BillKaneEMT

Fr. Mulcahey learned it from that weird and extremely disturbing Alley Oop comic in that one evening paper when the editor got really hammered in 1949.

If the LEOs were paramedics that would be fine. The author is saying that a 2 day class would be enough to qualify them for this skill. If they were medics they wouldn't need the 2 day class though. I was never shown how to do a needle decompression so I can't dispute that it could be taught in a short time. But as you said, without the assessment skills you might get a nervous police officer shoving a needle into someones chest while they're taking a nap after a heavy meal which caused some bad indigestion and bloating. I remember seeing an article recently, might have been on this site, in which the police thought they found a body of a drowned man in a river, taped off the scene and called the medical examiner, then the guy sat up and wondered what was going on because he laid down in the shallow water to cool off and took a little nap. I suppose this would make napping in public a lot less common after a few amusing (not really) mishaps though. edit: Sorry, I got that mixed up. Onlookers thought he was dead and called police, then apparently they called the coroner, then he sat up. Still, how bout a pulse check or at least a breathing check. He didn't get a needle shoved in his chest so I guess he's lucky:P http://www.krqe.com/dpps/features/must_see_video/man-sleeping-in-river-mistaken-for-dead-ob12-jgr_4299609

Here's an article from officer.com that I was sent this evening. http://www.officer.com/article/10761224/one-man-go-bag-kit-up-now Most of this article seems reasonable. Until the end. As a road officer you are the first responder. A thorough two-day course can provide you with the knowledge and skill to stave off the top three preventable trauma-related deaths. At very minimum, your One Man Go Bag should contain a pressure dressing, preferably two, a tourniquet, again preferably two. The kit should have Kerlex-type roll gauze to soak up blood and fill up gaping wounds. A nasopharyngeal airway and a chest-decompression needle are also needed to maintain an open airway on an unconscious patient and relieve a tension pneumothorax. So, thoughts? Because if I end up getting a needle decompression from someone with a 2 day training course under their belt I'm gonna be a bit perturbed. Alternatively, if I'm wrong, I think maybe they should've added a couple days to the EMT class. I just don't think this would be a great idea. I'll be waiting to see what everyone thinks with great interest. I need to get some shuteye, busy day of filling up gaping wounds with kerlex tomorrow. Nighters.

Voted with both of mine but those Edmonton Eskimos are crushing us! Also, isn't Eskimos a politically incorrect term nowadays?

Well thank goodness! We haven't had any alarming stories in the media regarding the evils of video games lately, I was getting worried! Here's a direct quote from the kid's mother. "He's a very healthy kid. Nothing like that ever happened before," Rawlins said. "I never in a million years thought that a video game would involve his health." I know right? That damn video game! If only there were a way of preventing this sort of thing! Some sort of.... I don't know. A special person who could say to the kid "Hey, see that big orange ball in the sky? Go outside and check that out. Alas, such people don't exist. No one is capable of telling a minor what to do for their own safety and wellbeing. Curse you cruel video games!!! I think the only possible reaction here would be a nationwide xbox ban. It's really the only solution at this point. I am going to personally set fire to all video game devices I see from this day forward. I'll be The Masked Video Game Avenger! No longer will these horrifically evil devices torment the beloved children of this nation! I shall free the young generation from the tyranny of pixels! It's all up to me now. Who will join my crusade to end this scourge of our world's youth?! Will no one else come forward? The fate of children everywhere lies in your hands. And mine. Definitely not the hands of their parents though. I want to make that clear. Asking a parent or legal guardian to take care of something like this is just out of line. It's up to us EMT City-ites! The power is YOURS! *strolls off into the sunset to the Captain Planet theme song* edit: I realize that it's occasionally tough to discern sarcasm in online forum posts. I'm fairly sure I put enough emphasis on that to make my point of view clear to just about everyone. If you are unclear, bear in mind that the preceding was entirely tongue in cheek before posting angry responses or pm's. Thank you.

