Dustdevil

You answered your own question. Driving experience (that is LICENSED driving experience, not what you did on the backroads of the county in your grandfather's pickup truck before age 16) comes with age. Without age, you don't have it. And I don't trust anybody with less than five years of it behind the wheel of my emergency vehicle. And, of course, it has been legally held forever that discrimination is not a valid legal concept when applied to youth. Life isn't fair. Nobody said it was. You can go to court or you can deal with it. Once a college degree is the entry level requirement for the profession, we won't have this silly argument anymore.

That isn't really a solution. It's actually more of a root of the problem. The current availability and acceptability of abortion is responsible for the societal cheapening of human life that results in people thinking nothing of flushing one down the toilet or leaving it in a dumpster. If medical murder were not accepted by society, then we wouldn't have this slippery slope that allows people to rationalise committing murder themselves.

That's the exact same question we keep asking about all the volunteers out there who do it for no pay at all.

LOL! One day we got sent to pick up a patient in the hospital and transport him to his home. This was a SCHEDULED transfer for a specifically SCHEDULED pick-up time. I got there and the patient refused to be taken because his doctor had not come by yet, and he wanted to talk to him before he was discharged. The doctor was not in the hospital, and nobody knew when he would be by. We couldn't wait around forever (it was a 911 system, not a transfer service), so we left and told them to call back when the guy was ready to leave. You wouldn't believe the stink it caused when I cleared us on the radio, "Patient refused." Both the dispatcher and the supervisor kept asking, "REFUSED!?! Your patient REFUSED?!? " A manager had us call him on the phone so he could yell at us that we could not clear a transfer as a "refusal." The supervisor was insisting that we had to call medical control for an official "refusal" on the patient. The dispatcher was complaining that the computer wouldn't accept "refusal" on a transfer. Then they all began arguing amongst themselves about it and forgot about us, lol. Idiots.

Plus ten for one of the most profound points ever made on this forum.

Sorry, but every pointless post counts against your total. It's about quality, not quantity. :roll:

Excellent points and explanations. This, my friends, is why Asys is "The Dean." :thumbleft: You bring up a point that I have neglected in the past, and that is definitely to be considered. As we are expected to respond in a public service role, outside the comfort and safety that most Americans work in, recognition of such is important when it comes to compensation for those risks. But I tend to just roll my eyes when I hear EMTs whining that they want that extra $100k in death benefits from the federal government like cops and firemen. If we were medical professionals, making what medical professionals should make, then the amount of money we could afford to leave behind to our families wouldn't be such an issue. Once we are educated professionals who are not immediately replaceable by next week's class of 120 hour first aiders, the glut of providers disappears, and employers will be forced to provide a benefits package that attracts and keeps professionals. That would include a comprehensive, double-indemnity, accidental death and dismemberment policy, as well as the usual health and disability benefits. It doesn't take the federal government to achieve that. Other than the federal public safety death benefit, are there other public safety benefits that you are talking about that I am not addressing?

Exactly. My argument proving my point is scattered amongst over 6000 posts here at EMT City. Feel free to review them. But seriously, just about every topic on this site that contains the term "public safety" contains this very same argument. You have not stumbled upon some new concept that nobody else has ever pondered before. Notice I said the argument "proving my point," not the argument "supporting my opinion." My point is not opinion. It is fact. And the fact that many communities integrate EMS into their public safety functions does not make the profession of EMS as a whole a public safety profession. Lights and sirens and the occasional badges are all we have in common with public safety. The rest is just wishful thinking on the part of a lot of wankers whose dream it is to be a city employee making lower middle class wages with a minimum of educational investment. Those of us who are here to be medical professionals are the only hope for a bright future for EMS. The rest of you are doomed to be bastard step-children for the next 35 years and beyond.

But that's not a "public safety" thing. That's just a small town thing. The doctors, dentists, lawyers, and teachers of the community get the same thing. I had a friend who was a mechanic in a small town and he couldn't eat a meal without getting interrupted either. Does that mean that they are all "public safety" too?

I would strongly disagree. This silly "public safety" notion is one of the primary factors holding EMS in the 1970s and preventing professional growth. I am correct, and all who disagree are wrong. Period. Thanks for asking!

We all do. However, you should take note that us, in the hospital, experience ambulance crews bringing in the same types of patients also laying supine, and with NRB masks running at 2lpm "because she's COPD!" all the time. This is certainly not exclusive to nursing home nurses. At least they gave her appropriate oxygen.

Thanks, Bro. Your points are valid and all too infrequently addressed here. Actually, I think we are really on the same page here. You're just a little more fed up and emotional about it than I, lol. I been there too, though, so I know how it feels. Again, I'd like to hear Mr. Dukat's thoughts on the subject of completely separating the transfer and EMS industries, leaving a more clear deliniation between ambulances and horizontal taxis. That would give the private EMS industry more respect, as well as giving EMS in general more respect. Yes, I know it would take a little gravy off of their plate, but I firmly believe that success requires us to do only ONE thing and do it well, and leave the rest to somebody else.

I think this is true. Most nurses do seem to be very ignorant about the training and capabilities of EMTs. If nurses really knew the truth, they'd give EMTs far less respect than they currently do.

Plus 5 for honesty. Minus 10 for spelling and punctuation. Come on, dude. You're embarrassing Canada.

I notice you didn't say she turned out to be wrong, and the patient ended up in emergency surgery. Congratulations to your idiot partner for making you, him, and all of us look like ignorant arseholes operating over their heads. Yeah... whip out your cookbook and recite it to people with four times your education level. That's a great way to prove to the medical community that we have the intellectual foundation to make independent clinical judgements. Not. :roll:

I'm not sure what you are talking about. How does your profession affect any of that? Do you take your kids to work with you? :?

Good thinking! And I agree! I did the same thing many years back. Called the NR office and told them I wanted the next available test, no matter where it was. They told me it was Terre Haute, Indiana. Uhhh... no, thank you. The next one after that was Las Vegas, and I was all over that. Good times! Good luck on your retest.

I'm not sure if you are asking for personal experiences, or just general observations of the process. I haven't taken the computer test (although I think I am going to have to in order to re-enter), I see it as a very positive piece of progress. The bureaucracy of the testing process is significantly lessened by CAT. Now if they can just get rid of the stupid skills testing too!

Wonderfully astute and classic advice. :thumbright: To the original poster, I am curious. Is this a problem you percieve to be unique to rural EMS, or did you just post this in the wrong forum?

Absolutely not! I would be the last person here at EMT City to suggest that! Besides, BC holds that dubious distinction. Either people need medical transportation (an ambulance), or they need a horizontal taxi. One or the other. Once those horizontal taxis are no longer called "ambulances," people will have no problem making that distinction. In Ontario, transfer jockeys are not required to have any formal medical training. But, then again, there are no private EMS services in Ontario, so there is no need for EMS services to do transfers for the money as is done in Alberta. Again, separation would eliminate the conflict of interest between the two and allow each to focus on one thing and do it well, as well as forcing both the public, the government, and the insurance industry to recognise the two industries separately for the purpose of regulation and reimbursement.

Man is born with a finite number of breaths in him for a lifetime. I try not to waste any of those breaths preaching to the deaf. Not only is it a waste of my precious breath, but it is counterproductive to society. I wholly encourage the defective amongst us to eliminate themselves from the gene pool. Why would I want to stop that? At least here, on the Internet, I can school wankers and rookies without wasting any breaths.

We're about the same age, but I've got about a decade of experience on you. That's a long time, but I remember those early days like they were yesterday. I have seen good and bad services of every sort in every sort of environment. Public, private, hospital, PUM, military, rural, urban, suburban, whatever. Been there, done that. You're not going to tell me anything about this business that I do not know. Your thoughts about what the general public thinks are equally incorrect. The general public has no concept of differences between public and private EMS. All ambulances and all medics look the same to them. That's why they flag down granny tote cars at MVAs. That's why they give transfer jockeys discounts at Dairy Queen. That's why people think transfer jockeys are firemen. That's why they think all firemen are paramedics. And that's why they still call firemen "ambulance drivers." The "general public" simply has no clue. If they did, EMS would be well into the 21st Century by now. The point remains, a lot of services do indeed suck. You are right about that. But you would have to be naive or -- yes -- ignorant to assert that this is exclusive to private services, or that the majority of private services who provide 911 EMS as their primary business are only interested in tranfers. I don't know where you have spent your 23 years of service, but that sort of perspective usually comes only from the lifelong, small-town, rural provider that has never seen what is going on in the rest of the world. I do know. And if you want to know what is going on in the rest of the world -- which is quite possibly the greatest benefit of participation at EMT City -- then please stick around. You do, however, touch on a belief of mine that I have taken a lot of criticism for myself over the years. That belief is that private, non-911, transfer services are very definitely NOT part of EMS, should not be representing themselves as EMS, should not even be regulated as EMS. Just like being a firemonkey, transfer work should be a completely separate industry and job from EMS with no cross-pollination. They should not be required to have any EMS training at all and regulated the same way buses and taxis are regulated. It would have a PROFOUNDLY positive effect on EMS as both an industry and a profession if non-emergency transfer ambulances were completely deleted from the realm of EMS and made its own, stand-alone industry with separate standards and regulation. Unfortunately, you are correct that those who run the 911 privates would fight that tooth and nail because they desperately want those milk runs to supplement their cash flow. However, there is no denying that continuing to mix the two industries does indeed hurt the professional growth of EMS, and even hurts the growth of PRIVATE EMS, because they will forever be saddled with the negative image you speak of. Mr. Dukat, I would be interested in your thoughts on that last paragraph.

I've been through this a couple of times, and it's never really been a problem for me. I was out of EMS for three years after "the big one" that broke my neck. I was out of EMS and nursing for five years doing other work right before deploying out here, and it took me less than a month to feel right back in the saddle. I'd say the biggest factor for you will probably be how solid your experience was before the accident. If things were second nature to you before, they will be again with just a little exposure again. If not -- and such is the nature of the volly biz -- then this could be a significant setback for you.

It does to me. Otherwise, the quote from "Better Off Dead" that keeps going through my mind doesn't work. "Now that's a real shame when folks be throwin' away a perfectly good white boy like that."

Yeah... I know we just recently had a big fight about that here, but I'm up for another one if anybody else is!