Just Plain Ruff

Screw the black friday shoppers. Sorry but I was at the black friday sales a year or so ago and the manners of those trying to get a good deal was despicable. Pushing, shoving. The retailers are mainly at fault I think. They put these special deals like 199 laptops or 300 dollar big screens but they only have 2 or three per store. So you have 100 or 1000 people (in the case of best buy) that think they are going to get the super deals when in reality the super deals are not that great if you look at the specs of the tv or laptop. Black friday 5 years ago or so I got in line at Comp Usa. I was at least to my calculations the 14th person in line. Well at 1am here comes a van full of people. They all got out and went to the 4th person in line. A couple of us in line behind them came up and said those people needed to get in the back of the line. The person already in line said that he was saving their places. So instead of being 14th, we were effectively 24th. Well group pressure started to mount and we told those who had their place in line saved It didn't work that way. They told us to F off and one kid pulled up his shirt and several of us saw what we thought to be some sort of holster. We backed off and called the police. The police arrived in force, they contacted the people involved and indeed there was noa weapon(arrests were made though). Comp Usa came out, told everyone in line to leave and had the police make us leave. (SUCKED) and I just moved to Micro center where I was the 3rd person in line and got my 199 laptop anyway. that laptop was the biggest piece of shit that I ever did see. I could have gone to Office max the next day, bought another laptop that was 100 dollars more expensive and 5 times the computer that the one I got for 199 was. So I have sworn off black friday shopping forever because well for all the people I know, I need my beauty sleep more than most.

To the OP - get some help and a debrief. Your vivid memory of this call will only fester in your mind and one day you will not understand why you are messed up. Not saying you are but by the tone of your post I can only imagine that you are having a very hard time with this situation. GET HELP from either a friend or a professional or you are going to wind up like some of my burned out colleagues who had no coping mechanisms or people they could go to. Get help now to save you later. Was on a call a number of years where a woman pregnant was thrown from a vehicle. She was in arrest on our arrival. She was 8 months pregnant. We had a faint ECG heartbeat that we thought might be the babies. We coded her, transported her to the ER and requested Surgeons and OB nurses in the ER when we arrived. They were all there on our arrival. Within minutes of arrival (more like 30 seconds) the baby was out and coding as well. 1 hour later we called it. I remember it like yesterday but I don't remember mom though. I do remember the father who arrived at the ER about an hour after the baby was pronounced. He said that he was very grateful that we tried to do everything we could. The baby would have been his and his wifes first. I still keep in touch with him off and on over the last 10 years. Nothing we could have done would have affected the outcome of the call but the father was what made the call bearable. I also have a very good medic friend who performed an infield c-section of a woman who's head was crushed by the bar of the t-tops on her camaro roof. He delivered a full term baby boy who is alive due to his actions.

Just take the freakin dog and be done with it. If it's a safety issue then that's one thing but serously, if you are that afraid of dogs, what the hell do you do when you have a patient in arrest and a dog comes in the room? Do you pack up because you are so afraid that since you don't know the dog he might attack? What about the little ankle biter who sits at the other side of the room under the chair growling and barking at you. Do you pack up and leave because of your fear that this dog might charge and bite you? I've worked with pit bulls in the room all the while coding their owner, just keep the dog in your peripheral vision, have someone try to remove it and then continue working. I always keep a bottle of nitro spray in my pocket for just such a vicious dog, and I've had to use it twice. But if this is not a service animal and the patient doesn't seem to qualify to have a service animal then the dog/cat/horse/mouse/or elephant get's left at the house. Simple as that. If someone is so afraid of dogs or something that it affects their job performance then I don't want them on my ambulance. Sorry but someone had to say it.

From an email I received from Foreign Policy Magazine daily Top news: After a day of apparent success and unexpectedly high turnout, voting in Egypt's first post-Mubarak election has entered its second day. There were no reports of attacks on polling places or stolen ballot boxes, following two weeks of anti-government demonstrations that often turned violent. Turnout is reportedly high for the second day of voting as well. Egypt's military rulers are pointing to the apparent success of the polls as validation for their interim rule, while protesters in Tahrir Square continued to reject the elections as a sham. Two more rounds of elections will follow, ending in January. _____________________________________________________________________________ So what if the American political system was like the above. 2 days of elections followed by another 2 rounds of voting. Would we have any better of a political system or not? What if if the presidential/congressional elections were voted on over 3 distinct voting rounds?

I also know of a nurse that gave Sux on a doctors orders but he didn't expect her to give it to the patient in the radiology department and then leave the patient on the gurney wating for the xray tech to arrive. After 20 minutes of waiting she went back to check on the patient and the desired result had been achieved.

Yep I understood that but If I was going to steal the RSI kit, I'd be stealing it for the ketamine. But maybe those who stole it prefer the paralytic to the ketamine!!!! Who knows.

My suspicion is that they stole the drugs for the Ketamine and etomidate. Not the paralytic.

WOW I made the list. I think that my pastor would be better at it than AK or Dwayne or anyone else here because my pastor knows me personally and I feel very comfortable talking to him. I also think that Dwayne and AK would be a perfectly acceptable substitute in my pastors absence though. I also know several pastors who are actively involed with the FD's and PD's in the area and I can go to them if I need. Plus my best friend is a councilor so I have basically unlimited access to him. I have been involved in several CISD debriefs, all debriefs involved the deaths of children, 2 of which were homicides. I didn't feel like the CISD helped but going to my pastor on one of them and my friend for the other was to me more beneficial than the CISD program. By the way, one CISD was not voluntary based on the brutality of the mode of death of the child.

I was watching the news the day after black friday and they blamed the stores, the bargains and the advertising on the bad actions of the few idiots who got out of hand and not once did they say that those involved and who caused the incidents were the ones to blame.

ONe more wrench. What happens if you are babysitting this celebrity in a state where you are not licensed or the physician isn't licensed?

I make sure that during the ride time that my students have with me, we go over what they are having problems with. Sort of a lunch and learn. When I was working EMS full time(80 per week) I had several students that booked blocks of shifts with me. I gave them my email address and had them send me questions that they were having issues with. Be it skills, content or other issues, we would go over those issues and I'd help them grasp what they needed. I also had my students work together in study groups one night a week either at a local restaurant or coffee shop or a small room at the local library. It worked wonders. But I'm not going to help them understand a medical school level text if they can't show me they understand the basics. I'm all for helping my students learn more about the assessment and disease processes, I will spend an hour or two after shift on those who asked for additional help and if I didn't know the answer I sent them to any number of my co-workers who did have the answer.

When did the city get a small group of people who think that they are the collective conscience of the entire site? I don't get it. Nope not the service I work for nor the hospital/client I consult for. that's like saying if you hear a joke and you don't find it offensive but you think someone else might find it offensive then you have to tattle on the people telling the joke. That's about the stupidist thing I've ever heard. If I hear a joke that is off color why is it my responsibility to go to the supervisor and say "hey I heard a dirty joke and I thought someone might be offended so I have to report it" If I find it offensive then I'll say something. If I reported every joke that my next door cubicle neighbor here at my lcient tells then I better put a permanent chair in my boss's office because i'm going to be there every single day. It's not practical and it's like big brother. that type of policy reminds me of a certain country in ww2 that had their citizens so paranoid and scared that they reported their neighbors. It also reminds me of the McCarthy era communist hearings where in order to get away from the hearings without being blacklisted you had to name other communists. I'm not going to report something that "might be considered offensive" to someone else. That is not my responsibility

