Kiwiology

I agree mate, the only reason our Intensive Care Paramedic will become needed is for intubation and some fancy cardiac drugs (amiodarone/atropine) or for ketamine

Hmm I seem to have read somewhere before that this City said iy was content with having no Paramedics? Guess not eh

OK WTF now she says she tried to get an ambulance for three days? Maybe I missed it before but you mean to tell me that she let her supposedly sick and dying partner lay on the couch for three days without attempting to get him to the hospital herself? FFS if some "dying" person was laying on my couch for three days and the ambulance ain't showed up hmmmm, maybe, maybe, just MAYBE, I might get off my arse and try to get the person to the ho'biddle? I'm not sure who is worse here .... this lady for constantly milking this crap, the media for whipping it up into some sort of witch hunt or the City of Pittsburgh for bending it over and taking it raw.

For hypotensive patients undergoing RSI we use ketamine 1.5mg/kg

All that is required for evil to triumpuh is for good men to do nothing, Ella Wheeler Wilcox

So how are your kids doing these days? People seem suprised, hello, ITS A KILLER WHALE! WTF do you expect??? It's like those dumbshits who ignore the "do not __________" signs and end up getting eaten or electrocuted or otherwise what they deserve for being FITH. If I go into the woods and get eaten by a bear I am not going to be suprised because I entered Yogi's environment, you know, its not like he is taught "hey don't eat that skinny white dude out for a hike", hello ... ITS A WILD FRIGGIN ANIMAL! Seems some people are too stupid to live, which is why they get chomped down by whales and stuff!

Reading these I am very, very suprised. I have US friends who complain about being 20 year Paramedics and working three jobs at $11 an hour to pay as much of the bills as they can! I've also seen a bunch ads for EMTs and Paramedics at around the same, $12-$15 an hour and was under the impression that generally pay was pretty shit in your parts. Earnings:: US$29,000-34,000 p.a. (BLS) US$33,000-41,000 p.a. (ILS) US$37,000-44,000 p.a. (ALS) Job Title: Ambulance Technician (BLS), Paramedic (ILS) or Intensive Care Paramedic (ALS) Experience: Salary is based upon practice level Type: Two hospital based, two not-for-profit; pay at the hospital based services are the lowest Country: New Zealand Avg OT: Not required Avg work week: Generally 48 hours, 4x12hrs on and 4 days off although varies some have on-call responsibilities Cost of living: Huge variation, the "median" house price is US$240,000, gas is ~US$4 a gallon Starting tax rate: 21.9% and up Sales tax: 15% The earnings above do not include Ambulance Team Leaders (senior AO on watch or station) or Team Managers (watch manager/tour supervisor) nor does it include District or Regional Managers as these are on the Management pay scale which is a bit nicer. Keep in mind we have free universal healthcare too. Pay is quite a contensious issue given the degree of regional variance, use of on call and callback based rosters, penal rates etc and the Union is quite tight lipped about who gets what, where and when.

New Zealand made the switch to nationwide AMPDS use in ... 2007 I think, with AVL and MDTs being completed last year but we've been using ANIALI for years. Now this might be a bit of a generalisation but call takers are trained in AMPDS compliance so they can get stuck in a cricle going round-and-round getting an "exact address" that will verify in VisiCAD or w/e it's called these days and if that doesn't happen AFAIK no resource gets deployed because "we cannot send somebody to somewhere we can't find [in CAD]". In the old days when we had ambos on the phone in regional centres there was a bunch more local knowledge and less reliance on making the software happy. This has happened here with Ambulance, and Police too.

Probably blew on the right pie, Safer Communities Together.

It's not funny that is the thing. The elderly should not "gross you out" and if they do you lack the understanding and maturity to be an Ambulance Officer. Most of my workload has been older people or the elderly and they have a very unique set of needs, as do all patients but them particularly. They also have a lot to give and some of the best moments I have had on the road are at Nan's house sitting down with her having a cup of tea. Do you think they want to be in a position of having higher health needs, reduced mobility, a list of meds a mile long and to top of all off have you who doesn't want to be there because "they gross you out" helping them back into bed at 1am when they have fallen out and toileted on themselves? I notice you mentioned things to help you prepare like ECG interpretation and drug calculations. Yes, those will help but I notice everything you listed is limited to psychomotor or cognitive "skills". What if we told you the best pre-EMS experience you could get was volunteering at the nursing home or working at rehab? Would you still be interested because those things don't involve the "fun" stuff like cardiac arrest and IV analgesia? Go away and come back when you've grown up a bit.

