brentoli

I check every drug in my box at the beginning of my 48. Pharmacies hire idiots too. We sign our drug box out at the beginning of the shift. If the next shift finds a discrepancy, it's my a$$.

So do you check your box out from a pharmacy at the beginning of the day? Not just hand off from the last crew?

Paramedics Investigated After Boy Handed Emergency Radio

The boy said he is worried about the paramedics and his grandmother.

"If I knew it would get them fired, then I wouldn't have done it. I feel bad for them," he said.

The paramedics involved haven’t been fired. The matter is still under investigation.

I can see where this would cause some un-needed confusion with dispatch and other people listening. Would you do the same thing? Would the 11 year old even be in the front with you?

Expired Drugs Found on Ambulance

CBS Atlanta News has discovered DeKalb County rescue trucks carried expired drugs on board. Documents obtained by CBS Atlanta show they were common drugs paramedics use to treat life-threatening allergies like an EpiPin and nitro spray or calcium chloride to jump-start a heart.

What these drugs will do, buy you time before you get into the hospital, said Dr. Gaylor Lopez, Director of Georgia Poison Control.

Shoddy reporting. However. What procedures does your service have to prevent this? I know there is a large disparity in record keeping from service to service.

edit to fix quote tags

I haven't seen one episode of this show.

I felt like giving you a - for denying AK some action though.

You're one person. Until backup arrives you can only do what you can do.

The major MCI potential is everywhere. Do you have a school? Do jets fly over head? Interstates?

Personally, I think being the very first person on scene would be the best position, you will have to take the time to size up everything and do your physical/mental 360* of the scene. Yeah thats fire-monkey talk, but if you are going to corridnate the MCI response you need to know what you are getting your people into.

We don't train nearly enough for MCI's and the training we do for the most part is lackluster. How many of you have been on an MCI with 35 high school drama students presenting on the ground in nice clumps with uniform injuries?

Can someone with Web Development/PHP/MySQL experience get ahold of me off-line or though PM? I need some assistance working out a program for a website.

Thanks!

Wow there have really gotten to be a lot of jerks on here. Dart is asking some questions, why not answer those asked and then politely give him some ideas to help his chances of success. With the responses given here it is no wonder this site is quickly losing its reputation as a quality place to hang out and discuss EMS and real life.

Dart I apologize for the asinine comments you have received and I hope you the best in your quest. I am sorry I have no knowledge of flight so have no way to help.

I don't quite understand how telling a 20 year old kid that theres much more to starting an air-evac service than just getting a helicopter and a couple of radios.

Sometimes people need reality checks. Dream big? Sure! I dream big all the time. I have thought up enough plans to start an ALS service for my area I could probably fill a 3" binder with the proposal. The problem comes in 2 forms:

First, getting the funding, people, and equipment to start the service.

Second, and argueably the hardest of the two, convincing people the status quo isn't good enough. Convincing fire chiefs, ambulance chiefs, the public, politicians.

I agree with spenac. In any industry or company it had to start with one person asking a question and comming up with an idea to answer it.

happy

If you will check this post:

Do you really need Air Med in your area? Do you have documented problems with it? Here is my suggestion to you.

Go back 5 years and find documentation showing a need for Air Med

Get all the other jurisdictions in your area to do the same

Schedule meetings with the service rep for all of the Air Med companies that service NY

Show them the documentation you have in an easy to understand no-nonsense manner. These people don't want to waste their time with hill-jacks saying "Heliocopters are cool, man!"

Sit back and see what happens.

You will see there is a well thought out answer to his problems. Also there are several other posts here that are offering a solution and answers to the question. Is one or two out of line? Maybe. But I don't see how you can sit here and defend an obvious whackerish question. This question came from someone whose only contributions to this forum are asking

1) How to install a radio in his truck

2) How to install grill lights in his truck

I am sorry, but with a history like that, and 5 posts to his name, of course a post like that will be called out for the wackerness.

I don't even know if $30 million in capital would handle your start up. Theres a good reason that most medical helicopter services are either branches of a larger transportation group (i.e. PHI Air Med) or a division of a hospital.

Do you really need Air Med in your area? Do you have documented problems with it? Here is my suggestion to you.

• Go back 5 years and find documentation showing a need for Air Med
  
• Get all the other jurisdictions in your area to do the same
  
• Schedule meetings with the service rep for all of the Air Med companies that service NY
  
• Show them the documentation you have in an easy to understand no-nonsense manner. These people don't want to waste their time with hill-jacks saying "Heliocopters are cool, man!"
  
