Just Plain Ruff

Bad credit in itself will not keep you from getting the job. Most HR people I know don't base their hiring decisions on a credit score. One thing they do consider is how bad your credit is and how late your payments are as a gauge to say to themselves, with all other things about this person would their late payments prompt them to steal from the company? Most of the time the answer is NO but to some hiring managers that I know, that thought is in their minds. \ Your credit report probably will never get run. If you do get denied a job based on your credit report and they have to disclose that to you then you can get a free copy of your reports from all 3 of the big agencies and look at it. And cleaning up bad credit is a nightmare. It take time and lots of it. Paying off bills and keeping the minimum payments up. There are ways to make sure that the billing companies don't put you down as late and I can tell some of them to you but that is not the meaning of this thread. PM me for more info.

I agree with Herbies last statement on his long thread. We are different from the doc. We also don't take the word of a bystander claiming to be a medic. I was flying monday morning. About 10 minutes into this 30 minute flight they announced that they needed medical help. I waited for a short time for a doctor or nurse to push their call button but none were forthwith. I then pushed my call button and told them who I was. I was ushered back to a woman who more than likely was having a heart attack and started to talk to her. Told her who I was and all that. She looked crappy so I had the crew put Oxygen on her, gave her some aspirin out of the flight bag, put the AED patches on her and also started an IV. We landed what seemed like moments later and met the responding ground medics arrived and entered the plane. I gave them a report and we helped her off the plane. That medic took my report, assessed my IV and began his assessment. The EMS supervisor came up to me and asked for a copy of my license which I had no problem providing. Remember Trust but verify

Things to give pause on a background check 1. Any sexual convictions (BIGGIE) 2. Criminal history 3. drug arrests 4. If they do a credit check and it's bad 5. employment history - big gaps or lots of jobs in a single year 6. incorrect dates on your resume 7. bankruptcy 8. Searching your facebook page or doing a google search on you and finding things you posted but wish you didnt 9. Lots of other things. Let's face it, we live in a what you say online is there forever kind of world. Look at Christine O'Donnell and her remarks as a teen on the show the Bill Maher is using to try to force her to come on his show. She said she dabbled in witchcraft on one show and Maher is using that to point out her hypocriticsim for abortion. He says her previous dabbling in witchcraft directly puts doubts on her Christian claims now. Look at the people who post on facebook or the trashy Myspace and put yourself in a hiring managers shoes. If you saw what they posted on their pages would you hire them? Maybe yes, maybe no. I'm sure that if an employer read one of my blogs (it's set to private) that they would not hire me. But that's why it's private, it's a online daily diary of my thoughts. Those are the immediate things that we have used to not hire or to hire someone was what we found on a background check. Does that make sense?

I didn't know there was training on coffee??? but seriously, are you sure this is the right forum for you? A Java based training forum would be better. Here's a google search for you to try. Go to www.google.com and enter the words Java Based Internet Training, free this will give you some good sources for training.

I'm going to chime in here. I see where you were going Spenac, this is a good subject to bring up but it also scares a lot of people. Males looking at female parts. That goes against the grain of how we are brought up, as we aren't supposed to see the privates of the opposite sex, except in movies and magazines(ha ha) But I don't think I'm going to do much more than look to assess if there is bleeding or trauma. The risk is too high to the male provider. Case in point, had a medic friend of mine a long time ago run a call on a woman with vaginal bleeding. She wasn't on her period she said. The medic looked down there for bleeding and that was it, a visual exam and nothing else. My friend also explained what he was doing and why he needed to do it and the patient allowed him to look. Got to the hospital and handed the patient off. The patient then told the nurse that the medic looked and the nurse convinced her to file a sexual battery complaint against my friend. He was charged but not convicted. He lost his job and eventually lost his house and family due to being unemployed and I lost a good friend when he just up and walked away from town and never came back. To look is a valid thing but to do anything more is not a good thing in this day and age. If like Dwayne said about his patient (ladder girl) yes you do a more thorough exam but there are times for that. This topic is a tough one to tackle and many people have strong feelings on this subject. It is a good subject to discuss but maybe we aren't ready to have this discussion.

