bullmedic

We have the ability to IO patients if we are unable to gain IV access and the patient needs meds immediately. The LOC matters not.

No we work 12 hour shifts only. 2on, 2off, 3on, 2off, 2on, 3off. And no we are not even close to fully staffed.

You hit someone doing 100mph and you will certainly be held liable. Don't doubt that for a second. How about a personal observation on policy. We had an ambulance accident here several years ago. It went down like this. Our unit was responding to an emergency call with lights and sirens. They had the green light. it was a 4 way intersection with 2 lanes of travel in each direction. There were 2 cars stopped at the light to the crew members right basically blocking both lanes that should enter the intersection. A third vehicle came around the two stopped vehicles and entered the intersection against a red light. Our unit and the offending vehicle met and killed both of the offending vehicles occupants and one of the students riding in our ambulance. We were held partially liable under a "contributory negligence" law because our policy stated that our units could not respond more than 10mph over the speed limit and the ambulance was traveling 16 miles over the posted speed limit. The city paid out a large settlement to the student's family and the family's of the people in the offending vehicle. Don't for a second take your responsibility as the driver of that ambulance lightly.

oh I forgot they will soon be having a paid academy. You will be paid and have benefits while going to class. There is no requirement to work for EBRP after the class, but in addition there is no guarantee for employment.

East Baton Rouge Parish EMS http://brgov.com/dept/hr/getrange.asp?pgrade=1201 EMT - PARAMEDIC $36,561 - $50,609 Annually 16.7404 - 23.1727 Hourly Pay Grade 1201 GENERAL DESCRIPTION Under the general supervision of an EMS Shift Supervisor, performs responsible technical medical work of an advanced paraprofessional nature in the emergency care and treatment of sickness and accident victims. Work is performed under conditions of extreme pressure and duress. Employees may supervise subordinate EMT's engaged in field emergency work. Performs other work as requested. ESSENTIAL WORK TASKS Administers advanced first aid and treatment to sick or injured patients at the scene of the injury or en route to a hospital as needed. Administers advanced life support procedures such as endotracheal and esophageal intubation, drug and intravenous therapy, and cardiac defibrillation. Completes patient run reports whether patient is transported or not; also completes patient billing and insurance forms. Recognizes and interprets vital signs and reports them accurately to a physician to enable the physician to make medical judgments. Administers prescribed treatments performing such activities as application of splints, administration of oxygen or intravenous injections, treatment of wounds and abrasions, and administration of CPR. Extricates accident victims from damaged motor vehicles. Drives an emergency vehicle as required; performs emergency vehicle equipment inventory and maintenance. TRAINING AND EXPERIENCE High school diploma, GED, or equivalent certificate of competency, supplemented by completion of an approved EMT Paramedic course, or any equivalent combination of training and experience. NECESSARY SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS Registration as an Emergency Medical Technician-Paramedic by the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians, and certification by Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, Office of Public Health, Bureau of Emergency Medical Services. SKILLS, KNOWLEDGE, AND ABILITIES Knowledge of paraprofessional emergency medical practices and techniques of the basic and advanced life support level. Knowledge of the occupational hazards associated with emergency medical work. Ability to remain calm, tactful, and professional while dealing with injured or sick patients and their families. Ability to identify emergency medical situations and administer appropriate medical treatment in order to stabilize the patient's condition. Ability to understand and follow complex oral and written medical instructions. Ability to supervise the work of subordinates in a manner conducive to full performance and high morale. Ability to obtain a Louisiana Commercial driver's license if necessary. EXAMINATION Score derived from application grading. With experience you can start at step 4 which would be $18.2926/hour. 84 hours in 2 week pay period. 12 paid holidays at time and a half.

I currently work for East Baton Rouge Parish EMS. Acadian is our biggest recruiter. People come here to work for them and figure out that it's not as great as their ads and come to us. I can put you in touch with many folks that have worked at Acadian. you can e-mail me if you like.

E-mail me your name and I will see what is up with your application. Where do you currently work? Experience? medickris@yahoo.com Thanks, BULL

Dust, We have no basics on our trucks whatsoever. All units are 2 paramedic units.

Acadian has done similar things in Louisiana. If not completely pulling out they simply hold the parish hostage by using threats of leaving. This is the best way to bilk more money out of the local governments. "If you don't give us some financial assistance we will have to leave." This is of course not the fault of the medics. There are some good medics that work for Acadian. This is simply the corporate model for profits. You have to protect your investments and if you are not profitable you close shop. EMS as a whole should not be a venture that is purely fueled by profits. If we relied on profits to make police departments profitable where would we be? Zuschlag has worked his way into every political niche he can and has even made a $5000 contribution to Jefferson's defense fund. What will Orange do if Acadian comes to them 5 years from now and says hey we aren't profitable pay up or we are out of here? Just hope the tax payers in Orange realize there ambulance bills are going to be a lot more than they have been in the past.