Wish I could "like" this ten more times. I don't mind being thanked by the patient or the patients family AFTER a 911 call of course. I simply don't think people should feel obligated to do that sort of thing. I mean, I thank my pizza delivery guy if he gets my order here on time and doesn't give me the wrong stuff. Let the fire fighters and such have the public acclaim. A giant apartment building fully involved is a better photo op than a 5 year old having an allergic reaction to a bee sting at an early afternoon picnic. Despite that I think I was hugged by about 18 people after the anaphylaxis call. The child had been stung before but had no reaction, presented with urticaria and airway swelling, family in town for the weekend and everyone flipping out. Anyway, family had no epi pen but thankfully we keep 2 adults and 2 juniors in the rigs. Epi and transport. Kid was ok and the family was turning the ER waiting room into a carnival. Admittedly I enjoyed that. I'm a sucker for happy endings. Random people approaching me and thanking me, people I've never treated and whose families I've never treated? That's a little creepy to be honest. Maybe I bought this shirt at a garage sale, maybe I'm the worst emt ever and I kill half my patients through dumb mistakes, these people don't know me. Just my opinion. Patients I treat who leave my rig better than when they came in= Excellent Families being happy, saying thanks, hugs etc.=cool. Random people I've never seen thanking me= pointless and a little odd. I originally typed insincere but that's not necessarily true. They might sincerely believe I need the boost to my self esteem or something. My self esteem is doing ok right now, thanks. Postscript: Spellcheck insists that anaphylaxis is not a word. It recognizes urticaria as a word though. You're so weird spellcheck

On it! This is an absolutely spectacular idea and I endorse it wholeheartedly.

Or, you could embalm every body with napalm. Then when they rise from the dead the slightest spark will make them burst into flames, toasting them and any zombie bystanders. Plus, it's a great way to use that pesky surplus napalm instead of making truckers and railwaymen cart it all across the country. Win win. Win?

Hehehe." If I'm elected president there will be a chicken in every pot and a chucklemeter in every living room! A NEON chucklemeter!" "But sir, we don't have the technology or the budget space to" "Silence! I am the great and powerful Oz and I ...wait what?" You can picture this tone though, right? Goes off then the dispatcher says: "Structure fire, partially involved at the Firehouse!" *2 firefighters look at each other* "Do you smell smoke?" "Nah, you?" "Nope!" "Alrighty, back to Call of Duty 4 then!" *Play for 30 seconds til a wrestling match breaks out over someone "looking at my part of the screen you cheatin bastard" * Aside from the fire at the firehouse tone that previous scene was played out word for word (after some editing for content) at a firehouse in which I was doing my ridealongs last year. The coffee table got smashed and one guy ended up with a minor scalp abrasion. It was the most blood I saw that day:P

Buddy sent me this. I rated it at 6.3 on the morning chucklemeter. Yes, I own a chucklemeter. I bask in your jealousy. /bask

I was an over the road truck driver several years ago and I was in west central texas on my way to a slaughterhouse to pick up a load of hanging beef. I'm on a state road heading south when I see the sky go pretty much jet black ahead of me. I keep on rollin and about 10 miles ahead I come to a smallish town that had just been hit by a tornado, which is now off to the east a bit and not really visible anymore. The town was trashed, cops waved me through and told me to watch for the utility poles south of town. So I get through the town, still going south, play the "downed power/phone pole slalom" cuz they're strew everywhere and think I'm past the worst of it. Get up to speed again when a WALL of what I think were grouse, perhaps 5000 of them, rise up from the west side of the road, loop around like a crazy tidal wave and plow right into me. Literally went blind for 4 or 5 seconds due to my windshield being covered entirely in birds. Blood and feathers everywhere, it was a mess. I managed to avoid wrecking my rig, got out and cleaned off the gore as well as I could and continued driving. I get to the truckstop near the slaughterhouse, get out to grab a bite to eat, and smell the nastiest fried chicken ever. I make a mental note to avoid it and go inside. So I sit down at the bar and order a burger, have a nice relaxing meal, and head out to go to bed. It didn't smell at all inside but as I got closer to my truck it just reeked. I saw what looked like oil smoke coming from under my hood, figured I had a busted line, shut off my rig and popped the hood latches. Apparently one of the birds had managed to hit my windshield, slide down under my hood, and wedge himself against the engine block. So I had a semi cooked game bird carcass, scorched feathers and all, stuck to my engine. If only I had known, I could have saved myself the price of dinner! ;-D Also I was right behind a guy on I-80 in Pennsylvania who hit a bear once. Going about 80 mph. The truck, not the bear. Obviously. That was a mess. It was a fairly big bear. Not grizzly size but probably the biggest black bear I've ever come across. Also I almost hit a bull once. In the road. On a gravel/dirt road in the middle of friggin nowhere in Alabama. That's a story for another day though. Time to go grill some chicken. And bake a German Chocolate cake which I've never tried before. Have a good night!

