Just Plain Ruff

Thats the guy. But my point is, The american people have the collective attention span of a pair of gnats. They won't remember that commercial 15 minutes after seeing it. IT's not important to them. If it doesn't get them to call BCBS in the first 2 minutes after seeing it then they won't call BCBS. I wouldn't worry bout it. Put your outrage into something more constructive.

But what are going to do with your hands while your mouth is full???

These aren't dissing us. They are no different than any other industry trying to sell something at the expense of another industry. Here's what you do. When you realize you are transporting the CEO of Blue Cross or another industry that has dissed us in the past, just make sure you miss that IO needle placement the first time or miss that 14 ga IV that could have been done with a 22 ga. Make sure you barb the needle of the IM Injection that really could have waited till you got to the ER. Have you seen how the ad industry makes the father's look out there? how they make the housewives or any other people out tehre look? It's amazing that we aren't just going postal every single day. So you can be angry about this commercial which 15 minutes after someone sees it they will have forgotten what they have seen or you can focus your energy on something more productive, like let's say, What's for dinner tonight, which my answer would be "Beef" in my best immitation of that deep voiced guys voice who I can't remember his name right now but he played opposite of Patrick Swayze in Roadhouse.

Dwayne, my answer to your paragraph For those in the camp that believe that this is wrong...how do you justify forcing people that have spent their own money creating an environment of their choosing to allow others into that environment? You can't force them. If you do force them then you become just as wrong as those who you were trying to make "right" in the first place. Those who shout Tolerance the loudest often refuse to promote tolerance the most. Do you think that a all black club that has been all black for many many years would bow down and allow a white person membership into their club without a fight? not likely. Do you think that Curves would allow men in their club without a huge fight or even the threat to shut their doors? I think not, they pride themselves on a men free environment promoting it as a safe alternative to the meat markets of the health clubs. The only ones who seem to be pissed off at these exclusive clubs are the ones who can't get in them. Sort of class or membership envy I say. There is a bar in a neighborhood in KC that is known to be an all black bar. whites have been for many years turned away at the door. It's been common knowledge in the neighborhood that if you are white, you are NOT welcome at this bar. Can you imagine trying to get that bar to change it's admission policies? Not without a fight.

GUYS, none of us on this site will ever be asked to be a member at this Elitist club so tell me again why the F we should care? Tell me again, how many on this forum out of the thousands of members we have on this site actually play Golf? Again, tell me why should we care about this?

IT's all them damn drug seekers that makes the US health care system so freaking jumpy

No Kiwi, what I'm saying is this, the patient is in intractible pain as per the OP. He should do this He calls the receiving facility and talks to either the accepting physician or the ER They tell him to divert to the nearest ED and they make a call to that ED or leave it to him to make the radio contact. Lady gets pain medications. ER is pissy and Runs gets stabbed in back with phantom knives and daggers Patient gets pain releif she needs and all is well. World is back in proverbial orbit with not a single hair out of place.

Yes, but once the patient began experiencing intractible pain after and hour and a half, she went above and beyond his scope of practice and an ALS crew should have been called into continue transport. If the patient required pain medications in the hospital and she was being transported to another hospital it was foolish for the transferring hospital to assume that the patient would not need pain medications at least sometime into that trip. 2 hours into a 5 hour trip the patient required pain meds. Listen the OP has been beaten up over this with the dead horse and it's foal. He gets that and want's to make something like this not happen again. He knows now that he could have called for ALS intercept for pain management and I am sure that in the future that is probably what he will do but then he faces the quandry of a job termination by doing so and in this day and age, doing what is best for the patient is likely to get you fired and then where will you be?? ON the streets, no job and probably no prospects of a job because the market SUCKS right now to get a job. So maybe instead of calling ALS for intercept, diverting to the nearest hospital for pain management would be the most appropriate choice? That has not been floated as an alternative. He could get the patient the pain relief she truly needed and his company could continue on with the transport and bill the patient for the transport.

I don't understand. you love ems but you might quit because of the studying and the tests and the state tests. WTF I just don't understand that post above. You might quit because you are coming up against some tough stuff. come on dude. You might as well quit now. OR buck up, suck it up and start to study and take EMS Seriously from here on out. Sounds like you were playing EMS up to now. Stop playing EMS and make the decision to be a professional or be a ricky rescue.

Would you two just get a room.

duly chastised but the question still stands, when was it his responsibility to pay for their food? I mean he's got to pay for their food and now he has to go out and buy a suit too. Hell, he's gonna go broke paying for all that bling

I have always been an advocate of taking those in the trenches, not those who have written books and those who have spent the last 20 years in management eating their way to a early heart attack and not setting their butts in the captains chair of a ambulance for the past 15 of those years but those who actually are seeing what goes on on a day after day basis. Putting those people in a centralized location and saying, put your ideas together, give us the ideal system that you think EMS should look like. Take 5 guys from a rural system, 5 guys from an urban system, 5 from a hems system, 5 from fire, 5 from private and 5 dispatchers, 5 supply people, 5 supervisors. You get an amalgamation of members from all over the country so you have a wealth of experience. Give em two weeks to come up with a framework as to what should be included in an EMS system. (it can also be GALS too) You can throw in 5 management people in order to provide the management perspective. This two weeks needs to be funded not by the government nor by any entity that will have any say in how this EMS system will be funded or paid for in the future. The people on the panel have to be paid for their time and travel, expenses and a small stipend equal to the shift work they missed out on. Of course this isn't going to work in the end because Egos of the people involved later down the line will become huge and it will fall apart but the suggestions by this group will be implemented in pieces by forward thinking ambulance services in bits and pieces becuase of smarter people than the egos of those who will screw it up later on like I said. But many of the suggestions will in the end be adopted into the national standards but it will be up to someone who has the backing of I don't know who to start the ball rolling to get the funding first, and then they have to put together the framework of an organization that can sponsor the group to make it a valid forum(national forum) and then you have to determine who you wish to invite(that's the hardest part ) Who are the movers and shakers in EMS that are working in the field and are not relegated to a desk. I'm not saying that those stuck behind a desk don't know the struggles of the field providers but many times they have blinders on in terms of field providers issues. The first two weeks is just the Brainstorming part. Part two is an additional 2 weeks of streamlining those ideas into top 10 ideas for each level of the ambulance service. field services supply protocols supervisor roles management roles equipment/ambulance training State EMS national standards Additional 1 week sessions would address each of the above but would pull in a task force for each of the points above consisting of a team of 3-5 people I envision this to be a 1-2 year long process I would be of course the project manager. My hourly rate is 150 per hour ha ha ha

back kiwi back back I say.

But all those who want to keep the status quo alive and well have to do is strut out those 5% life threatening emergency patients who benefitted from ems to a photoshoot, strut those 10% out of hospital code saves and those 1% trauma codes whose lives were saved. Strut those people out in front of the cameras and you have your poster children to keep the status quo alive and well. Not trying to puncture your thunder but the above is one of the reason why we keep the status quo. And I just did Justify and validate the continuation of EMS As is or per say the status quo. But I strongly urge you to bust through that glass ceiling and provide new improved reasons for making EMS Better. We've been here on this forum for a very long time batting around this exact same question and the same concerns and although we talk about it long and hard, not many of us have gotten off our collective asses and done much about it which I put down for a root cause being that we are geographically diverse and cannot meet up and put our heads together. So what do you suggest?

But that only makes you go to the other corner

I don't understand, why was it your responsibility to pay for their food?

Definately pretty cool. An to the lizard, that bug is mine but you can have it if you only say please.

Kiwi, I am pretty sure that she's none of those you mention in your first paragraph. but then again, everyone houses secrets right.

i agree R/r What more other than cover the burn, stop the burning process, provide pain relief, get em to the burn/trauma center and try to fix the concommitant other trauma that often goes with burns. Airway airway airway. If they have facial burns, you better secure the airway or you are toast. I learned that the hard way, thank goodness I secured the airway prior to leaving the scene or one of the patients I had would have more than likely died.

Not sure mikey, I mean he wasn't doing anything but playing basketball while on duty. I don't really consider that a line of duty death. No more than I consider a cop choking on a doughnut and dying a line of duty death. Or a paramedic tripping while walking to his sleeping quarters and hitting his head and dying of a brain bleed a line of duty death either. I might be biased but I think of line of duty death as dying while performing your duty. for example Firefighter dying in a burning house or similar Cop being shot and killed by a suspect or similar Paramedic being assaulted and killed by a patient that's to me a line of duty death, not a broken ankle while playing basketball and a embolus breaking off and killing them or choking on a doughnut at Winchells doughnuts. I just don't see those as line of duty deaths. Of course others here may not agree with me and that's ok.

Actually this young lady is currently in a hospital in New Jersey due to this terminal condition. I've been talking to her off and on and this is what she says of her condition. And these are her exact words to me via her PM to me Its an electrical imbalance and neuro mutation thing....like the nerves arent nice like other people's. Its especially bad in the heart since there's an extra node in there like wpw, but all of the nodes even the nicer sa and av ones are a bit mutated so its not a set oh hey this is what it is theres a whole textbook on this etc. Like other conditions She said that she has suffered multiple cardiac arrests and has been in the back of ambulances multiple times. that is the reason why she wants to be an EMT. I have seen her facebook page and everything that she has posted here seems to pan out on her facebook page. She is as legit as I've ever seen and if she's pulling a fast one then this is the best put together "pulling the wool over our eyes" sham that I've ever seen perpetrated against this website and against our group. It's good to have some skepticism but I think we can all put our skepticism away with this young lady and extend our hand of friendship out to her. She's 16, stuck in a hospital and a friendly note to her would really go a long way to lifting her spirits. KIWI, I need to talk to you ASAP and I can't send you any PM's Please email me at ruffems@gmail.com It's pretty important I speak with you ASAP. I have a package I need to deliver to you and need to get some info from you. Email me so I can get the info to you.

She never got to the point of needing the zofran drip.

Ash, that's all I can remember, it was about 10 years ago I took it.

no, these guys were putting on a show, plain and simple. Where else do you get to see a couple of "fairies" er I mean firefighters in dresses playing firefighters? they were putting on a show. I would bet dollars to doughnuts that the fire was intentionally set for just this event. It was all part of the parade. There was another fire truck a block away waiting with "Real" Firefighters waiting to come clean up the pieces if something actually went wrong.

Thus the need to call the registry at (614) 888-4484 and ask this question since you have gotten answers all over the board here on this thread. And since you don't say what state you are from, you should also google your state bureau of EMS and call them directly and ask the same exact question and get their answer as well. You will then have a answer to your question. See I've done half the work for you. But it appears that the OP has not returned to the discussion.