pyroknight

I would just like to see a little fricking consistency. You can consent to sex at 16, but cannot vote until you're 18, and cannot drink until you're 21. Let's face it, most people don't even START to mature until about 25 (some NEVER do, but most start getting a clue by their mid 20s). Most males are not ready to take on any real responsibility until they are 30. Unfortunately, the hormones kick in at 12 or 13 and parents are dying to get these know-it-all brats, who are now physically capable of kicking the $h!t out of them, out of the house. If you increased the age of adulthood to 25 or 30, it would mean we parents would have to support the buggers and provide them with food and shelter and video games for another seven years. I am NOT voting for THAT program, lol! Kids are going to do stupid crap no matter what our laws say. Pick an age where you want to arbitrarily decide people become adults and stick with it. People have a right to drink themselves to death, catch STDs, and become miserably indebted. There are far too many liberal bastards deeply embedded in politics and government in the US for anyone to every have the balls to step up and institute policies like involuntary birth control for those who cannot keep their pants on yet have no income or insurance. The retarded will continue to procreate at a rate higher than they kill each other off until another pandemic sweeps through and helps scrape a few feet of sludge off the bottom of the gene pool. Have a happy day! 8)

No offense taken. That's exactly what I felt like when I played Incident Commander! I think it is a GREAT idea. Their implementation, however, is less than poor. The graphics are good, the scenarios are okay, but whoever thought of placing time constraints and resource constraints on the IC obviously does not have much knowledge of the field. Instead of requiring the player to wait for resource credits to pop up so that you can order assets, you should be allowed to order anything you want any time you want, but with consequences. Grade me AFTER the response, don't tie my hands DURING the response! I had to sit back and watch civilians die because I did not have enough credits to activate my Haz Mat branch. How dumb is that?!?!?

Has anyone used the new "Incident Commander" software from the Department of Justice? I have tried to, but it appears to be confusing and unrealistic. I really do not want to disseminate disparaging information about a useful tool if I am just not smart enough to figure this simulation out, but I will loudly disseminate my opinion if it is supported by some folks on here who have had the same experience I have.

Okay, I'm installing a Prozac mister in kat's ambo.

Well, as long as you are on company time, I guess that is okay. 8) If you were wasting perfectly good personal time researching this crap, THEN I would have to see if Broken would pay for YOUR psychotherapist bill. :twisted:

Flight, You have WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much time on your hands. You need a hobby, or a girlfriend, or both, 8) !

Spend some of that money on a psychotherapist. He or she will listen to your description of your woes without all the less-than-sympathetic feedback. Then turn a wad of it into singles and hit a strip club. Loosen up, dude! 8)

I heard an interesting statistic from Dr. Sanjay Gupta this morning. In the USA a patient usually receives a cardiac catheterization in a matter of hours in an emergent situation. Elective catheterizations are usually scheduled within 24 hours. In Canada, the average wait for emergency cardiac catheterization is 6 days (that's AVERAGE) and the wait can be up to 60 days for an elective catheterization.

Hey now, 'Zilla! Don't you go pointing fingers at ME! Snap out of the Alzheimer's and remember who brought tactical medicine up in the first place! If you have trouble, see quote above, lol! Do you REALLY expect to bring up one of ol' Dusty's few vulnerabilities in a thread designed to bash him and expect us (well, me) not to try and get him worked up? I don't THINK so! :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

Wait a minute. Can you use "utility" and "tactical EMS training" in the same sentence? It's a cool gig and all, but no one is actually delusional enough to believe it's USEFUL are they?

Policy is policy, but my personal policy is to ask them what a tolerable number for them is. Most patients will tell you 2 or 3, but there are those patients who will tell you that they live with a 7 every day and that today is a 10. They just want to get rid of their breakthrough pain and get back to their normal, tolerable level. IMHO, the patient I referred to received appropriate treatment the first time. His a$$ just should have stayed at home instead of making a return visit.

The patient WAS in obvious distress, but was also obviously a big pussy. Her (a nurse practitioner and former flight nurse) head is usually screwed on pretty straight. This guy had little scabs all over his arms. I pegged him for a meth user, but she believed his story about bug bites and his adamant denial of illicit drug use. I still think the "bugs" were under his skin and in his head. Our ED doles out oxycodone prepacks like candy. Hey, I only have RN after my name. What do I know? Ambulance transports out of the hospital (excepting to the airport for medevac) are, thankfully, extremely rare in this community. He ambulated into the ED both times. He had a friend pick him up after the first visit, so I presume he was at least securing his own transportation. Small miracle.