We have 6 hospitals in our parish(county). We generally go to hospital of choice unless they are on "divert". This happens pretty often here and the patients has to chose another facility. Basicaly the only exceptions are patients that have to be transported to the hospital that handles a specialty. We only have one hospital that can handle burns, one that handles true head injuries, and 2 that handle true pediatric emergencies. If you fall into one of those categories you go to that facility despite the divert status. If four hospitals are on divert you go to the "closest most appropriate facility". We had to come up with some way to get stretchers cleared and trucks back in service. When we ignored divert statuses our units would be held up in ED's for hours, literally. If we get 4 of our 8 units tied up in ED's we are sunk. So it is in our best interest to observe the divert status. It also works out to be in the patients best interest because they get seen quicker. I think the bigger issue here is that too many people use the ED as their PCP and that causes huge delays in the ED's. Something has to give and I know we are having huge problems trying to figure out a solution.

We have 6 hospitals in our parish(county). We generally go to hospital of choice unless they are on "divert". This happens pretty often here and the patients has to chose another facility. Basicaly the only exceptions are patients that have to be transported to the hospital that handles a specialty. We only have one hospital that can handle burns, one that handles true head injuries, and 2 that handle true pediatric emergencies. If you fall into one of those categories you go to that facility despite the divert status. If four hospitals are on divert you go to the "closest most appropriate facility". We had to come up with some way to get stretchers cleared and trucks back in service. When we ignored divert statuses our units would be held up in ED's for hours, literally. If we get 4 of our 8 units tied up in ED's we are sunk. So it is in our best interest to observe the divert status. It also works out to be in the patients best interest because they get seen quicker. I think the bigger issue here is that too many people use the ED as their PCP and that causes huge delays in the ED's. Something has to give and I know we are having huge problems trying to figure out a solution.

We have morphine, versed and valium. Those are carried on our person all the time. We do not carry any other drugs to a scene. Anything past traum interventions will be handled in the unit.

If it was not reported here you certainly would be reprimanded. No suspension but surely a reprimand. All of the medics that did not notice it before, if that could be substantiated, would get a letter too. We are required to put our unit out of service for that type of problem or contact the supervisor during the call if that is when it is discovered. How bad would you have felt if your next call was the one that the defib was needed and it was not functional? How would you handle that? Would you then tell on yourself and say hey I noticed that on the last call but it just slipped my mind? Or would you realize the trouble you might be in and say hey it looked good to me when I checked it this am? When I am wrong I am wrong. Easier to take the hit and go on than to try to fight a losing battle. Of course we do not have a union so that is not even a consideration. Just chalk it up to a learning experience and be more vigilant in the future.

Wow. None of you have ever seen a screen broken on a LP-12. We have had them broken. The Zolls with the smaller screens and the screen covers have not been broken. We have the protective cases on our monitors and they can take an extreme amount of abuse. We had a demo Phillips for several months and many had concerns about the screen and the fact that it was exposed. Would we break them? I am not sure but I have had monitors hit the ground from time to time. Our Zolls are tougher than our LP-12s were.

We tried both of them here and we decided on the Stryker. The Ferno had several problems especially the angle of the handles at the foot. Very awkward and not easy to lift with. Why are you guys trying to lift the stretcher up stairs? Stair chairs are for that. We are also going to purchase a new stair chair. We have not decided on whether it will be the Stryker or the Ferno but I think both are excellent. With the roller mechanisms on them you can roll down the stairs unassisted. The cost of the cots is high but we have had several medics go out this year with back injuries. If we prevent one of those surgeries we probable pay for all of our cots.

Hey ask your rep from Phillips how much it is going to cost once that pretty screen gets broken. Then ask the rep from zoll how much it will cost. If your service only breaks one a year you'll be way better off with the Zoll. The Zoll is very rugged and if you set it up right artifact is not an issue. We were having all kinds of trouble. After a software update and different cables we are rolling with no problems. BULL

We only use the Zolls and have had our share of problems. But before that we had the lifepack 5's, then the 10's, then the 12's. Had problems with all of them. I think that there are bugs in all of them and in time you will find one. Since our rep has updated software and cable problems have been sorted out most of our problems have disappeared. BULL

I thought that when this thread was started because someone actually wanted opinions. Well I see that is not the case the author simply wanted to belittle all of those that did not share his opinion. Why is his opinion more valid than mine? It's not. Why is his answer right and mine is wrong? It's not. All of this "I'm scared the drug dealers may come after me" or "some poor soul might die because they are scared of me" is silly. The cops in my area aren't going to arrest someone because they shot up. Probably not going to get a ticket. But, they would be very happy to rid the community of the vermin that pray and thrive on intimidation and weakness. I live in the community in which I serve. I do not live far, far away and can just forget about the people I see every day. So yes I am concerned about this. My guess is if this was going to directly affect your relatives or family because these guys lived in your apartment complex your views might be different.