Thanks guys. Did I mention they offer tuition reimbursement for furthering my education? This has been a great day. Ok. I really do need to get some rest. Have a good one!

As an update: I went in and interviewed with my new company Monday. They took over most of the 911 contracts in the area barring a few towns that still use FD. And didn't that make them popular! My new company runs 100 rigs a day during the week, 60-80 on the weekends, and since they handle 911 for multiple towns and cities from here to South Bend they seem to be perfectly stable. I couldn't even get an interview when I started but after 2 with HR on monday and one with the owner and his wife that afternoon they hired me on the spot! Plus they let me do orientation with this months class instead of waiting for next months so I won't have to go without working. They have a 4 day orientation and at least 2 weeks of riding with an FTO for all new hires, plus mandatory CEVO and a few other things my last company never bothered with. It's sort of culture shock but in a good way. A really good way. Anyhow, I'm gonna crash out now but you folks have a good one!

That's reasonable enough. I should point out though, 1000 hour paramedics, nationally registered, started at $12.50 an hour at my company. We had a few closer to 18 but it took 8 years or so with the company to get that high. Granted, our pay was at the low end of things, but 12 and a half bucks an hour for an nremt-p is just silly. "Oh yeah, fork out 8-12 thousand dollars for school, you'll be making.... state fair money! Woot woot!" From what I hear that is not the case at the 2 big guys in my area who are still in business, and who hired every medic that worked for us on the spot due to their own medic shortage. Supposedly they're starting medics at 16 an hour which has lead to some "I shoulda quit last year" talk among my my former coworkers. Anyway, higher education would be great but if you insist on a 2 year degree (which is 10k at the bare minimum here) ambulance services will need to pay more than other companies pay for high school educations. Time to get ready. I'll be back this afternoon.

I have almost no experience with the west coast area, not in the last 5 years anyway. Are you sure about the firefighter wages? I live in the midwest and while firefighter are making at least triple what I make 125k a year is a bit shocking. My company went out of business this saturday and one of the reasons they cited in their "don't let the door hit ya" letter was the fact that the state was simply not paying them for any public aid runs we did. They were cutting costs for the last month, most notably when we were told to purchase our own gloves. Gloves are cheap but when you're making less than 10 bucks an hour it is a little frustrating. BSI or a non ramen noodle based dinner? Decision, decisions. Alas, such is life in this decadent age. Regarding issue 2 I understand your frustration. Personally, all of my coworkers were pretty amazing, particularly the paramedics. I LOVED working the ALS shifts. Not just because we tended to get the more interesting calls but due to the opportunity of working with and learning from some really great medics. As far as fire fighter glamor, well.... Just to get the ball rolling, let's consider the Hollywood perspective (In honor of your location *stage bow*). Best firefighter movie? Many would say Backdraft. I certainly enjoyed that movie and it did portray firefighters as serious hero types. Best EMT/EMS movie? Probably Mother, Jugs and Speed. A bitter EMT packing a big gun while hilarious hijinks, most of which portray the private ambulance folks as idiots, ensue. FF's 1, Privates 0. How do we change perceptions of the public and our employers? First, we get educated. As soon as I find a reliable job so I can avoid cardboard box living, I'm signing up for medic school. I'm still hoping to start before the end of the year. *fingers crossed*. Obviously EMT's who are happy with their current level of training and treatment options won't like that answer. It's a shame but it's about the only realistic chance I see at improving our value. Frankly, our class was extremely condensed at around 200 hours (with clinicals) and some states use classes that are half that. Fully half the class revolved around anatomy and physiology and I'm willing to bet that almost all of that is omitted from some states requirements. I'm looking at you Illinois! I'd love to see the basic emt requirements go up to, say, a 12 month course. Include phlebotomy and expand our protocols to include, oh, how about BGL testing? I can do it to myself twice a day but not a patient? How about some pain management beyond "bite down on this here plastic stick and we'll drive real fast mkay?" Why not take the current 10-12 month medic course offered by hospitals into the basic course and have the medic program stretched to 2 years like it is at Ivy Tech and most other colleges? And no grandfathering. EMTs who don't want to deal with it can be reclassified as EMRs. EMTs who take the new class can get paid a livable wage. Medics can take their associate of paramedicine degree do a 6 month nursing bridge if their back or knees go out or they just get sick of the rig. Now I admit this isn't a perfect solution. EMT's who feel happy with their treatment options will resent being dropped to EMRs. Employers will be enraged at needing to pay more than $9.50 an hour. Hospitals will be furious that... hmm. I dunno, they'll probably be mad at something . Anyway, I'm just brainstorming here. Let's hear what everyone else has to say. I'll check back on this tomorrow. Gotta get some sleep. Interview at 1100!