Yeah! Dust needs to fix the US Department of Education! What is your lazy ass doing to straighten out the federal education bureaucracy, Mr. Devil? Hmm? Not so smart NOW are you mister?

I just triaged a guy with Strep that had been discharged less than two hours earlier. This guy got 2 L NS, Bicillin IM, Rocephin IV, Dilaudid IV, and anti-emetic IV. He was discharged with a "pre-pack" of oxycodone and a prescription for more. Do you think he could suck it up and whine and snivel on his couch while popping oxycodone? Oh NO! He had to return to the ED because he was not miraculously cured within two hours of his first visit.

I am intimately familiar with the Alaska EMS regulations, but as has been previously mentioned, there are huge differences from state to state. An Alaska EMT certification is a pre-hospital credential. Hospitals are free to require that someone be an EMT if they desire, but EMTs working in a clinical setting are not authorized to perform any skills merely because they are EMTs.

The one up side to "paperless" systems is the ability to quickly identify the system abusers. You still have to see them, but you can be much more stingy with narcotics (it is not uncommon for our docs to advise frequent fliers to use ibuprofen) and you can avoid repeating complete workups every single visit. If a patient has had the same complaint twice a month for the last six months and they've had a CT and an MRI and yada yada yada, you can run a couple of labs, tell them what the doc told them last visit, and send them down the road.

Socialized medicine is NOT the solution. Here in my town, the native people have free health care. They have a clinic that is open every day. Do you think for one minute that stops people from presenting at two in the morning with dental pain they have had for two weeks? Nope. A lot of the problem is doctor shopping / med-seeking behavior. These people (they are not really patients, patients have medical conditions) will come back for several days until they hit the doctor who will send them home with a "pre-pack" of narcs and a prescription. All that is required is that we ensure that no life threats exist. Unfortunately, in today's litigious society, the doctors have to rule out EVERYTHING in order to cover their a$$es. If we could limit liability, maybe they would be more inclined to decide that pain is not life-threatening.

Just smile and wave, Brent. Smile and wave.

Admin should institute random drug screening of posters. Oh and damn that Dust!

+100 for original title I'm sure Dust will add some more. At least with CBT you will not have to wait long.

Silly ED Docs. Just tonight I had one of them whining and crying because we did not have any 5.0 Ethilon. Yeesh! I have read in survival manuals that you can use dental floss and I have seen them use household thread in the movies. We have a whole cabinet FULL of suture material, grab something and get to work you big sissy!

You may want to pick up something like The Complete Guide to Medical Math if math is a challenge for you. Some instructors will take the time to show you shortcuts, others will just write a formula up on the board and figure you will get it or you will get a job at McDonald's. You are going to need to be able to figure out drug dosages, drip rates, and the like. A little self-study will help you breeze through the math problems when you get there.

I just have to say, putting a stretcher in a piece of firefighting apparatus makes about as much sense as a trailer hitch on a hearse. You could find a use for either if you tried hard enough, but there is a better tool for the job. Can you imagine a department buying an Osh Kosh ARFF rig and trying to take it to structure fires? If you wanted to put a bench in that (do I have to say "squmper"?) thing for a rehab compartment, great! Just don't put a stretcher in there and try to convince anybody you didn't have transporting patients in mind when you did it.

I was a whacker in college. I had a Ford Escort GT with a Dash Laser and alternating brake / reverse lights. I carried my own big jump kit (no ALS equipment though, not even after I GOT my EMT-I, I wasn't THAT much of a whacker ). My next vehicle was a Ford Bronco II. It received a dual dash strobe, the Dash Laser lost the mirror and moved to the back. I hooked a headlight flasher up to the high beams and a pair of driving lights mounted to the bumper. We won't talk about the driving lights pointing out the back hooked to the reverse lights (or, for that matter, the fact that you could turn them on when NOT backing up - I would never have used that on tail-gaters, honest). At some point I grew up a little and saw enough emergencies to realize that none of them was worth risking my life or the lives of others. I stopped trying to force my way through traffic and the lights became less important. My F-150 has a three-LED dashlight (that my wife bought for me) that I augment with my hazard flashers if necessary. I don't even use it THAT often. I am usually just "heading that way routine." I FEEL like a whacker in the new EMS gear that I was issued, but it is more comfortable than having to throw on full fire turnout gear (damn it sure is bright red though - bright red with reflective yellow stripes).

Get a room! :roll: