Just Plain Ruff

the salary in a small rural town I used to work for is around 55K. That's rural missouri and on the other side of the state of missouri than St Louie is. Another area in missouri just north of the above service the pay is around 16.33 per hour to start as a medic there. both of these examples are hospital based services. The KC area I only know of one services pay rate and its north of Kansas city covering a larger county. the pay is about 33K per year. St Louis's cost of living in some places is pretty high so I suspect pay is higher. Last time I heard of someone in St Louis working for the city of st louis he was making about 43K but he was pretty high on the longevity list and seniority list. that's the extent to what I know.

Herbie you must really have loved that statement. The best place I ever worked was at a company that did put it's employees first or at least they did before they realized that a bunch of employees at a company sponsored event was a bunch of employee's not billing clients and that all went away. worked at an EMS system who lived that mantra. Employees first, patients second and company third. They were really good to work for. Holiday dinners, monthly parties at the station, bonuses based on company performance and great benefits. the employees were able to talk on a human to human level with the owners. they were even known to turn down a huge contract for transfer services with the VA if the requirements of that contract would have been detrimental to the employees and their work. An employer who treats it's employees right has a happier place to work, a happier place to get called in and a happier place to just be involved in.

depends on how you compartmentalize and deal with this job. If you take it home with you, if you think about it every day, think about the bad things and forego thinking about the good then you will be in for a long and depressing career. I always have tried to keep work at work and home at home but that's impossible at times. it helps to have a good sympathetic ear of a spouse or partner(not work partner) that you can talk to away from work. You will bring it home with you at some point. The way you deal with it is what makes or breaks you. yes, You may indeed find yourself laughing out loud at something or crying at times. It's all in the line of work and being a guy you should find no shame in crying like a baby when something truly hurts.

Talk to them, don't treat them like idiots. This is the absolute hardest thing any parent will have to face and just talk to them and answer their questions, honestly. If they ask if their baby is dead, do not say yes until you know for sure from the crews. When you find out that resuscitation has ceased then someone from the team needs to be there with you. If you have never done this before then you need to be paired with someone who has. You should not be the one to tell the parents their baby is dead if it's your first time in this situation and hopefully the crews won't put you in that position to be the one. I learned from a very seasoned medic how to do this and he said this, watch it done a time or two and then you will know that no matter what you tell the parents they won't really hear you anyway. Their grief will be overpowering and you just being there, holding their hands, or hugs if allowed by the parents work wonders I also am a firm believer of allowing the parents to hold their child one last time unless of course it's a crime scene. There is no excuse for refusing to allow a parent to hold their child one last time and I've always deferred to law enforcement on the crime scene issue but if no crime scene then the parents get to hold their child. You will never forget your first infant or child death. I can see my first, second and third dead child's face as plain as day even after 20 years. Can't remember the full circumstances but I do remember. VERY tough all around.

Can't remember the words but it comes from Three's Company Making our way in the world today takes everything you got show and lyrics

I was thinking of putting my wife in the middle of the car with a steel cage surrounding the car and a 12 point restraint system but since that would be too expensive of a car I'll go with middle seat back seat with lap and shoulder belts in our mid-size SUV. I only have a couple of weeks to go with our current pregnancy so the less she drives the better.

Let me ask this question Why can't straight people make gay jokes when Gays do it all the time? Why can't whites or mexicans say the N word when Black people say that word all the time even in front of my children at various public functions? Why can Blacks say the word Cracker to a group of white people but when a white person says the N word he get's attacked or worse? Why isn't the Gay community up in arms when an openly gay actor plays a womanizing man on "how I met your mother" but when an openly straight man plays a gay actor he's chastised for it? Why can two black men made up as two white women in a movie yet when the idea is posed for the same but it being two white men it's deemed racist? These are all questions that I've asked as well as some of my friends ask. Why the double standard? Should there be a double standard?

Why do you assume I'm ransacking their home? I simply stated I look in their bathroom and kitchen. You are the one who brought up the less than desireable motives and just like silent farts, he who smelt it dealt it so obviously you are the one who has less than desireable motives in your heart. That's all the response you'll get from me because you are wrong about my motives. Yeah Dwayne, he's just making assumptions that are wrong. I've never stolen from anyone, never had even a desire to do so. It's not nosey, every medic I know of looks at the environment and to say i'm ransacking their home is insulting but then again, he's insulted everyone of us on this thread by insinuating we are all racists and assholes but he's perfect remember. But to each their own, I know I'm in the right and I cannot count how many patients I've seen where their kitchen was empty and I helped them out with probably the first good meal of their week by bringing them something back after my shift was over. One case in point. Had an overdose, very stable but just took too many pills. After trying to find what pills they took we couldn't find any medication bottles except the one bottle on the floor of the living room. I looked around their apartment, went into the bathroom and found 9 other pill bottles on the floor open and empty. When confronted the patient said, yeah I took those pills too. Had I followed Crotchitie's advice and Not "Ransacked" the patients house, I would never have found the pill bottles and would not have been able to tell the doctors at the hospital that they had overdosed on the tricyclic antidepressant and Betablocker pills that were found on the floor of the bathroom. If I had followed Crotchitie's law of not being nosey, I would have brought in a single drug overdose rather than a multiple drug overdose thus leading the ER down the road of treating the single drug rather than their plan to treat the multiple drugs. The patient would have died without that info. That's my personal reason, to treat my patients. Following the Crotchity law of not being nosy would have killed the patient. But you don't want to be too nosey, you might get accused of something. Perish the thought.

What the hell does that mean? did I ever once say I searched their bathroom or kitchen. I said I looked in their bathroom and kitchen. Where did you get the idea that I search their bathroom. And what possible personal reasons would I have to search their bathroom or kitchens? Don't beat around the bush, tell me what you are insinuating?

See there is the moral argument yet you said we have a duty to act. Having a duty to act makes it sound like since there's a duty, that there is a requirement to stop. Don't quote the bible to me. I'm not going down that road anymore here. I don't stop because theres not a whole hell of a lot to do if I have no equipment. You might stop and that's your prerogitive (sic) but I'm not you and you aren't me. I'm also not burned out so don't label me as such. Nor am I lazy but I am old. I just do not stop and it's good of you to have such concern for my old lazy burned out self, I'm touched. Oh I forgot, our good old Crotchity who is the moral compass for this group and for the world itself. If crotchity does it then it must be the right thing. What the hell am I justifying myself to you for. Jeesh, my sugar must be getting low.

Just curious does anyone know where in the car a pregnant woman is safest? Front Seat? Rear seat with lap and shoulder belt? Rear middle seat with just lap belt? I've been curious as to the best place but my questions to others off this list have not been good ones. Thanks ps - even my wifes doctor didn't really have a good answer.

I don't know if the answer is yes but I think that we are the best that many can get. Often we are their first route and often their only route to the healthcare system and it's incumbent on us to be their advocates and like Dwayne says, we should be doing the type of stuff that he mentioned on every call. How much more time does it take to look around the house and say "you know, I noticed you have a bunch of throwrugs on the floor. Those are fall hazards and you should get rid of them" and then help them remove the rugs. Who knows, your actions may save some elderly person from falling and breaking a hip. I always look in their kitchen, and bathroom if I can and that tells me a lot about how they are eating or what goes on in the bathroom. Lots of meds nilly willy inthe medicine chest, I'll write their dosage and times to take out on a piece of paper I designed and give it to them. Saves me the trouble of writing the stuff down in the future and gives the person a list of their meds when they go to the hospital. I look at their kitchen and if it looks like they haven't eaten today I'll offer to make em a sandwich or I'll put a bug in the ear of our social workers to put them on the list of who needs help or to help set up a social worker visit. That's just me though.

That's just my point Mike. I don't like it when people throw out that because I'm a medic I have some DUTY to act like if I don't I'll get in trouble. Morally, do I feel at times that I should stop? Yes, and sometimes if the feeling is there, when the stars align into a straight line I will stop and usually it is with good outcomes like I was able to do something to help the people. but the majority of the time, I'm not going to be doing anything more than looking like a bystander because I have no equipment to use other than what is in my car and that usually consists of fast food wrappers and bottles of coke zero so if the car is on fire I can pour my coke zero on the fire. if you feel morally obligated to stop or you say that I'm morally obligated to stop that's one thing but don't tell me or anyone else that they have a duty to act. Thats rubbish.

I'll bet that any doctor who uses the mantra that narcotics masks abdominal pain would change their tune quickly if they either had appendicitis or some other form of abdominal pain and were faced with their antiquated line of thinking. Some people do much better with PO pain meds than IV. I found that for my migraines that I get very very seldomly, that IV narcs kick the headache but they don't last long enough to completely get rid of them and I'm usually needing a 2nd dose. Many years ago I had a headache that was so bad the doc gave me 2mg of nubain first, that didn't fix it so they moved to IV Demerol with minimal response, and then upped it to 5mg Morphine wiht minimal response and finally after 9 hours in the ER with the headache, 2 CT's and and MRI, and a near lumbar puncture, I was given 2mg Dilaudid and that finally did it but 2 hours later the headache was back and I got 2 vicodin's and that finally relieved the headache. Have never had a headache that bad since.

My health insurance is free to me if I took the high deductible and I did but even with free premiums I'm still nailed in the end if I have medical issues. I have 25.00 copays for the doctor I have 100 dollar copays for the ER 250 copays for outpatient procedures my individual deductible is 2500, and that 2500 per family member not just one of us. My maximum out of pocket costs are 9500.00 So with my wifes pregnancy she has met her individual deductible and we have met our out of pocket max so everything from here on out is paid for at 100% for her but I still have to meet my deductible and my children have to meet theirs. We are only about 25% of the way for me and 10% each for the kids. So total amounts I have to spend is 19500 total for all of us to be fully 100% covered not including any co-pays for meds and doctors offices or ER visits. That total amounts to 2/3 of my total yearly salary not counting my bonus structure so my insurance overall is not cheap or free, maybe if it was I'd be singing a different toon.

Ok, quote the law that says I have a duty to act? It's not my jurisdiction, I'm off duty. I don't believe I have a Duty to Act unless you use it altruistically and say that sense I'm higher trained that I should stop at every single scene no matter what the injuries and render aid. I used to do that but not any more.

Nope don't stop, simple as that. Where I'm from the ambulance is little more than 5 minutes away. The backup ambulance is little more than 10 minutes away and I have no equipment on me, including gloves so I don't stop. What am I going to be able to do without any equipment. I can look pretty on scene though. Of course, there are those on this site who have better equipped personal vehicles than many ambulance services.

The amount of time to wait is how long it takes to read my response. Or read the threads here. I did just the opposite, I was an EMT dispatcher for 8 months after emt school, it's just where they put me as a new hire. I then moved into EMT driving and stayed there for 16 months. to think how much further I would have been as a medic if I had just not listened to some idiotic advice of 2 years as an emt before getting my medic. STUPID advice given and taken. I learned from that mistake. and yes, most of those who said to wait were emt's who didn't have any drive to be a medic or firemen who had no desire and fought als integration on the fire department for many many years. they still are bitching in KC MO about the integration of ems/ambulance and firefighting. so take all our advice however you wish to but I've been there, done that, paid for that and wish I could take it back. But that was 20 years ago.