"What’s wrong with suggesting material that should without question improve a practitioner’s assessment skills & overall knowledge base?" nothing is wrong with that thought process if the student has mastered the information in their textbook. But what is wrong with that thougth process is if the student hasn't mastered the info in their class book and they are using the texts listed as their information base. If they don't know the material in their basic text book then how can we be sure they are actually learning from the advanced texts. Its just like putting a student with a remedial knowledge of college algebra into a advanced calculus or trigonometry class. if they don't have the basics down how the hell are they gonna pass the advanced stuff? Rock you are right and I accept the criticism but what I don't accept is emt students trying to become paramedics when they don't even have the basics of being an EMT down. I don't accept is medic students trying to become doctors when they in all reality aren't even good paramedic students. There is nothing wrong with attempting to get a better grasp on things but what distresses me the most is the medic student who is just getting by with a 75 or 80 percent(of course that's a good grade in some US schools) and they are wanting to go get a physician level text book in order to "help me grasp what I'm missing". I find that getting these students a mentor or put them in a study group does so much more to their grade average and their understanding of the material than any medical school level textbook ever will. We all say that you have to crawl in order to walk, but it seems that the majority of students think they are above the crawling or toddling stage and think they can go right into the 4 minute marathon stage.

I always think that some people who complain are doing so just to complain but if there are people who find that content offensive then you should not show it. My definition of offensive is likely different than another's. If someone complains and says it's offensive to them then you need to respect that person's opinion and put something else on. I would love to see everyone getting along and coming to an agreement on what is shown on the television. For the period of time that it's on and a majority want to watch that particular show can watch it while the person who does not wish to watch it goes and does something else. But they should not be forced to bend to the majority if the there is only one television in the station. I mean if you can't live without porn or that type of material for a shift then maybe you have a bigger problem than at first thought. If you need to watch porn at work then you are someone I definately do not want to work with.

Plus touching me in places that only my wife gets to touch while I'm sleeping is liable to get your hand broken and then the cops called on you. Don't we teach kids that no one has permission to touch them in their private areas? That still holds true with anyone from infancy to 110 years old.

I'm dismayed. The reason I say this is that many of the EMT/Medic students I have had the pleasure/displeasure of meeting and precepting have all asked a similar type of question. They are wanting to get the more advanced books that give a broader explanation of disease process, medical issues and basically what medical school texts they should be using to broaden their horizons and base knowledge on. What I have seen consistently is that the students don't really have a firm grasp on the basics that their paramedic textbook or EMT textbook's are trying to give them. I put this back on two causes, instructors who do not have much in the arsenal of what a real teacher is and students who want it all given to them on a silver platter. The current texts are good in the material that they teach and you gotta get the basics and base of education down before you start the medical school texts. Some of the instructors that my students are under are fire-medics who are teaching the paramedic curriculum directly out of the book and not prodding the students to learn. They don't have the knowledge of learning styles and the understanding of what makes a student learn one way over another, they simply teach it cookie cutter and expect all their students to learn that exact same way. So we of course have students who are not prepared for the rigors of patient contact in an ALS capacity yet can quote obscure medical conditions and treatments that they will only encounter once or twice in a career. They do not have the basics in how CHF is differnet than Pneumonia or pleural effusions. They do not have the knowledge of what actually happens to the patient when they are RSI'd but they sure know the drug dosages. They know the skills part but they don't have a firm basis of understanding of why we do certain things over another. I do not give recommendations to students until they can prove that they have a grasp of what their paramedic or emt text book is trying to teach them. To give them suggestions on medical school level textbooks when they don't have the paramedic education down is tantamount to setting them up for failure. I won't do that. the only books I recommend are Dubin's EKG book, An anatomy and physiology text book and maybe an additional paramedic text book.

NO to me that is a fireable offense. You don't touch anyone and if you do and it's unwanted then you are gone. that's been the rule at any of the employers that I've worked with. it could be tantamount to assault if you wanted to push it. I can tell you this, you come into the bunk room and rub your hands on my body there better be two things happening for you. 1. You must be HOT and 2. you have to be my wife (who is OH SO HOT).