WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot

My name is pretty self explanatory. I was tooling around the site and saw it in a post, found it entertaining and blatantly stole it! the avatar has to do with my loving to ride motorcycles and the pic just kinda makes you go WTF?!

do tell...

Turnip you have had the experience of working on a holly wood set, I would take this job just for the adventure. We are talking entourage here! It would be fun for a little bit. If I could keep the car when I got tired of it all I would sign on for a period of time!

translation, we are happy to give you some ideas and point you in the right direction, but we are not going to write your paper for you. :0P BTW Dwayne, your reply left coffee on my computer. LMAO!

I have to agree in part SYSTEMET, it's not worth agonizing over. Each patient gets good service from me regardless of how I feel about their chief complaint. I don't see the calls we get changing and that's ok. The BS calls are often entertaining and give me a break from the heavier calls. Which was kind of the point to this whole thread when it was started. Due to Turnips astute observation that this is a public site, it has redirected. Reading a lot of these posts, we talk a lot about the burden on EMS but not so much the burden on the health care system. All these patients we bring in to emerg. for minor reasons tax the system dramatically. I can't speak to the hospitals in other countries but here in Canada we have huge wait times due to the volume of minor patients that could have gone elsewhere to get the same care. If we had the oportunity to triage some of these patients to minor emergency clinics instead of Emergency departments we could be a small part of a solution to these problems. I work industrial where I essentialy run a minor emergency clinic (pardon the delusion of grandeur). I see the minor stuff and have the tools and education to treat and release quite a bit. The decision comes down to whether the patient needs labs and or antibiotics, more definitive care, etc. We do have the ability to make those calls. I think we just need the madate to choose where to take our patients. No we won't change how EMS is used, but we can change the burden that use puts on the health care system.

Ah Turnip! Why did you have to go and ruin things by pointing out that this is not a private place to blow off steam and have a good laugh at the lowest common denominators expense. Now I'm going to have to think about what I post... for the benefit of the profession of course.

Ummm... Less volume equals less pressure X Radius / 2X wall thickness... Pressure = force / area. I can't remember how to calculate force of a fluid(CHBARE might be able to tell you) but essentially if the area, in this case the walls of the arteries, remains the same, a decrease in volume will decrease the force it exerts on the walls of the artery. This is an oversimplification of course because when you start calculating in compensation mechanisms where the artery constricts (Alpha 1) thus decreasing the area and the heart pumps harder (Beta 1,Inotropic), thus increasing the force of a smaller volume you can maintain the same pessure with less volume. I hope this helps a little...

It's a little redundant as the points have been made but here are my two cents. I find pictures of exceptional value when you are breaking in a new doctor. They don't know me yet and have their own ideas. So, while he is taking the collar off my patient before doing x-rays I can explain that I think on this particular patient that is a bad idea and show them the picture to drive home the description I have already given them. The collar stays on x-rays and CT are done and I gain credibility with the doctor. Do I erase the pictues? Only ones that could identify my patient, the rest I keep for education, but never to publish. I would like to continue making my mortgage payments thankyou very much.

Bernhard you are right of course, my reference to the wanna be hero was this image in my head of an old partner of mine. He needed the attention to justify his very existence. He would have created a spectacular scene to get it and usually did more harm than good. I certainly didn't mean to denegrate first aiders in general and I apreciate you pointing out how I have misscommunicated that.

Of course they deserve a proffessional response, no one on here has said "I tore them a new asshole for wasting my time". Everyone gets treated with respect regardless of how we feel about the call. Rule number one, it is not my emergency, rule number two, just because I don't think it's an emergency doesn't mean the patient sees it that way. This could be a huge emergency to them and we treat them with dignity and respect. Then, after the call, we laugh about it and use the black humour we know so well to blow it off. like in this thread where we can talk about the bull shit calls that you have ruined with your mightier than thou art bull shit.

let's say they only drove 30mph (5280 feet x 30 = 158,400 feet per hour / 60 minutes = 2640 per minute x 5 minutes = 13200 feet / 5280 feet per mile = 2.5 miles the kid would have had to walk. Maybe if he had walked instead of sitting down in the park he would have warmed up...

Yes you are on topic... by highjacking I mean you have ruined something that could have been a lot of fun.

Oh Dwayne... They so respond on calls and for the most part we have the same problems you do, it does depend on the crew and place. I have worked with some amazing firefighters but not as a rule.

Flammer you need to take this thread for what it is worth. The intention isn't for a moral debate on our responsibilities as health care providers. It is a venting point for dumb calls. If you want to debate if there is such thing as a BS call and our responsibilities as care givers then start up a thread on it insted of highjacking this one. Just let us have our fun insted of doing your devils advocate thing. I'm not saying you don't have a valid discussion topic, I'm just suggesting you have it somewhere else.

OK you figured it out, they had a one night stand and I am their bastard child.

Oh this has the potential to be a really fun topic. My biggest BS call was for a vaginal bleed at 3 in the morning. When I asked when her last period was she just looked at me stupid and said "about a month ago" I stood there looking at her, didn't say a work. It took a full minute before the light came and she clued in...