Welcome to the City:) This is a great place to learn from a great group of folks. If you have any specific questions feel free to ask, you'll nearly always get a quick answer. I've been to Utah many times, never lived there though. I've covered most of the country at one time or another and Utah is probably in the top 3 in terms of friendliest people. I was taking emt classes more recently than most of the people here so let me just throw a couple things your way. 1: ALWAYS do the reading. Read and study and read some more. this ties in with number two which is... 2: NEVER skip a class. Here's the thing. EMT basic classes are so condensed that missing one class generally means missing 2 or 3 chapters worth of material. You don't want to miss a minute of it. You need to get the reading done and the class time. The state testing, both practical and written were cake compared to our instructor's requirements. With any luck you'll have a teacher that really cares about how his or her students turn out. The bottom line in the class is that you get out of it exactly what you put in. If you decide this is the field for you and you put in the time and effort to be the best you can be then you should do fine. We started with 35 and after the first test we had 24. After midterm we had 13 but it would have been easy enough to guess that after a few weeks. If you put in the effort it shows. If you don't, likewise. Good luck and take care.

Iron deficiency Anemia will throw off the A1C as well sometimes. I realize the blood glucose was at 105 mg/dl but mine is often that high and I keep mine controlled with diet, exercise and metformin (though they halved my metformin dose recently). 110 and below is fine as I understand it. Without knowing the patients oral intake I'd hesitate to tell her she needed drugs. I was taught that an A1C of 4-6% was normal for a non diabetic and that between 6-6.5 could indicate pre-diabetes but that without at least 2 consecutive tests of at least 6.5% a doctor wouldn't diagnose diabetes. For me, I learned I had type 2 following drug test in which I was spilling sugar. At that point I was sitting at 280 mg/dl BGL so they decided I had a problem even before my A1C came back. I was a truck driver then, living an extremely unhealthy lifestyle, sedentary, eating garbage, smoking 3 packs a day and 60 pounds heavier than I am now. Thing is, it was pretty clear to the doctor under the circumstances that I was a type 2 diabetic (entirely due to my bad decisions:-D) and that multiple A1Cs wouldn't be needed in my case prior to me starting metformin. Given the patients stats I'm a little surprised at the diagnosis but of course, I'm no doctor:). I'm gonna run this post past my neighbor, who is a doctor, and see what she says. Also: That was taken from a very interesting article I read recently. http://chriskresser.com/why-hemoglobin-a1c-is-not-a-reliable-marker Enjoy.

Hahaha. Ok, first of all, thank you everyone. Dwayne, I always believe you:) Richard B, that story made me feel a lot better. Mike, Here's hopin, I'm going in to Prompt, the local big boy, tomorrow. I got a call from one of my former coworkers which leads me to believe we might get hired en masse by them since they're shorthanded and for a couple other reasons. Kiwi, my brother (who lives in Indy) just suggested the same thing. I'll be putting in apps statewide starting monday. I honestly feel quite a bit better now. I posted right after I got home, having just been blindsided then spending 40 minutes behind the wheel just getting angrier. I had to vent and I didn't want to start yelling at nothing so this was my best option. I spent my early 20s going off at the drop of a hat, a decade later I pride myself on maintaining, at minimum, my outward calm. I haven't actually yelled at anybody in like 2 years. I'm a firm believer in "what goes around, comes around" and I try to handle everything as though that were true. Pay it forward and so forth. To be clear, I'm in a better situation than many other people would be. I'm single and childless so all I have to worry about, financially, is myself. I'm sure I'll find something soon and I'll get by doing odd jobs if need be til I get hired by another service. The majority of my anger was caused by the callous and extremely disrespectful way I feel management and my dispatchers have acted throughout this process. Seriously, I get canned 2 hours into a 24 and you're mocking me for not assuming you were lying earlier? It's ok though. I'm not gonna let some snotty kid get me down. I needed to blow off some steam and I'm glad I had an outlet for doing so. A decade ago I woulda stopped at a bar and ended up in a brawl. This way is better. And no, I wouldn't have done a bad job or broken anything:) I would, however, have about 20 applications out already It's all good, I'm updating my resume and checking the local company sites right now. I'll be fine, and thank you everyone for the good wishes and moral support. Good night folks.

