firedoc5

Saw that on the news early this morning. It is being blamed on an underlying heart condition, so they are saying.

Fly with your own wings, Brother. You'll be sadly missed.

At least that's better than "Nothing on but the computer". "That Smell" - Lynyrd Skynyrd

The product. It was a pair of reins. I love to be busy doing nothing all day. (Yes, I know it's from a song, but I like it)

Yea, pick me one up too, Bare. I promise to pay you back later :wink:

Since my family is from LA and from having lived in LA, I've known Acadian fairly well. Like any place, especially as large of an operation as they have, there are pro' and con's. Which out weighs the other I don't know. Sorry.

Cell phones?? At one time we had a couple of transfer units that all we had were very short distance portables and a couple of pagers. Say if we were far west of town and we got a call. The portables couldn't reach us. So they used the pagers. It was a couple of months when we finally got vehicle radios. So needless to say, I was before the high tech of cell phone use. We did finally get some right after I got on the FD. You know, the ones the size of a brief case. They were pretty much useless. Now for me to chime in on today's use, or at least IMHO. Cell phone use should be used for work such as dispatch, directions, messages, etc. And only held by the passenger. If need be they can use the speaker phone if both needs to hear. NO personal calls, especially if a patient is on board. Even if between calls, only authorized calls to be made. I'm sure any service can establish what is allowed or not allowed. NO texting unless for business as priorly mentioned. And I'm sure I can think of a few others if I sat here and thought about it long enough.

Depends if you are turned on to Suzane Summers, George Lucus, or Mel Brooks.

I believe "formal" goes along with "professionalism".

I guess I should have elaborated some. I was meaning that if a NH patient appears to be under-nourished (not malnourished) and you have a somewhat long ETA, it wouldn't hurt to call medical control for permission for Thiamine. Hopefully the NH Nurse will give you a report of how their appetite has been. I only had to do it a few times and each time permission was granted. And as far as I know, no more than we give can do no harm. (I might get swamped for that statement). But how many times have you brought a NH pt. in and before you are done with your paperwork they are giving Thiamine?

I know what you mean.

Yep, That's the one. :banghead:

I totally agree on the thiamine. You're right. All too often NH pts. are under-nourished. I stand corrected on the COBRA. Right after I left the FD I had COBRA, and since it did seem confusing and very frustrating to me, I thought it was a type of insurance. Thanks for the explanation.

How nice some of these new fangled stretchers. I'm from the days of the two man lifting stretcher that to be lowered you had a "kick down bar". And the supposed "one man" stretcher where you had the wheels that would go on the deck. You then had a trigger, and if it worked right you just pushed the stretcher in and the wheel carriage would collapse. But 90% of the time you would have to have a second person to lift the wheels off the ground as you pushed. So the one man actually took two people. Ahhh, those were the days. Come on, I know there's others out there that know what I'm talking about.

In the dept. I was at we did both "in-house" and hospital or when a class would be offered through the local college we were able to do any of them. One problem was that is when a class was offered, especially a mandatory refresher or other type of class, some of us were teaching the class. It seemed like we were teaching the same class we were taking. It might sound a bit confusing, I know. But when doing actual "in-house" training, which was at least two hours per weeks, we had Lt./T.O.'s. But some of the Lt./ Training Officers were not Paramedics, then it was up to the Paramedic on shift with the most ALS experience to teach the class. Most of the time it was me. One of the problems with Lt./ T.O.'s that were not Paramedics, most of them had been Paramedics. What caused that is that is that at one time there was an issue of not enough Paramedics to cover every shift. So one of the hiring agreements was that when hired on they had up to three years to become a Paramedic. If for some reason the rookie could not pass the Paramedic class or test, they were dismissed. So it was mandatory that each Fireman had to be a Paramedic. BUT, once a Fireman was promoted to Lt. he had the option of dropping the Paramedic, but would still have to be at least an EMT-A. Confusing, I know. So here we would have T.O.'s that were required to teach CEU's but couldn't. So to get around it, the Paramedic that did teach the class signed off on everyone, but the T.O. had to initial it.