• Sit back and see what happens.
  

Bell 407's For Sale

Theres some pretty paint jobs.

I'm VERY VERY VERY skeptical about your intentions.

A friend of mine wants to start a medivac/search and rescue service in our area. The area that I live in is about 1-1.5 hour(s) away from the nearest available helicopter service. What we need are ideas on setting the service up. What kind of radio would we need to purchase to put in the helicopter to allow the pilot to talk to fire/rescue? Our area works on high band and low band radio's. The state EMS frequency is 155.340 which is the frequency that would mainly be used to talk to one another. What kind of thermal imaging camera could be mounted on the helicopter for the pilot to use? What kind of spotlight? I need any information that anyone can offer. We really would like to start this thing up here. It would really be to our advantage to have a closer service to fly critical patients out to the nearest trauma center (which is 2 hours away by ambulance). Any and all information would be helpful.

Is this serious?

Honestly?

Not trying to be a jack ass. Do either of you have any sort of aviation experience at all? You don't just stick your motorola radio ontop of the helicopter dash and say you are good like you do on a F-150.

There are companies that deal exclusivly in providing for public safety aviation. Assuming you are serious in starting this buisness your better bet would be to court the companies, get contacts with sales reps, and then research the materials to find out what you will need.

As for EMS in particular, I think that by necessity our roles will expand under Obamacare. Couple the push for expanded primary care, the huge influx of more patients who are "covered", and the shortages of primary care providers, and I cannot see how our roles would not be changed and expanded. They can provide extra training for EMS providers, and pay us a few extra bucks, we will be doing far more primary care to cover the shortages in this field, and they will save billions.

I think one of two things will happen

A) Pay will become worse, supplies will becomre more scarce, and response times will get longer.

The economy will catch up with EMS and we will start seeing job reductions.

Medicare is dropping and will continue to drop reimbursment rates. Costs are rising, EMS providers will now have to provide insurance if they didn't before. Supply costs are rising. Fuel is rising.

Whats supposed to happen?

I wonder if they are disturbed that the doctors are carrying weapons, or because the doctors need to carry weapons?

I didn't notice that. I think I have trained my mind to pass over spin phrases.

Its truly sad that we are having these discussions. I brought up the self defense thread due to a senario that happened near by. I am declining to discucss it right now due to the freshness of it and not knowing all the details.

Here is an interesting article on Slate today about doctors in a practice and ER doctors being subject to violence:

When Paitents Attack!

According to 2005 data from Bureau of Labor Statistics, health care workers are twice as likely as those in other fields to experience an injury from a violent act at work, with nurses being the most common victims. Nobody in this country keeps consistent track of how much of that violence is directed at doctors. (The last report from the Department of Justice put the number of doctors assaulted at about 71,000 from 1993 to 1999.)

...

A 2006 study confirmed that doctors usually improvise when confronted with a violent patient. Their responses range from pragmaticlike writing the desired prescriptionto Vaudevillian. One doctor admitted to carrying a fake gun; another suggested he would fake a heart attack, fall to the floor, and hope the patient would feel guilty for having caused it and just walk out. More disturbing: Forty percent of ER physicians, according to the aforementioned 2005 survey, admitted to carrying a gun, knife, or other weapon.

I have the extra carrier, and have used it primarily at scenes where we are advised that shots may be fired, like "Warrant Service" standby's (use the search feature on Tactical EMS in or with SWAT responses).

I'm surprised no one picked up on this.

You realize that wearing a vest only when you think you might need it, is akin to wearing your seatbelt only when you think there might be a crash.

If you have no training, and your employer did not ensure that you were adequately trained and prepared, then you lose all liability, and it all goes to your employer. But once you are "certified", you are now the one responsible for intelligent, safe, and competent use of the skills you were taught.

I agree with you Dust, but from research I know that reputable training companies will send legal defense / expert witnesses for your defense assuming you have kept current on CE and followed your training.

When you go the self-sought/agency made up method you are less likely to have that legal defense.

Neither one of us are lawyers and this should not be taken as expert legal advice.

I think you should change "self training" to "professional training" or something similar.

I wanted to make the distinction between professional training, from a training company or certified instructors in the medical field, and training you have sought out on your own away from EMS. Those that take on martial arts as a sport/hobby or the women that take self defense classes that police departments sponsor, that type of thing.

I have realized after reading this article that this bill er new law will have farther reaching consequences than just affecting me and my family in insurance costs. It will affect the businesses that we use everyday.

This is another reason why this bill is so bad for the US. The 1 billion charge is 1/3 of AT&T's profits for last year.

In a September 13 [2005] statement, the CEO of Starbucks Corp. announced his company will spend more on health insurance for its employees this year than on coffee beans.

Starbucks is a service business dishing out expensive cups of coffee and related goods. The value of coffee beans that Starbucks roasts for retail sale pales in comparison to the revenue raised from selling cups of espresso and café latté. Starbucks pays about $2,500 for health coverage for each U.S. employee, including part-timers, and about two-thirds of its employees are part-time workers.

Consumer Driven Health Care (11/01/2005)

You're kidding, right? Decades of martial arts practice -- literally devoting a lifetime to it -- is less worthy than a one day merit-badge for a few moves that you will never commit to muscle memory? Nigga puhleeze.

The problem with so-called self-defence training is the same problem that exists with EMS training. People think that a short time spent learning a few "skills" is an education. It isn't. It's just enough to get you or someone else really badly hurt. Most every self-defence seminar I have ever seen was a total waste of time, and was sometimes even counterproductive. I don't care how awesome the instructor is, you cannot teach anything of long term use in 8 hours.

I have a black belt in a mixed style of martial arts. Also I did kickboxing for a long time. If someone were to attack me, I wouldn't remember much of any of the training. It's something you have to keep up with and practice all the time. A short instructional class won't do you any good. So, I agree with you 100% on this one.

I thought that through before I posted it belive it or not.

I'll let you guys with a little more years school me here, but this was my reasoning:

If you end up getting in a liabilty situation that ends up going to a trial (I know its unlikely in the plea bargin days) the panel of 12 under educated people in the situation at hand would look more favorably on the framed certficate rather than just saying "I took 3 years of judo." Also with the certificate many outside training companys will offer their services for trial if you are going by what they taught.

That was my rational about putting an outside 2 day plus course above martial arts.

I think Dust has a valid point. A onetime class is a drop in the bucket.

I have had the continual training, but know that I would be extremely cautious using any of the techniques.

We have the option of calling LEO. But short of "Shots Fired", an actual response is slow at best.

Not to mention. Actual training of this sort requires providers to be at some sort of fitness level.

Perhaps we should tackle that first? But that is just my opinion.

For purposes of this poll, choose the higest level only, and consider Professional 8+ higher than self learned martial arts.

There has been talk of incidents lately where providers are being attacked and defending themselves, some turn out better than others.

What type of training have you had in self-defense? What type of training do you think EMS providers SHOULD have? What would you look for in a self defense course?

Discuss.

Wow, if this is legit, this is a scary turn of events. I have one question though. How exactly would one detonate these boob-bombs?

My guess would be with a large jolt/shock of some sort.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentaerythritol_tetranitrate

Like the related explosive nitroglycerin (glyceryl trinitrate), PETN is also used medically as a vasodilator in the treatment of heart conditions. These drugs work by releasing the signaling gas nitric oxide in the body. The heart medicine Lentonitrat is nearly pure PETN.[18]

Another service turned this run down due to weather. That is not going to bode well for the pilot's culpability here.

We had a med-helo accident in 2005 a few blocks from my house. That was also a run that was turned down. The service afterward now asks on if any other services have turned down the flight. One of the many changes they made.

None the less, peace to the crew families.

Fmale homicide bombers are being fitted with exploding breast implants which are almost impossible to detect, British spies have reportedly discovered.

The shocking new Al Qaeda tactic involves radical doctors inserting the explosives in women's breasts during plastic surgery — making them "virtually impossible to detect by the usual airport scanning machines."

It is believed the doctors have been trained at some of Britain's leading teaching hospitals before returning to their own countries to perform the surgical procedures.

Fox News - Terrorists Could Use Explosives in Breast Implants to Crash Planes, Experts Warn

Question 1 - does anyone here think that the cost estimates will turn out to be right for this bill or are you like me, skeptical because the history of this government is to live beyond it's means. We take in less money in taxes than we put out or we would have a balanced budget or a budget surplus.

United States of America - Home to the McMansion

*************************************** This just in (Breaking News)... Congressman Anthony Weiner's Jamaica, New York, office was closed, and several persons who had been in the office were decontaminated, following discovery of a white powdery substance delivered through the mail.

Darn shame we don't have any democrat offices around here. Would make for some interesting runs.