I worked for a company like that at one time. It was AMR. After the 4th holiday that they called me in to work and I wasn't given a choice, I realized that (even though I knew it in the back of my head) that the company didn't care about me or the employee's. They cared about the company. I finally told them one holiday that I wasn't coming in, they said it was a force call in and I still said I wasn't going to come in. I got suspended for 4 shifts. On the very first shift I called a smaller hospital agency to see if they had an opening and by the 2nd suspended shift I had a job at the small hospital EMS system. I never went back to AMR. You have to draw the line somewhere with these types of companies or they will continue to walk all over their employees. I HATE companies like the one you work for. No one stands up to them so they keep on doing what they do, all to the detriment of the employee. You don't see the big boss getting F(&(&*KED like the front line employees. I will never work for AMR or another company like them again.

Yes, I'll echo the as soon as possible concept. I am in line for a position over in the UAE and they said they wanted to get me over there as soon as possible if all the pre-employment stuff came back. I am now told that their As soon as possible is actually "as soon as possible which will take at least 6 months" kind of thing. So either call them Friday or wait till monday which will have given them more than a week. I know you want the job but you are really working on their timeline not yours. So you took the test on monday and you post on wednesday. The guy at the testing site said it would take 24-48 hours to get the tests processed. I can see how you really want the job but seriously, you need to slow down and relax and wait at least till friday to call. I had a drug test that the lab collected on a tuesday. My company didn't get the results back for 5 days. As for wanting your decision based on their ASAP statements. If you are hiring a bunch of EMT's and you send them all out for drug tests and physicals, don't you think that some of those prospective employees haven't had their physicals yet due to scheduling constraints? And the hiring staff probably won't make any decisions until all physicals and drug tests are back. Finally one other thing, Don't you wonder why they haven't called your references? It could be two or three things. First, they are not going to hire you so they won't call your references OR they have not gotten around to calling them yet and they will or they are going to hire you and they are hiring you based on your performance so far and don't need to contact your references. In all my many years of looking for jobs, doing some hiring and other tasks, I know that the only time we called someone's references was if they were neck and neck with someone else for a single job and we had to call references in order to make our decision based on what we were told by their references. I'm not busting your chops but I think you are getting ahead of yourself. Have patience and give the company some time. If you do call ONLY CALL THEM ONCE. If you call more than once and make a nuisance of yourself then the company may just say "we've got a good group of poeple, we don't need this one" Relax and have a martini and give the process some time.

So sad, so sad. But if there is any way I want to go it's just dropping dead. Just don't work me. my condolences go out to the entire group of people who knew her.

Echoing Rid and Lone's post I cannot see anyone spending 100 or more for a stethoscope. I've seen some medics that have those electronic stethoscopes that cost upwards of a couple hundred just seems absurd. When I hear a provider tell me that he needs this 200 stethoscope that is better than 95% of all the doctors have that he comes into contact with just makes me think WHACKER! Ever seen the facial expressions of a physician who hears a medic tell him about hearing S1 and S2's? It's priceless. My personal physician, old school, uses a simple double tube stethoscope for the general population of his patients. He goes to the Littman high high dollar one when he needs it but he tells me that even he doesn't need to have a super duper handy dandy fancy shmancy high dollar stethoscope to tell him S1 and S2's and pleuritc rubs. So in all seriousness, get the stethoscope that fits your needs. If you are a provider doing IFT's or simple transfers do you really need a high dollar stethoscope? Acute care delivery is a different story but again, do you really need a 200 stethoscope when it's only going to be used to take blood pressures and listen to lung sounds. Critical care transports or pediatric transports(high acuity) then maybe you do need one of the high quality stethoscopes. Why not buy a low priced stethoscope and use the money you saved to add to your belt equipment assortment.

It seems like with a shortage of people doing the menial work of the CNA and the like, that the province is looking at ways to augment the staffing of the long term care facilities and also the hospitals. It's cheaper to pay a medic than it is to pay a nurse. I "grew up" in a system that worked medics in the ER along with nurses. Worked pretty well but those nurses who worked with us knew that they would be working alongside medics when they were working so they had to decide if they could work with medics and those who took the job as a nurse in the ER took it knowing that medics were there. It does sound like you are being used in a Scut capacity and that you need to evaluate what the job descriptions are from your province and go from there. The nurses also need to be educated and briefed about medics in the ER. ER nurses hate change. They are probably feeling that their jobs are in jeopardy because if they can get a medic to do the job for less then they might just find themselves on the unemployment line and that is threatening to them. Take a look at their perspective from this vantage point. You have always been working dual ALS crews and all of a sudden the province says that you have to use EMT's on your trucks, that would sort of be the same thing.

Care to back up that statement or are you just spouting nonsense.

