TechMedic05

Greetings!

I've been lurking for a couple years now, hopefully not completely forgotten.

Long and short, there's a possibility I may be moving far from home, and am hoping to scout out a few employment opportunities prior to sitting across a desk in an interview. Is there anyone lurking about who has potentially intimate knowledge of the private EMS companies operating out of the Worcester, MA area? PM's are appreciated, no need to toss dirt on everyone in public.

Thanks in advance!

Techmedic05

Hey, guys.

I've been lurking around the forums for a year or two, since being actively involved...

I'll be down in Baltimore for the conference. Hope to run into some of you guys.

Tech

I agree we shouldn't talk about it, but...well, I can't talk about that here.

"...I think a Hippapotomous just walked by..."

8) 8)

Question: If you have a run of calls and all of your primary response units are occupied, do you call on an available transfer bus, or call on the mutual aid system? I ask because there is a private company in my area that prides itself on having ALS on every rig, and if a 911 call comes in and they have nobody but a BLS rig, they will call another company (or activate mutual aid) to do the call (even if the other service has no ALS). How do you feel about that? Is it cutting of your nose to spite your face... or is it building up a brand name?

Cosgrojo - I'm not trying to be entirely pessimistic here, but if it's the company I -think- it is, then, my suggestion would just be that it either a - Doesn't trust it's BLS emplpoyees, or b - doesn't want to lose a BLS truck for the short time it takes to do a local transfer, etc.

Just my thoughts.

8-[

Don't be to harsh, we are trying.

Try lookin' at the "Bash BLS thread...

Good post. If you don't give your patient O2 because he has COPD he isn't getting what he needs. If you give him O2 he is getting what he needs but even if his/her hypoxic drive were to kick in which from what you guys are saying would take hours anyways, we can still treat the pt when he/she quits breathing and loses consciousness. Am I missing a bigger picture?

Pretty much right on the ball...Simplified, but on the ball for Prehospital scenarios. Except for the COPD part. They can get mostly everything they need, they just can't get rid of what they don't.

The official name is "Medic [number]" So, for radio callsign, paperwork, documentation, it's Medic 31, or whichever truck you're on. The BLS crews are all numbered, starting off with a letter designation standing for their station. ex: "Kilo-74".

On the radio, numbers are typically all that's used. unfortunately, people aren't bright enough to figure out to not have a "November 31" on the same day you have a "Medic 31" on.

Other than that, 'Get in the truck.'

park

lurk - like me.

MINE!

barn

bail

We have completely eliminated the problem here. Instead of working 24's, we work 24/7. There is no shift change. We simply never go off shift. :?

Overtime must be nice, though :wink:

tail

with wood glue

awfully good crack

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

"Any moron with a pack of matches can start a fire. Raining down sulfur takes a huge level of endurance. Mass genocide is the most exhausting activity one can engage in, next to soccer."

blue suede shoes

Are we using D5W for the sugar or so we aren't giving more sodium? Like in an Amidorone drip.

Quick and easy answer, please no copy/pastes..

There is no quick and easy answer. Anything should be somewhat supported.

Good point, I stand corrected!

I just find this inconceivable that anyone would even toss this idea around.

Much like the rest of healthcare, EMT's are cheap, dispensible, easy to come by, and most often readily willing to practice our skills. It's not our fault they throw these things at us, it's EMT's fault's that they accept it.

Many should be like Rezq304 and emtkelly, and aggrevated that others in this 'professional field' of 'medicine' would expect us to work against Hippocratic Oath, especially if done because they don't want to, or feel comfortable doing it.

We don't need to constatnly be the Bastard Child of medicine.

I agree 100% - it's not within our scope of practice and we all better hope it never is.

Hire Professional Hangmen!

Medication Administration is, in fact, within the scope of practice. It is that those medications are outside of protocols.

Unless you count "Murder" as a Scope of Practice Item.

I think they would be under a doctors verbal and written directives. It would probably be only authorized by that state though as an expanded scope of practice.

As far as verbal or written directives, it is still outside of scope to administer such things. I guess there's the lengthy argument of what is in and out of scope. Technically, IV Medication administration is within the scope, so it is allowed. Until protocols come up for "Lethal Injection", it shouldn't be done by EMT's. Regardless of what a Doctor orders, we are still limited by protocols.

Every mechanism has its problems, and its protocol. If you tye the noose wrong or set the drop distance wrong then you end up strangling the person or snapping their head off instead of snapping their neck. Electric chair? Anyone else here seen Green Mile? Firing squad? Who says you can't miss?

I never said any other way was perfect. Sure, mistakes happen. The idea was to remove any aspect from an EMT's hands. Isolate and deny. Isolate those who do it [to on-healthcare providers], and deny entry to any EMT who wants to.

I disagree that these are contradictory positions. As I said in another thread, if a person already near death dies during an MCI triage situation because resources are diverted to those with a better chance of survival, than that person's death is a passive consequence of the actions of healthcare providers. That is, that person is dying just as they would had no healthcare provider made it to them at all. The death of someone who was administered a lethal dosage is an active consequence -- if nobody had showed up to kill the person, then that person would have lived.

Either way, it is still a consequence of the healthcare provider. And no one can say, 100% definitively, that any patient passed over in a MCI would be dead or not. So, is it safe to say that if the EMT is providing care to someone else, that it is acceptable to contradict the Hippocratic Oath, and cause further harm by not treating a patient?

I guess what I'm trying to point out is to watch your gatekeepers. Medicine, overall, will want to deny approval or isolate anything dealing with the death penalty. Why? We obviously don't want to be associated with death, and dealing death. It's dirty, people fear it, and we'd look bad. We already have enough of those issues. But change the taste to a MCI, and we openly admit that it's acceptable to allow people to die.

So, What is it?

I don't know. MCI is an essential tool. There's no changing that. Being active in the Death Penalty? That's something that would be incredibly easy to shove off onto someone else, and free the hands of medicine with.

/Seconds the motion.

Without getting into a pro/con death penaty debate because I don't know how I feel about it, I don't think that anyone should perform an execution as a EMT/Paramedic.

It's easy enough to train someone to run a line.

Go back to the hangman model of the old days, and just train a state executioner.

Exactly, besides, I'm sure there's more creative ways to execute people.

Remove all medical components, aside from a MD to say "Yup, he's dead Jim, dead.", and hense - remove all controversy with the medical field.

I'm not quite sure irony is the appropriate word...

We'll make EMS classes all about skill sets, abilities, and lighten up on the educational aspect, but if there's anything controversial about only utilizing skills, we'll say it's icky and bad, and stay away at all costs.

and a violation of the EMT Oath, to participate in taking life of any person.

What about triage? I understand that not all will survive, in an attempt to [theoretically] save the most amount of lives, but why make exceptions now?