CBEMT

*speechless*

Around here, you refer to your "ambulance," and people assume you're talking about a unit belonging to a private transfer company- automatically you are seen as inferior. People here know that when they call 911, the fire department shows up. An ambulance is what took their grandmother to the nursing home after her hip replacement. 911 units have been called "Rescues" since fire-based EMS began here in the 1950's. The term is not going anywhere, since neither are the fire departments- who represent 95% of the EMS in my state. The remaining agencies who are not fire based almost all call their units Rescues as well, likely for no other reason than to ensure that they are recognized as NOT being "just an ambulance."

You heard the part about them being OFF DUTY, right? That would tend to imply that there were people ON DUTY. They can go for the ambulance all they want, but it's not going to be there. I work in a town with ON DUTY crews. If I'm OFF-DUTY, and a call goes out, why am I going to go to the ambulance? That's what the ON DUTY people are for. If it's a bad-sounding pediatric call, and I'm closer to the scene than the ambulance anyway, guess what? I'm going to the scene (sans any sort of warning device or sticker). In a choice between the scorn of EMTCity and possibly doing some good in a critical situation, the patient wins. Granted, wouldn't happen since I don't live anywhere near the town, but you get the theory involved. I hope.

I usually end up clipping it to the zipper portion of my jacket or sweatshirt, or if it's warm enough for just a shirt, I'll put it in between the buttons. We have one style of shirts with epaulets and one without, but clipping it to the epaulet usually results in my jacket keying the mic.

Feel like sharing? EOA is still state-required equipment here, and even with NREMT you can't get licensed here without taking a class on how to use it unless you can demonstrate you already were. I'd love to be rid of it.

Well, to be fair- at the moment, we all have to do it, whether or we think Basic is a great level of care. Can't really accuse somebody of lacking common sense for doing what's required to enter the field. And I've been meaning to ask you- where is Basic school $1500?? Even the expensive places around here haven't cracked a grand yet, and most are in the $800-$900 range- even way up here in the inflated Northeast.

It's not necessarily about using the radio, it's hearing it. We both cover and respond to large, noisy events- everything from football games with 20,000 people to liquor-licensed frat parties. Not being able to hear my crews or dispatch is unacceptable.

Never. I don't let them wake up enough to argue about it.

Fantastic. More of my tax dollars confiscated for the benefit of the most useless element in our society. If it saves one junkie, it's a failure in my book. That's a code some poor medic student needs to finish his ride time.

firedoc, would you mind posting or sending me a link to that story? I'd love to send it to my younger EMTs as a case study.

SNAP! :shock:

I was at an EMS continuing ed class with an electrophysiology attending just last week. He gave that exact presentation as the result of a pacemaker wire breaking loose and perforating the diaphragm. So the diaphragm itself was being paced, which caused the hiccups.

My FT job deals with a decent amount of orthopedic injuries, so we have a few different splinting options, and use them on a fairly regular basis. We've got air splints, a Frac Pac(similar but not exactly like this one), padded board splints, and these three-sided padded cardboard jobs. And of course a traction splint. My personal favorite for ankles and feet is a pillow.

Required equipment, and they are in the first-in bags of both of my services as well as more of them in the airway compartment inside the truck. I too can't imagine not having them. Only had to use it once, probably could've justified it a few other times but decided not to take that step.

Uh huh. I never said you did or could. I never said that I did, could, or should.

If he flies over, he gets accused of being insensitive to the suffering on the ground. He lands, walks around, and gets a feel for the situation, and he gets accused of using people's suffering as a photo op. Couldn't pay me enough to take that job.

There's a local private company that has a Basic who has to be collecting Social Security. He's legendary. Far as I know he's been a Basic about 20-30 years. Works 8 hours, weekdays, on a BLS truck, doing about 99% transfers (working a BLS truck on a company that does primarily transfers to begin with, it's just your lot in life). You know what? He couldn't be happier. He clucks over the old ladies, makes sure all his patients are comfortable, works hard, carries his load, and never complains. It's not what I want out of life, but why do I care what he does? I've got better things to do than worry about whether or not he's working on being an almighty Paramedic because I think it's important for him to do so.

Enough that it's still a root cause for most of the problems between FDNY and FDNY*EMS. You'd have to figure that many of the guys who were the problem when the merger first happened have retired by now. Actually, a majority of the FDNY guys I have contact with have nothing but respect for EMS- they know the workload these guys are carrying, and respect the fact that they WANT to do it. The ones they can't stand those who go EMS to get into Fire "the easy way." Obviously there's no way to tell ahead of time whose in EMS for what reason, so unfortunately it seems like there's a lot of guilt by association going on.

Pretty quite actually. Midterms will do that.

My full-time EMS job is part of a JCHAO-accredited facility. We were DEFINITELY given the once-over at the facility's last evaluation (prior to my joining the staff).

You MIGHT be able to get away with that at a private company, but no way in hell would that fly at a government agency. Even at a private, depending on state law the labor board might have an issue or two with hiring practices like that.

So long as you realize that this is a policy for billing and not patient care, and therefore impossible for them to defend when you take them to court for firing you, you should do all right. :wink:

The pre-treatment weight and vitals, along with the post-treatment weight and vitals, were always written by staff on the face sheet of the patient's paperwork that we'd get- which is how we always had med/history/allergies, etc. We were expected to weight most of the patients we picked up, so that information was something we always had.

Words fail me.