Not the good pissed either. Not taking the piss. Oh no. A little background first. 2 weeks ago my company did some layoffs. They closed one of the branch offices and let several emt's and medics go. Cutbacks, it happens. They've spent the last 2 weeks screwing up our schedules, making random changes and irritating the hell out of everyone while simultaneously telling us every day that things will get straightened out and everything will be fine. I tended to get ALS shifts because the medics generally have a few basics they like to work with for whatever reason and I happened to be one of them. I started my ALS 24 at 1800 tonight. We have to call dispatch to clock us in and I asked our dispatcher (who shall remain nameless, since he doesn't deserve one) what was going on with next week's schedule. "We're just finalizing it now, give us a couple hours and we'll let you know. We're swamped with calls for Monday, Wednesday and Thursday so it's still getting worked out." Head out on a quick run about 1850, back by 2000 and our base manager was there. He hands us each a letter of termination, says the company is folding and to punch out and go home. Really? 2 hours into a 24, thanks for the wasted gas hoss. Oh, and wednesday when you took a cup of my famous coffee and stopped for a moment to remind me how well the company was doing and that there was no need to look for another job? I appreciate that too. Then I call to punch us out and speak to the same dispatcher who proceeds to make a joke about my gullibility and hangs up on me. Seriously? So amazingly professional. See if you make that joke to my face when I come to pick up my last check son. Then we have a couple minutes to grab our stuff and take it out to our cars so they can lock the place up and change the door code. I should've seen through their BS and I didn't. Fine, I made a mistake. It happens. You wanna lie to my face and I don't realize it? Good for you. Give me a few more years to build up my shell of cynicism to an impregnable thickness. The way this was handled was blatantly unprofessional. Bush league. Unacceptable. I haven't been able to save anything, the job paid less than 10 an hour and my bills eat up every check. I get that companies have to go out of business sometimes. To lie to my face about it makes you look like a piece of excrement Just saying. So, hopefully I'll be able to find employment with someone. I might end up working at McDonalds until I do. So yes, I'm pissed off. Just had to vent for a bit. Sorry if it came off a little ranty, I'm just having a lousy day. Later folks.

Ok. The original suit was thrown out because the law protects individual emt's but there is no law protecting a "squad"? Idiotic. Here's the thing. I hate New Jersey. I used to work there as a truck driver and it was awful. Some parts were pretty nice I assume but I was always stuck in Newark and Jersey City and those are, in my opinion, the worst two cities in the continental US. Despite my personal feelings about the state, and despite all the awful things I've heard about their EMS, this decision strikes me as being completely wrong. I'm not defending their choice to sit on scene doing cpr for 30 minutes. I'm just saying that if the law protects individual emt's you really shouldn't be able to call two of them together a squad and then sue away. I started reading the comments and made it through three of em. I had to stop after reading: Ok. I disagree with this. A BLS rig has such limited equipment and it's occupants such limited training that I feel load and go once the patient is packaged is, the majority of the time, the way to go. How bout that total lack of pain management? Oh, you wanna hook the pt to a monitor? Better have an ALS rig then. Or buy your own. We load and go just about every time. Admittedly we're pretty much always within 5 minutes of a hospital, 10 at most. Pretty much any treatment beyond splinting, use of an epi-pen following a bee sting reaction, pressure bandages, etc; would be better performed by a full ER that's 5 minutes drive away. I have yet to run into any really significant trauma on the job, the vast majority of our calls are medical and most of the bad ones are done by ALS so my opinion may be incorrect. I probably would have started cpr and kept it going on the way to the hospital. Partner drives, I keep it up in the back. I doubt the patient would have survived, and of course I'd be getting sued now for not staying in place to continue cpr, but that's probably the choice I would have made.

