codesurfer

Ah, thank you! I will be honest, I totally had to google IAFF to even know what that was!

I have stopped on a few car accidents over the years, and keep an extra box of gloves in my car for that very reason, but sadly I will only stop if I see something nasty. However, as bad as it sounds I will not intervene in public if it can avoid it, I will pretend to be a bystander and call dispatch if I have to. Sometimes I just want to have nothing to do with medicine and EMS. I usually get the same response from friends and family if I don't help however....

What is the IAFF marches on thing about?

I am glad I was able to clarify what my thought process was to y'all. This was a 0200 post after a long day at work and class and was frustrated with it all, but it made perfect sense in my head at the time! LOL! I was always told that the day you know everything in EMS was the day you needed a new job! So I was kind of upset that my statement was taken that way by you guys, I didn't want to be classified as that girl! =D Paramedic school has been a long and frustrating process, but I have learned SO much over the past year and I really do hope I can make use of it all now that it's all over! Scary....

Sorry it's taken so long to respond guys! I'm in my last week of in class paramedic stuff and take the last exam on Thursday so I've been avoiding all studying distractions! LOL. I am not quite sure how I feel about interior firefighting. I have never been in a house fire, but grew up in San Diego and have a pure hatred for wildfires, but maybe I'll have a different outlook if I was trained in it. I don't want to rule out any agencies because I would have to be a firefighter for that reason. I don't know if I'll like it until I do it... I've always had an interest in working in DC since I moved to the east coast because like you, I just love that city. I really do wish it was somewhere that would be as great to work in. Oh yeah traffic is a constant battle up there! But like I said earlier growing up in SD and LA traffic is actually relaxing to me, it gives me time to wind down before getting home. As crazy as that sounds!!! Are there any nice places to live in Fairfax County, close to springfield. I was looking at houses in VA a few months ago online and I may be wrong but it looked like all of them seemed to be a little on the ghetto side, and I do not see the point in paying $300,000 for an apartment in Fairfax or Alexandria! Thanks for all your help and advice! It is helping me tremendously! =D

He will be working in Springfield, VA which I believe is outside of Alexandria a bit. But I think will eventually be working for PG County. I don't particularly like fire, but I know that it is just something I am going to have to suck up and deal with if I want to work for a county 911 service. I know I can make it through the fire academy but I would like to work somewhere where I don't have to go interior on a fire if I don't have to. What's the deal with DC? People tell me to avoid it but I have no idea why! LOL. I am not even sure I know exactly where Hagerstown is, but I will definitely check it out. We are looking at houses in Laurel, MD right now. It kind of seems like the happy medium between DC and Baltimore for us without being in the middle of the ghetto. I was looking at Howard County last night but couldn't find much information about them. I also saw the City of Laurel has an EMS department but hadn't heard anything about it and can't find anything online either!

Have a few questions about MD, VA, and DC EMS. I don't know if anyone on here is from/working in that area and can help answer some questions. I will be finally moving back north to Maryland in a few months and am looking for some advice about the services up there. Basically who to work for and who to avoid. I lived and worked on the Eastern shore (some of you will know what that means) and don't really know too much about the way things go in the DC/VA Metro area. I have heard from multiple people to avoid DC Fire/EMS for various reasons, so that's probably out of the picture. As of right now Baltimore City is one of my top picks due to the call volume and schedule, it seems to be the closest to the county I currently work for. My husband will be working in VA, so I am not opposed to VA EMS but know absolutely nothing about how it works over there!! Advice of any kind is greatly appreciated, I feel lost in my job search and have no idea where to start! Thank you!

Thank you Mike, I appreciate it!

I think my phrase "useless knowledge" came out a little wrong. I didn't quite mean useless, it's just that I'm not quite sure what to do with it all yet. I think it's more along the lines of I've got all this information in my head and I don't quite understand what it all means yet! LOL! That kind of useless! Thank you! I did not specifically train through the Red Cross, but I do have a history with the Red Cross through disaster awareness and response.

New member here about to finish EMT-P school. I work as an EMT-I for a 911 service now, but I am going to need all the help I can get in the next few months trying to turn all this useless knowledge into something helpful on the ambulance!! Any assistance and advise you are willing to share is greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance!

As a soon to be ALS provider and a new member I guess I'll take a stab at this..... What is flail chest?: I think it's defined as 3 or more ribs broken in 2 or more places. What caused it?: Since it is unknown I am going to go with some sort of blunt trauma. What are your primary short term concerns?: Hypoxia. Possible ventilation issues. Cardiac compromise with its proximity to the heart (maybe some type of cardiac contusion). Any other issues due to the injury, I willing to say that this is probably not an isolated injury unless someone used a baseball bat. Longer term concerns?: No idea. Load and go/stay and play? Why?: I would call this a load and go. Mainly because if you've got an injury like that to the chest I am going to assume you've got a serious mechanism and there are going to be some other injuries involved. This may be distracting you from some other serious issues the dude is having. Treatment?: "bulky dressing". I know that's how your supposed to treat this. But have always been unsure as why. Do you really want to push the flail segment back down? Wouldn't that compress lung tissue and possibly reduce lung expansion? If you need to start BVM ventillations couldn't that increase your chances of some sort of barotrauma? Honestly if I got this man tomorrow...I would put him on a backboard, start a large bore IV or two depending on vitals, throw on a NRB at 15 liters, place him on the monitor, and roll to the ER.