While reading this was anyone else cringing thinking about having a unsedated violent psych patient in the confines of either a helicopter or airplane? This just sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. Why does a psych patient qualify for a helicopter transport. Does it count towards medical necessity? Will the insurance company pay for the flight if the patient has insurance?

Did anyone see the Imam's interview on Larry King. He did leave the door open to moving the mosque The pastor in Gainesville has called off his Koran burning because he was assured by the Imam that they were going to be moving the Mosque to an alternate location. This is bullcrap if you ask me. The FBI met with the Pastor today and he called it off after their meeting. Now a Baptist church has said that if they call off the burning that that baptist church would do the burning instead.

Yeah the paper is orange, not the printing.

I am trying not to make an assumption here but since this was posted in the funny stuff and the original poster has not responded that the OP thought that this was perfectly acceptable behaviour and found it funny. Otherwise he/she would not have put it in the funny stuff area. Like I've said already, if this was my son or daughter, I'd have been in front of the hospital board and also the board of nursing making a complaint against this nurse. But in all actuality, I would have never gone along with this whole shenanigan in the first place and I'd have been making arrangements with my EMS Service to transfer my child to a hospital that had more caring nurses.

Usually if it is a copy of the orange sheet we accept it. Granted most of the doctors around our area are all known by the EMS crews so we don't put up much fuss clarifying the dnr. But no matter how much we try to push the ORANGE sheet on the agencies putting the DNR's inthe patients hands, they keep using white paper.

I think you are right Don. I'm not sure who the higher authority would be, but since I've never been put in that situation to have to go to court I can't answer it. If the patient goes into arrest from the adenosine then I'm going to honor the DNR but I'm calling the doctor to cover my ass. I have ideas of what would happen if we caused the arrest on a patient with a DNR but they don't need to be put out on this forum.

If they are on hospice and have a valid DNR that falls into the list of the ones I listed above. Basically if there is a DNR that is presented to us, we honor it. But in Missouri the only legally EMS recognized DNR is the Out of Hospital DNR which is on a bright orange piece of paper. If they don't have that I could feasibly work the code. But in all reality and seriuosness, if I'm presented wiht a signed DNR on a form that has the doc's signature then we are going to honor it. But if there is a question of validity, I'm on the phone with medical control and discussing it with them. Of course we are working the code at the time until I get clarification.

So my question is posed to BeachRescue - did you have a problem with what they did?

The only pre-hospital DNR I'm allowed to honor by state statute is the out of Hospital DNR on a orange piece of paper. Our service does honor the nursing home, home health, and hospital DNR's that the patient has. If they can't produce the dnr and say "He's got a DNR at the hospital" or this is a beauty "His DNR is at his attorneys office" I'm not going to honor it. I'm going to work the code and let the hospital deal with the aftermath. I've had times where I've gotten on scene and the patient tells me "I have a DNR but I don't want to die". I'm on the phone with medical control telling them what the patient just told me. 100% of the time, the physician said "if he codes, work him"

I'm not ok with this either. If it was my son and they did this to him, We'd be finding a new hospital.

Besides, no one here is arguing that Atropine is the treatment of choice for high degree blocks, They are just arguing that it's a viable alternative. No one here is saying don't pace these people. No one is saying that you should cause pain to your patients to get a response you want, no wait a second, I think Inf was arguing that he prefers to make people suffer because he gets the response he wants. Kind of creepy if you ask me.

Guys, Chbare and ERDoc, haven't you read the book "Arguing with idiots" I think you are doing just that. INF, if you can cite journals as to why atropine is so dangerous why don't you? If you just spout off your "humble opinion" you will be proven wrong. But maybe we are too dense to understand why Atropine is so bad. I've found nothing that marks Atropine as a absolute contraindication for any bradycardia. Have you? Paramedic (Inf) arguing with two of the docs on this site 20 bucks Paramedic being handed his butt on a plate - 100 bucks Paramedic being laughed off the site - priceless Funny thing is, I've given Atropine to several type 2 and 3 heart blocks and it's never caused cardiac arrest like Inf says it will. Sometimes the patient even got better. Not the 3rd degree block patients but the 2nd degree type 2 have gotten better. Why do you wish to cause pain to any of your patients. That's not what we are supposed to do.

PM Sent with offer.

So you don't put a monitor on any DNR patient? You must have pretty strict DNR protocols. If the patient isn't coding then the DNR does not apply at least to my knowledge it doesn't. DNR's are not Do not treat's they are do not resuscitate and from the original scenario it sounds like she was stable other than a heart rate of 180+ I don't think the DNR applies at this particular point in time.