There is no "easier" way. If you want to become an EMT, but want to do it an easy way, then don't do it at all. You can go over and over what is posted here and you might pick up some of the lingo. But unless you are at least in an actual EMT class or already an EMT, you won't learn squat. I'm by no means trying to turn you off to becoming an EMT, I just want you to learn to do it the right way. So far, the way you have described things, around here you would be labled a "whaker". You don't want to be a whacker.

I might be showing my ignorance here, but...When I first started out I worked as a volly for a Basic service. We were partially tax supported but each patient was billed what I now know, or assume, was a co-pay. And since I had so little experience at the time didn't think anything about it. A little less than a year later I was hired on a private service in a large town, or at least large to me. The city Fire ran the calls and provided the care with our cooperation and we did all the transport. Sort of like "Johnny & Roy". The private service still billed the patient even though the Fire Dept. was totally tax supported. It was explained to me that the patient was only being billed for the transport. Later on I found out that if there was an EMT-I or Medic on the call they were billed for ALS transport. This would occasionally throw up a red flag, but nothing would ever come of it. After a couple of years, when I was an EMT-I and was now handling some of the front office stuff I noticed that the billing from the private service began to charge for monitor use, IV, anything ALS, even though most of the time the equipment and practically everything ALS done was done by the Fire Medic. I really thought this was wrong and started to ask questions. Of which I was told to stop asking questions. Eventually a huge red flag was popped up. This time it became a big issue. City Board, FD, County Board, etc. called a few meetings. Eventually the meetings became close doors. After that none of the EMS personnel could help with the office duties. I didn't complain, I hated to do it with a passion. But even to this day I don't know what came of the meetings. After I became a Medic I realized that by going over the copies of each run sheet, they would notice what was done and would bill for it, no matter what agency's equipment was used. Two years later I got on the Fire Dept. Of course since it was tax supported there was no billing, unless it was HazMat. At one time the "powers to be" told us that on a call for us to use our equipment as much as possible. I thought that maybe we would have to start itemizing whose equipment was used or not used. But it never came to that. And since I no longer worked for that private service I had no idea how they were billing. At one point I was told that they stopped billing for equipment used, and only charged whether or not it was an ALS or a BLS transport. But personally, I still think there was something fishy going on. I'm not saying anyone was getting kick-backs or anything, but I think some laws were bent. Or at least swerved around. Now that I'm out of it altogether, and there are now more than just one private service in the city, I have no idea how any of it is done. But I do know the City Fire does not charge for a single thing. I hope this is relevant to the topic, which I thought it would. If not, sorry.

I was trying and trying to think of a way to do Ohm without doing it in some sort of Yoga style. I talked to a few friends of mine from there and they didn't get any resistance from the insurance companies.

A label I once saw on some horse riding gear. " Genuine Artificial Leather". I didn't buy it.

You know, I'm still trying to figure out that old Chicago song. :banghead: "She's Always a Woman to Me" - Billy Joel (Dedicated to a friend of mine, the mother of my god-daughter :angel13: , that after three years of searching I've finally located today.) :love7:

In a way, some of those are just so wrong. Funny :sign5: but wrong.

I'm sorry to hear about the new tumor. I was hoping and praying that she wouldn't have anymore. This is to re-strengthen the power of prayer and hope. Tell her that we all are still behind her all the way, including the newer members. And remind her that she is still an honorary member here. Give her a hug and kiss on the forehead for me.

When we knew it was her we were sure to take the type III rig. And whoever was in the back had to stand. It was a real pain in the a$$ to be sure.

You beat me to the explanation of COBRA. It's a type of insurance that's very complicated and even harder to describe. Our lady had her own phone. Even though she was in a nursing home, she had her own phone, TV, her own private nurse almost around the clock. Her nurse was usually there 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. When we would have to take her to the hosp. we had to take all of that with us including her wardrobe. When we complained about it the boss said to "do it", no matter what she wants. Evidently she was loaded, and paid everything in cash. Eventually when the hosptials got better TV's we stopped having to lug hers around.

Sounds like something he'd say.