This seems to be a strictly American thing. None of our 2,500 volunteer Ambulance Officers or 7,000 volunteer Firefighters have lights on thier vehicles, neither do Civil Defense or SAR and yes they are required to go to the station in thier own vehicles. The Road Code here states we must stop for flashing blue and red (Police) or two blue lights (Fisheries and Customs Officers) and offer right of way to red and white (fire and ambulance). It is also illegal to mount those colours on your vehicle but hey go nuts mounting orange lights on your car .... people really care about you impersonating a garbage truck Going out on a limb here I think most people on here feel there is no need to trick your car out with a ton of lights and that thier comments reflect that, as do mine. I think it is totally unnecessary. Hmm, if you are doing rescues in your own vehicle it seems a bit dodge .... now there are obviously environmental factors that I am unaware of that may mean it's perfectly legit (e.g. large distances or a group of responders who are geographically disperse making centralisation of a squad vehicle impractical) but that makes me wonder if you guys carry round rescue gear and a stokes in your car too! I cannot also help wondering if you have proper portable lighting like the ambulance Rescue Squad and Fire Service carry.

ROFL PMSL @ NYS Buff Get a friggin Kojack light mate

LOL; that brings up a legit question on my end. How do SES and ASNSW Rescue get along because aren't SES technically stealing work from the Rescue/SCAT teams? Any turf wars between the orange jumpsuits and ambos? (By looking at thier website it claims they provide vertical, RTA and technical rescue) Now .... perhaps a look at Kiwi's Rules of Fire Based EMS 101 can prevent endless tail chasing - The IAFF is out to steal medical runs and protect its members' jobs - Many Fire Departments do not want medical runs, so up pops the local quicky warm body medic patch factory - The IAFF/IAFC purport that response times matter and how they are able to best meet them, but because they do not really matter that is really null and void - The IAFF/IAFC claim that Fire based ALS provides better outcomes, using some unreferenced studies from 1990 that are no longer relevant and out-of-context so again, null and void - People (read: public and legislature) are stupid, and the IAFF/IAFC are increadibly powerful at lobbying and whipping up support for whatever they want .... and they usually get it! Thus conculdes Fire Based EMS 101, thanks for watching and now, a message from our sponsor ....

Our Technician (BLS) level have PEPP and do not have the independant ability to infuse so I dno .... But that makes me wonder, why would you risk decreasing MAP in the presense of PEEP or hyperventilation? Is the old hyperinflation trick we are taught to avoid with asthma?

Hey man I used to live near Poughkeepsie! @ JP; listen to the cop again when he asked what else the guy had he told him "you don't have to show me, you're not obliged to" then when the cops arrested the dumb bastard they read him his rights.

This was recorded on Police 10-7 our version of AMW/COPS, if you "get" it, it's friggin hillarious http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2oVTULyWZk See the news clip on it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cRkrF5dGyQ And the New Zealand Herald article http://www.3news.co.nz/Always-blow-on-the-pie-catapults-Kiwi-cop-to-online-stardom/tabid/418/articleID/127544/Default.aspx ...And the South Park parody

Perhaps they should stop dipping into the ketamine I also wish a speedy recovery

Fluids, maybe ceftriaxone? Not too sure on the dopamine or adrenaline

Eh? the Service is not diminished, the physical number of Paramedics might in fact go up because the Fire Service sends everybody down to the local warm-body producing patch factory and lets them rot on an engine. However as with most things we must think QUALITY and not QUANTITY

Sounds like total shit

The only drips we hang are amiodarone (150mg/30min) and adrenaline (1mg:1,000cc NS start at 2gtt/s and titrate) so to that end its not very hard at all from our end here in Kiwi

Ketamine, suxamethonim/vec and midaz here

Good to see the IAFF are finally admitting they want ambo runs to save thier job This article is quite interesting, it proves that the IAFF/Advocates for Fire Based EMS are using old data that is no longer clinically relevant and that they are not interested in patient care http://firegeezer.com/2009/11/22/the-neon-red-elephant-of-ems/ The Fire Service is very good at consistently marketing response time, high levels of "skill" and "training" (not necessarily education) and whipping up a bit of good PR around how they respond and so heroic and what gets me is the public and legislature lap it up.

Best Mexican food I ever had was in Phoenix .... What drugs are you using for RSI?

Howdy Texas is an interesting state as far as EMS is concerned; the medical director can basically prescribe whatever scope of practice he wants to ambos who have anything from ten weeks (HFD) to two years of education, and you have the best (A/TC EMS) and worst (HFD/DFR) and everything in between in one state! I've been thru Texas and have some friends scattered around there; nice place, lovely place with good people and good BBQ ... I need me a really big hat tho ... the ones at the airport were just too expensive Keep an eye out for this shady character, I think he is out Odessa way .... you might say he is the ultimate badass