We have initiated two distinct and different policies. The first is a Paramedic Refferal Program and the second is a Paramedic Inititiated Refferal. The first can be done by all of our medics. It is a mechanism that allows us to contact medical control and refer the patient to a facility other than the ED. This may be their PCP, an after hours clinic, or a non-emergent or semi-emergent clinic. The medic simply asseses the patient and contacts medical control. The med control physician either agrees with the paramedics assesment or doesn't. If he agrees we leave the patient with directions to follow-up with the appropriate level of care. All of these reports go through our QI process and each medic is responsible for his decisions. If a question arises and the program has been used inappropriately that individual is no lponger able to use the program. The second level is the Paramedic Initiated Refferal. This is reserved for our street managers. We have 4 assigned per shift. There are generally 3 working on units and 1 roving in a supervisory capacity. These individuals can, without med control, tell an individual that we will not be transporting them for a very specific group of complaints. They are: #1 "Patient's without complaint or mechanism of injury." (These could be the "I am out of my pain meds" patients or somone who just wants to be checked out (i.e. BP check, Glucose check) #2 "Animal Bite" Obviously this is left to the discretion of the Unit Commander involved. If someone was attacked by a dog and has serious injuries we will transport. If someone has a minor bite to an extremity with controlled bleeding they certainly fit. #3 "Lice infestation" Again obviously not an emergency situation. Most reasonable people would not call an ambulance for this but folks here have done so and will continue to do so. #4 "Foreign object in ear/nose" Again our unit commanders make the call here. #5 Minor bruise, laceration, abrasion. Non-specific extremity pain/minor swelling due to trauma." #7 Sutures #8 Isolated toothache If you have any questions I would be happy to answer them.

Well I guess I am in the minority. Absolutely I report this to the police. Absolutely I note it in my report. I am a public servant and I am here to protect the whole public I serve not just the one seizing individual. Who is he selling this stuff to, what other activities is he involved in? Who knows? Not me. But, what I do know is that these activities are illegal and that these activities can put other peoples lives in danger. The neighbors, the kids down the street, my family as they drive by this apartment when a looped up guy pulls out of the lot and hits someone. If a patient does not want to trust me and tell me of their drug use that is fine. That is a decision that is to their detriment. Again I am concerned with the whole community not just one individual.

You can see our pay scale here. http://brgov.com/dept/hr/emsdetails.asp What it does not include is built in overtime of 8 hours every 2 weeks. First year here you should make a minimum of $37000/gross without a day of overtime. The range is: 15.94 to over $22 but only new hires with less than 6 months make step one. You are step 2 after 6 months and you will make step 3 within about 9 months after that. I made $60,000 last year working a 42 hour work week. 48 in week one and 36 in week 2.

OK I'll say it if no one else will. She has candy on her lips like that and wants to be prim and proper. lmao

How about 56,000 calls this year with only 8-24 hour units. You do the math. I think we have to be up there as far as calls per unit. Bull

We respond with multiple agencies. And each has their own ideas. With one agency we go to LCC(last cover and concealment) with others we are relegated to suppport which could be 50 feet or 5000 feet away. There have been several incidents that required our treatment and I think we will continue to get closer and closer to the entry points. It is certainly easier to train a medic to the police work than it is to train a police officer to do the medics work. Remember your service would be better served to have a practicing medic come to swat training than to have a police officer come to ride on an EMS unit once a month. If you want to provide ALS care. If you just want someone to patch a hole and then wait around for a medic then I guess you could train your officers to the basic standard. What officers have to remember is that if someone shoots them under their arm a basic is not going to do them much good. If worse yet they get shot there and cannot be removed from the hot zone they are in real trouble. Look at the Alexandria Shootout in Alexandria, LA. See if you think ALS paramedics could have done some good for the officers that were pinned down and bleeding to death if they had been closer than a "couple of blocks" away. BULL

None. We do not carry drugs in our kit. When we are doing operations we are there because the operators need support. We are not there to treat hypoglycemics, cardiac problems or anything else. We are there to take care of trauma injuries to the officers or suspects. Our unit is fully equipped but as far as what we take to the door it is all about trauma. BULL