Wondering if this is normal

[spenac]

On 24 hour shifts, we're expected to be able to stay up the entire shift actively working back to back. Only some stations are actually busy enough where this happens on a regular basis. Same applies if you do a 48 or 72 hour shift.

You sign on for 8,12,24,48,72, etc, you better be able to handle it. I work for smaller services and pull 96 often and used to pull 336. But very seldom do you go more than 24 without sleep.

[paramedicmike]

Good point

All this makes me wonder if the OP posted from a work computer. I hope she didn't. She could, in theory, be fired just for that

-be safe

[Just Plain Ruff]

Remember People, when you post on the internet it is out there for anyone and everyone to see.

I can post the Dustdevil is a big fat idiot and somewhere sometime someone could look that up and see that I wrote it, not to mention the beat down I'm gonna get when Dust and I meet up in Florida for our yearly get together of telling war stories and exchanging horror stories about marriage and relationships.

If you post something then anyone can read it and if it's negative towards someone or some company it can be found.

Many more employers these days are doing searches on peoples names who they want to hire.

here is the info that came up about me

This link shows all the references to Michael N Ruff on the web via google. It shows I run a website. The employer can go and look at the website and if they don't like what you post then they can justify not hiring you.

No no no I'm not the singer solely because he has a better voice and is better looking than me. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Michael+N+Ruff

It's no longer an issue of anonymity but anything you post online is there for people to find and see if they know what to look for.

Be careful.

[ERDoc]

:glasses5: :glasses5: Mr. Ruff, please come with us. We need to talk to you.

Some of these shifts are absurd. Even residents are protected in reguards of the number of hours they can work (though the limits are not always followed). A simple internet search would show these people how dangerous it is to work so many hours, especially when you are driving a several ton chunk of metal at 65-70mph. If there ever is a serious crash, I'm sure someone will be going after these people for the number of hours worked.

[Just Plain Ruff]

You sign on for 8,12,24,48,72, etc, you better be able to handle it. I work for smaller services and pull 96 often and used to pull 336. But very seldom do you go more than 24 without sleep.

Holy crapola Spenac, 336 hours straight that's like 14 days in a row. what happens when you are running for more than 24 hours without sleep? anything more than a 24 hour shift is crazy.

No one on this website can tell me that they are sharp and alert after 20 - 23 hours of no sleep.

[spenac]

Holy crapola Spenac, 336 hours straight that's like 14 days in a row. what happens when you are running for more than 24 hours without sleep? anything more than a 24 hour shift is crazy.

No one on this website can tell me that they are sharp and alert after 20 - 23 hours of no sleep.

We used to work 14 on 7 off. It had improved before I quit to 7 on 7 off. But remember this was a service that averaged 2 calls a day. Of course each one had an average of 4 hour round trip time. There were very few 24 hour periods that we did not get at least 8 hours of down time. There were a few times we went out of service for 8 hours so we could sleep. This meant any calls had to wait for mutual aid to come the hour down to take the call.

I would never work for a busy service that required long shifts. If you do not have reasonable and realistic expectation of 8 hours down time I feel we should not pull longer than 12 hour shifts. This is again another issue in EMS that one size does not fit all. It would be wrong to mandate services like I work to limit people to 12 hour shifts.

My current job I do 96 hour shifts but we average 4 calls a day at the main station and have 3 staffed ambulances, so just over 1 call per ambulance and we have a hospital within 10 minutes of 80-90% of the calls. At the other stations we average less than 1 call a day. I have only had one 24 hour period that I did not have at least 8 hours straight down time in 9 months working there.

[lnrrco]

Rotation of LDT's should be the case if you have that many stations, if the call volume you have is to great for the number of trucks you have and the crews are not getting to rest the best thing you could suggest to the higher up's is have 12 hrs shifts and if your state allows it have a BLS transfer unit on duty to help out with the routine trips.

[Dustdevil]

Rotation of LDT's should be the case if you have that many stations...

Minus 5 for unapproved abbreviations.

I doubt that many of us have the slightest clue what an "LDT" is in your system.

[spenac]

if your state allows it have a BLS transfer unit on duty to help out with the routine trips.

Bad idea. Get called for lifting assistance. Send BLS and find something serious, care of patient will suffer. All trucks should be required to be ALS for the benefit of the patient.

[firedoc5]

You sign on for 8,12,24,48,72, etc, you better be able to handle it. I work for smaller services and pull 96 often and used to pull 336. But very seldom do you go more than 24 without sleep.

Very good point.

When I started my first ''pro'' job it was 24hrs. /day, six days a week. You literally lived at the ambulance building. There were no set ''sleep hours'' actually. Sure there were daily duties you had to do, but if they knew you had a busy night or that you had a long transfer during the night, they'd let you sleep whenever. Now there were some who would try and abuse it, but that would be addressed when needed. And it seemed things came in cycles. There may be times when you'd go ten days in a row where you only got three hours of sleep at a time. That's where my natural insomnia was a plus. But with no set ''sleep hours'' you had to watch it because the boss may have you do things at all hours of the night. One night at 4:00 in the morning we were winding down after a big MVA and watching TV the boss called from his upstairs apartment and told us since we were up to wash a couple of the rigs. I told him to bite me.

But times are different now. And to me with the way having to shuffle everyone around there's not a lot of disorganization. Someone needs to sit down and actually work out a system. Right now it sounds like the old ''whose on first'' problem.