This is just awful. I can't even imagine how the families of the victims are feeling here. Thoughts and prayers go out to them, even though I'm not praying much anymore. I would like to applaud the members of this site by the way. Every other forum I've been to this morning has had huge explosive arguments between people pushing different agendas and using this tragedy to emphasize their point. On all sides. It's absolutely disgusting and unforgivable. This is the first online place I've been where no one is using a tragedy to forward their own political crap. Good for the City.

I was somewhat critical of our firefighting brethren a little bit ago so, to show it was all in good fun and not personal and whatnot, I thought I'd share an amusing little pic. Enjoy! And watch them wires boys.

I truly hope so Mike. I get that nobody enjoys being knocked around by a patient. I got punched in the eye a couple days ago by an older guy we were packaging for a psych eval due to AMS/thoughts of suicide. It was irritating and he didn't even have a good punch (sharp knuckles though:P) so I can understand being upset about getting hit. I didn't try to have him thrown in jail though. Thing is, if the patient is not competent to give consent and you take him against his will then, being incompetent to refuse treatment he is, in my mind, not responsible for his actions. You can't have it both ways. Let's say I'm dispatched to a call for a 40 year old male having a syncopal episode on his front porch. I arrive just after the patients wife, a nurse, gets home from work. The RN explains that her husband fainted due to overwork and he's fine. I witness him faint again (I think) and decide he needs to go to the hospital. I laugh in a chilling manner and strut past the silly nurse, grabbing the awakening husband and telling him he's going to the ER. He says no and begins to struggle so I choke him out, strap him to a cot, and kidnap him. It's ok though because he's so messed up in the head he can't legally refuse treatment. Then I insist he be placed under arrest for willfully hitting me in the face. That's beyond insane. That's: "I just looked upon the tentacled face of Cthulhu" insane. Even granting that part of this story was mistyped or just misunderstood by the author I can't consider this anything but a miscarriage of justice. It'll go to appeal and I hope it gets overturned. That's something new for me, I'm almost always coming down for harsher penalties for breaking the law, but in this case I simply feel the medic/emt's were in the wrong. Assuming that the patient actually consented to treatment, then never revoked that consent while physically attacking the emt's/medics, and assuming his wife wasn't really a nurse but played one on a TV commercial once and was also drunk, then I could see this being a legitimate decision. I'll look for a more detailed report in case I read it wrong or the story was misprinted but as it stands I can't see a justification that would hold water in my area. If you lay a finger on a patient without consent, provided the patient is competent to give it, it's battery. If you attempt to intimidate a patient in any way, it's assault. If you transport a competent patient against their will, it's kidnapping. I'm no lawyer but that's how the law was explained to me. Again, if the patient isn't competent to give consent that's a different story. Given the facts as they were related in this article there is no excuse for this in my mind. That's just my opinion, as I said, I'm no attorney. I'd love to hear what one thinks though. Do we have any legal experts who post here? edit: To clarify.

I truly hope that the author of this story was drunk and got it all backwards or something. How in the hell was that verdict possible? Touching a competent patient without consent is battery. Period. If the patient was NOT competent then how the fu#$ was it assault and battery on his part? This ruling is insane, the prosecuting attorney and judge need to lose their jobs and be evicted from their homes and savaged by badgers. FFS. Unacceptable. edit: At MINIMUM they need their certs revoked. If anyone from any pure ambulance service I've ever heard of tried this they would damn well lose their certs. Victims, what a joke. I have plenty of friends in local FD's and I can't conceive of any of them pulling something like this. This is just ridiculous. 2nd edit: And I mean permanently revoked. All of em. None of this suspension crap. That basic on the ALS rig near me who started an IV got his revoked permanently. I'm not gonna paint all FF's with the same brush but that department needs to clean house.

I think this a perfect expression of what every policy for ambulance services should be. I'm going to show this to my boss and it'll probably be printed out and put on a poster at the base. Well said.