Just Plain Ruff

What I found to be most funny is the statement that AMR went out of business. What really happened was AMR realized it was a losing proposition to pay for a emt and a medic to staff a town that runs less than 60 calls a year if you extrapolate the math. they shut their station down but didn't go out of business, if they did go out of business my wifes cousin would be calling me to help her get a job at the places I used to work. Are they gonna go after the nursing home that generates 25% of their call volume which I'm sure that the nursing home does just that maybe even more. In the small town where I used to work population 560(salute) we had 1 nursing home and one psych facility. We ran fully 1/3 of our calls from the nursing home alone. So should we have gone after the nursing home to fund our service. Would have been nice to have a brand new ambulance every 3-5 years.

I say we all go to that site, and tell him it's totally ok and legal for him to treat as well as even transport patients to the hospital. Can you see this yahoo transporting a patient. Ultimate whacker time then.

good luck on that. I would approach management with your concerns and suggestions prior to going to the labor board. Once you go that step then you cannot go back and it's immediately a adversarial relationship between management and employees. Get with a group of your peers and co-workers. Set out a plan of action that is implementable and present it to the management. Please PM me, I did this at a previous employer and it worked but you have to have a plan. PM me and we can chat

Dont' thank me. thank my friend who will remain nameless. ha hs

I have been sent a nifty powerpoint from a dear friend regarding suspension injuries. Good stuff. here's the link to find it here on EMTcity http://www.emtcity.com/phpBB2/dload.php?ac...amp;file_id=127 You have to have MS POwerpoint to view the file. If you don't have powerpoint, you can download the powerpoint viewer by going here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;displaylang=en happy learning

is there any way you can look for another job? Eventually the odds are gonna come around and bite you in the rear end and you are going to fall asleep and crash, Killing or injuring yourself and your patient. You should have pulled yourself off the road the night you were seeing double. You were probably about 5 minutes from falling asleep. Think of your family and yourself and start the process of searching for another job. The other thing you can do is to present a unified presence to management telling them that you have had it. Do it in a respectful manner and be prepared with some examples of what you would change and how. If you go to management with just complaints and no options or alternatives you will get nowhere. PM Me if you want some help with this.

Dust I agree to a point, you can walk away from a violent patient and allow PD to handle it. In the end, it's gonna get handled one way or another. But to walk away from a patient who has the deadly disease. Can't do that because their medical issue is not gonna get handled one way or another. sure they can get a ride to the hospital by family and friends but let's discuss the end of life HIV patient who has no other way to get to the hospital but you in your ambulance. How is that patient served by your service? I like your earlier suggestion of dividing patients by type for one to handle and another to handle. The pediatrics, I was always the one taking care of kids because they always seemed to do better with me rather than other people at my service. If your partner wants to take care of all the HIV and HEPB patients, then by all means, let him but we don't really have that luxury especially if you work in a one emt and one medic truck. As the medic you are gonna get stuck with every patient unless your service has a option of allowing emt's to treat and medics to drive on the Bls patients. I still think and won't change my tune on this one either, you either treat every patient you come across or you don't work. simple as that. You treat the dregs of society to the hooker, to the elderly to the hot chick in the wreck. Every patient means every patient regardless of their illness (infectious disease) status. And Vent brings up a great point - do we really know who's infected?

Dust, good salient points and well taken. Maybe not intentionally inflammatory but antime you post a thread that is similar to a thread that was so charged with emotion it becomes an inflammatory topic. If this thread can stay positive then it's a valid thread but I've seen these thread spin-offs before and they get out of hand quickly and negatively. Doug, the topic is not a bad one but it's a unfair comparison and to me it seemed like it was meant to stir the pot. As EMS workers we don't have the luxury to not treat a specific patient population and if you advocate that position you are not right for this field. Case in point, you are against abortion, you get called for a botched abortion of a 15 year old girl or 30 year old girl. Since you are against abortion would you refuse to treat that 15 year old because her illness is caused by abortion??? you can substitute drug use, alcoholism, assault, hiv, hepb, tb, ddt and xyz and still you have to treat the patient because you know as a EMS worker you might be called to treat someone sometime with that condition. IF you refuse to treat the patient, then you should not be working in EMS. It's take care of every patient or get out of my ambulance.

No, the reason why your getting no response is that your comparison is ludicrous. You cannot refuse treatment to anyone regardless of their disease status. But what I have posited all along is that the ems worker or healthcare worker should not be allowed to work in the field because they know they are infected and by not allowing them to work in the field mitigates the risk to the patients that they are treating. I will not discuss my responses to the original thread because I've made myself crystal clear but this discussion is assinine to continue. You can mitigate the risk if you are infected but you take the risk as a HCW and you must make the assumption that every single patient you come into contact with is infected, hence universal precautions for yourself. This in my opinion is a thread that was designed to be inflammatory and to feed the fire of an already hotly contested debate. AS a matter of fact, I think that this should be locked due to where this thread is destined to go.