Paramedics make terrible first aiders, just sayin... I have stopped but most often I pass by. I do not have a star of life sticker in my window though I do have one tattoed on my body. I still get a woody when I drive by a good MVA and if it looks like I can help and it is prudent for that time certainly I will, but most situations just don't warrant it. It has been said a few times in this thread. We assess each situation and choose appropriately. I respect the people that stop for everything, but I do not lose sleep when I choose not to. As for the initial question to this thread, I would have done the same thing. I would sit back and watch for a few moments a decided if I really needed to jump in to help rather than run in to be the hero. With that being said, the decison to help is based not only on my assesment or physical skills but my emotional skils as well because we as proffessionals all (I use all loosely because I have worked with some serious idiots)have a unique ability to bring a calm over the caos and sometimes that is all that is needed, and can be of far greater value than whether I had a full set of equipment in my trunk or not. (Which I don't)

I have been wasting a spectacular amount of time on this site, learning both educationally and a touch of humility. There are some damned smart people here and few with some spectacular credentials. @ Dwayne, I have seen alot of posts form you, thank you for the welcome, and I am pretty sure we are going to bet along just fine! Turnip, I am trying to keep a low profile for awhile until I have felt my way through here a bit and figured the personalities, but you I know, and it is so on. I blatantly stole my name from a post I saw on here and I intend to live up to the name! Kiwi, we will have some fun, likely at tniuqs's expense!

Thansk for sharing that Brett, it is good to keep up on what is happening back home.

Auzzie is not the Queens english. It is like Newffie is to a western canadian accent, or louisiana is to a... fuck I don't know... any thing else...

I must say, I expected a long boring round of philanthropists on this one. But there are some great responses. Herbie, I absolutely agree with you. I have no problem with a bit of confidence, even cockiness. Arrogance or some superiority complex drives me crazy. Happiness you are patient as a tree and kind as can be, I would more likely break that student down to tears and make them feel dumb as a buck toothed red neck inbred honky tonk hoser, then work on building them back up once they have discovered humility. I might even accidently forget them at Tim Horton's a couple times... "what? I thought he was in the back?" I have never had a need or want for thankyou's but being Canadian I get them all the time, but then, we are so polite we thank bank machines... Come to think of it, I recall thanking my patients more than a few times.

hehe flattery will get you anywhere "turnip". I am fortunate to work around some pretty bright people, I am no rock star, but I will work on it...

Greetings, This site was recommended by a collegue. I have been wandering aimlessly through posts to get a feel for things. Having recently read the pros and cons thread it looks like I am in the right place and I will check my ego at the door! I have been working EMS for 12 years and have been a paramedic for 7. My experience is mostly rural where I have always worked full time EMS and have had the great fortune to be somewhat busy. Rural has always appealed to me because I enjoy working with the doctors, nurses, lab and x-ray to stabilize, then long transports to primary centres. I do miss the sharpness that came from working in the city where calls were more of a reflex; now I have to think my way through calls and con ed has become critically important. I have been working industrial for the past 3 years and I have to admit that I enjoy it most of the time. The urban services seem to be limiting paramedics practice recently and industrial is expanding it... It is an exciting time to be in EMS.

I may regret making this my first post but here goes: Professionalism is in a sad and sorry state in EMS for a couple of reasons in my opinion. The first is that we do not have the long history and rigourous hiring standards of our counterparts in Fire and Police. Fire departments have a paramilitary history where they can smack down the new people and they are strict in their hiring practice, not to mention the history and PR that comes along with being a Fire Fighter; in general there is an instant sense of pride and belonging when you get hired on to a fire department ( I leave out volunteer systems though in my experience the same can hold true depending on the service). Police officers also go through rigourous hiring processes and psycological evaluations. When your first partner is an old burned out medic it becomes difficult to find the sense of pride. Secondly we have kids straight out of school getting into EMS that have not worked a day in their lives and thought EMS sounded cool. They have little respect for what they have undertaken and the effect they will have on other people. As a fire fighter these young people get a mentoring system where they work with a team and earn their way up the ranks. In EMS we work with one other person that may or not be as experienced/proffesional as would be hoped for. We have a certain autonomy on the ambulance that leads to bad behaviour without appropriate supervision and/or leadership (I speak from personal experience as I was, shamefully, incredibly unproffessional when I started in this industry). I don't think people new to the industry really understand the humility of a person entrusting the care of their family member to us. I don't think they understand the significance of the responsibility of what they are taking on. To improve proffessionalism we first need a better mentoring system, where newbees can be taught the significance of what we are doing and the importance of how we present ourselves both personally and as an industry. We need a better work environment with reasonable work hours and high expectations from supervisors that walk that walk and show what a proffessional looks and acts like. Pride in the proffession comes from working with people that take pride in it in the first place. If the rest of the service is taking pride in what they do and presenting themselves well, if they support their collegues that are experiencing burn out, we will get better people representing our industry. I feel sorry for the guy that yelled at a doctor. He doesn't feel respected, he doesn't respect himself or his carreer and he has no concept that he will never get that respect so long as he behaves the way he is. Respect is earned not demanded, so If he doesn't feel respected then earn it by shutting up and working harder for it instead of blowing up at the doctor and looking like an a**.