in the plan!

FUNNY IT SEEMS THAT NO ONE ELSE HAS A PROBLEM WITH MY CAPS LOCK I TYPE LIKE THIS SO FELLOW MY MEMBERS CAN SEE IT MORE CLEARLY

Quite obviously, you never bothered to read the forum rules, which clearly prohibit typing in ALL CAPS. What are you, special? :roll:

I hope you are better at following directions in school and on the job.

I personally want my elected officials spending their time on more important matters. I'll just be careful with my own needles.

And, who has the right to make me have to?

I am a reasonable man. I will delegate that authority to my personal goon squad.

Not only should it be mandatory, but the government should get involved by providing further incentive. Classes should be free. And students should be able to deduct the value of a day's salary from their taxes, even if they attend on a day off.

And those who fail to recertify each year should be subject to on-the-spot cardioversion if caught.

That's very true. And you can forget OSHA ever standing behind you or protecting you. It won't happen.

You're better off playing the ADA card. They will actually back that up.

Would that would mean anybody, due to preexisting medical problems, who is unable to get down on the floor to do CPR, couldn't get a license renewal?

All such laws have special circumstance waivers written into them. No big deal.

Any significant increase in public CPR education benefits not only society at large, but us in particular. Somebody has got to teach all those classes! I know some medics making a pretty good living teaching CPR and other safety-oriented classes.

Just to clarify, the medical director I was referring to didn't ask us not to call because he didn't trust us. Quite the contrary. He asked us not to call because he trusted us and expected us to make our own decisions regarding patient care, no matter what the situation might be.

Dude, I had a doctor don gloves just to do a ROM exam of my knee last week! :?

I think that we should make CPR part of your drivers licnese test...and every four years you have to take it again.

Isn't BCLS required for high school graduation in Texas? I could be wrong. I just know that I have taught a LOT of HS CPR classes that the teachers said was "required."

I like the DL idea. After all, modern EMS' roots are in the DOT-NHTSA. You'd think that they might take some interest in pushing something like that through to the states.

At the very least, CPR should be an option to get deferred adjudication on a traffic ticket. "Defensive Driving" has become such a worthless joke. A lot of people would choose CPR over DD.

What a concept, eh?

Here's the "options" my favourite medical director gave us:

• 1. Do whatever you think the patient needs.

2. Don't call me until you have done it and are enroute to the ER.

I recently found that same photo while searching the net. I know a girl who is obsessed with Mark Harmon, but is too young to have ever seen him in anything before NCIS, so I went specifically looking for 240R pics. It was definitely a campy show. But it did give me some really good ideas.

For years I kept praying that television producers would finally discover that there was EMS and fire service outside of California. Of course, one must be careful what one wishes for. When they finally found their way out of Los Angeles, they merely skipped over the entire country to go to NY, where the world is equally as unrealistic as California.

So are you just looking to get outta Dodge, or can you not get in with Grady?

What kind of tourniquets are y'all using now?

Fort Worth and Austin Texas both have high-volume 911 services which are separate from fire and utilize basics. So does New Orleans, as well as almost all of Louisiana, although Louisiana seems to consistently stay about a decade behind the rest of the EMS world technologically speaking. Las Vegas is private service 911. A lot of Northern California is private 911. Isn't Atlanta private or hospital based EMS? Do they not hire basics?

Ahh... the video arcade craze! It was almost as bad as the drug craze. Otherwise docile teenagers turned into thieves, burglars, and even robbers just to get enough coinage for their next fix. It was truly disturbing. I remember the mid 80's being a bonanza for coin collectors. Rare and long out of circulation coins became commonplace in circulation as kids stole their parents' coin collections and took them to the corner arcade to play video games. I knew people who opened arcades strictly for the opportunity to sort through all the coins to find the rare collectables.