I'm still waiting on someone to say what a raped ape looks like.

I can see that Mr. 9 posts to his name has not come back and made any more comments. To me that speaks volumes to his credibility and I will treat that credibility for what's it worth, NOTHING> .

I have no issues with the person with the disease. The issue I have is the disease. If you come to work with an infectious disease then you put the patients safety at risk. You can cut it so many ways and say there is only a .3% chance or a 1.8% chance but the chance is still there. I know many people with HIV, several with Hepatitis and two with TB. I am great friends with some of them. I do not have an issue nor do I have any problem eating with them drinking with them or going out and doing things with them but that's the end of it. I do have the problem with them working and being infected. Oh well, this issue is soooooooooooo charged that I think any more discussion on this will only lead to more hurt feelings and the like. Has anyone figured out what the employer's liability is in letting someong infected work?

smallfry I apologize for the 9 post comment, it was a kneejerk reaction but did you really read what I have posted over and over. I have given my views on the subject. You come in here after nearly a year or so between postings and proceed to insult and call me prejudiced and living in the dark ages. I took offense to that. I for one do not believe you've read anything I said. All you did was come in here and call those of us who don't agree with your views (I assume those views are that those with infectious diseases should be allowed to work) and call us prejudiced and in the dark ages. You did not give any rebuttal to anything that those you hold in such disdain said but you started the insults. You know what, my views are what they are, I have posted my reasons. If you cannot respect my right to have them then are you sure that we're the only narrow minded people on this board? I would look to yourself my friend. Ruff out

and smallfry, i've never said discriminate against them. I said that with an infectious disease they should not be working in ems. But with 9 posts I guess that you are an expert on everyone's opinions in here.

and someone with 9 posts has credibility here?

as long as we stay away from chastising ruff on his views, I have often wondered the same thing tnuiqs(sic) Just what are the healthcare workers rights when it comes to having an infectious disease. Does the patient have a right to know? Does the employer have a right to know? The question does need to be asked.

I thnk that spaces are overrated. Ithinkthatweneedtotypelikethis.andifwetypeinparagraphsweneedtobetarredandfeather ed.

thank you wendy. I appreciate it. I don't expect anyone to agree with me but I am not alone in my thoughts. But I said I would not post again and I broke the promise but I had to thank Wendy

Good lord, I've explained myself already. I'm not gonna do it again. It's my opinion and belief and that's all it is. I also don't drink and drive, I don't do drugs, I don't have sex outside of marriage and I certainly don't steal, do I need to explain my stance on those positions too? I will bow out of this conversation at this point because I can see where this is goin..

since I'm not actively in the field anymore I don't get checked any more. But when I was in the field I was checked by my family doctor, at my expense, every 6 months. I've explained myself and my position to you in a pm. I've also explained to the group and I'm not going to do it again. If this makes me look bad or obstinate or prejudicial then so be it. The same question I have of you vent, how often do you get tested?

This is rumor and pure rumor, I cannot confirm or deny but it's a great story where I used to work, a long time ago, two docs were sitting around drinking and they thought it would be fun to give each other vasectomies. Well they did but due to their inebriation apparantly something went wrong on the first attempt. The injured doc comes in with major issues in the nether regions. They fixed the issue but it quickly got around to everyone at the hospital and is told to this day to new employees at times. It's made it to the urban legend stage but I don't believe it's an urban legend. The question I had at the time and still do, what are two grown men, drinking, doing giving themselves vasectomies. Strikes me as a little hinky.

or he gets a lot of attention when he does. The more attention you give to people the more often or intensely they do the thing they are getting the attention for. It's like trolls on the internet. You feed them and they always come back for more. I do feel sorry for him, he's probably the laughing stock of the fire service he worked at. And the bad thing is that now he is the laughing stock of anyone who finds this article. His picture is right next to the article, no wait, that's just a scumbag. what happens when he works a code? does he pass out because the medic stuck the patient?

No it's a hovercraft baby, helicopters aren't supposed to fly 30 feet over traffic. But a hover craft could.

are you nominating that navy guy for a near darwin award?

yeah, I think it's gonna be around 15 bucks. But my next paycheck will be much higher. I'm still waiting on other infection control people to chime in. I think that my next paycheck will be pro-rated to those who say they have no problem with it. The more that say ok you can work then I'll have to divide it by that many people so you might just get a nickel or all 15 bucks. ok so kat, your boss has no problem with anyone working with TB??? If he has a problem with that then you lose my paycheck. What I wonder is this, what's the liability of providers who know they are infected and continue to work? What is the liability for the ambulance service who knowingly allows an infected person to continue to work. Would you want to be .3% or the 1.8% who gets the disease? not me. I don't think I'm gonna change my tune anytime soon. But I'm not infected so in the end it does not affect me.