Dustdevil

I think we should hold in our judgements until al the evidence has been analised. Right now, that evidence is crusty at best. There could be clear explanations for her behaviour. Maybe she has a medical condition. People are known to do bizarre things during fecal motor seizures that they have no memory of. The cops should not become too relaxative with their investigation until they know for sure she wasn't set up. Does she have any enemas that might do this kind of thing to her? They need to check the log to see who else was in the building at the time. We need to know who all has been impacted.

Stick around here and you will learn more than you ever wanted to know about retards. I know I have. :? As to your original question, I agree that a demand valve is not at all what you are looking for. Plus five for some pretty serious and intelligent research. But, while your theories make a little sense on the surface, they don't really bear out. In the hands of a very experienced and very educated provider, a demand valve can be a useful tool for emergency ventilation. Personally, I love them. The risks involved seem to be grossly overstated because, frankly, they have to be or else too many idiots will misuse the devices. But I don't think they have any place in general field EMS these days. And they don't provide any of the benefits you say you are looking for. The list of more useful things to spend that kind of money on is long and distinguished.

That was a pretty bowled movement for her to make in broad daylight. You can't doo something like this and then just hang around. You have to scat. I still want to hear her side of the story though, just to see if it floats. She needs to clear this up fast, or she can flush her reputation down the drain.

:shock: They deleted the entire topic! That sucks! I didn't expect that one! I wish I had copied it now. So basically, some 18 year old female EMT student in Edmonton goes with her instructor and five other students on an event standby. At some point, insetead of being vigilant as he is being paid to do, the instructor holes up in the back of the ambulance with three students (at least 2 of them female, if not all three), and decides to impress his young charges with his cardiological prowess. So he whips out the Lifepak and proceeds to charge the paddles shock the cot pillow a few times, telling them it is necessary to keep the defibrillator working properly. Then he applies the paddles to one female student, scaring the hell out of her, then he applies them to the girl who posted the story. He tells her she is having PVCs and acts all concerned. He starts to run a 12 lead, but discovers he has no patches for the monitor. Anyhow, so she posts four strips he ran on her and none of them show PVCs. She posted the story with a title like, "ECG practice in real life" or something, and was excited by the whole experience, not realising how inappropriate it was. She wasn't slamming the guy, but everybody else was.

Of course I don't know anything about this guy, but I would tend to agree that this is probably the case. But even if this is the case, having no sexual intent does very little to lessen the severity of this incident. Immature and unprofessional judgement is dangerous for any medic, but especially so for an educator. Not to mention that his medical knowledge appears to be as lacking as his judgement. There were no ectopics in any of those strips, just a sinus tach caused by being scared by somebody coming at her with paddles. I doubt there ever were any PVCs, but if there were, they probably disappeared once she realised she wasn't going to get shocked after all. Although I could only find one topic during a quick search, I know we have had multiple discussions here about incidents of medics being killed by horseplay with defibrillators. Curiously enough, it seems like the victim is always female. WTF is that all about? But yeah, I tend to agree. Losing his job(s) is not enough for this guy. There is no place for this sort of mentality in the medical professions. If he cannot be trusted with the health and safety of healthy students, then he certainly cannot be entrusted with the health and safety of vulnerable patients. ACP needs to give him the sack. I know some of you have contacts with them. You'd be doing us all a favour to drop a dime on him.

This is becoming epidemic. :? Original post was 9 months ago folks, and she hasn't been back. I am betting she has moved on to a new hobby by now.

True. I suppose I was just being anal. We shouldn't be too quick to dump on him until we know his actual roll in this affair. I'm sure he's a very charmin guy.

Sweet. Good luck, and let us know how it goes! I truly hope your school better prepared you to practise than they did to find a test. :?

I normally don't cross-promote in-between websites, but there is a thread going on at another forum that I encourage y'all to take a look at. http://www.emsvillage.com/forums/messagevi...p;threadid=5279 WTF? Anybody know what school this is and who this guy might be? Not asking for names or anything, because obviously the original post may reflect something very different from the reality. But it'd be interesting to hear from somebody who knows this "instructor" that can give us some insight into his credibility and professionalism. I don't find this kind of thing hard to believe, because there are are a lot of total nimrods teaching medic school these days. But again, I'm not looking to tar and feather somebody on hearsay. Please read and discuss.

Something about this just stinks. This charge is going to look pretty shitty on her record. Maybe her attorney can get the hole thing wiped clean. Or at least stall it.

Because it's only been a week, so he hasn't had time to ask her? First rate detective he is, eh? :? Or perhaps that is one of those questions her attorney advised her against answering.

Good. That's my job.

It's like a new toy! I swear, you learn something new every day here!

[spoil:16ef8a35c6]Yeah, I know. I just wanted to see how long Khanek would actually spend looking for a regulation that doesn't exist. [/spoil:16ef8a35c6]

Exactly. Don't get all hung up on education, guys. It's all about the patch. [spoil:10bd292634]/sarcasm[/spoil:10bd292634]

Can you please give us an exact quote from OSHA regulations that states this? Chapter and verse, please.

Who have you asked? Your instructor? The NR office? The state office? Any one of the three could tell you in five minutes or less. I'm confused. This question gets asked so often that I am really starting to worry. Are that many schools really graduating people and not even telling them when, where, and how to test? :?

Hmmm... you must have a different system there than in the U.S. To get into medical school here, you have to have four years of prerequisite science courses. You don't start from scratch in medical school. Med school only takes you deeper and specialises in human applications of the bio and chem you already learned. Same thing with nursing, except that it is 2 years of prerequisites instead of four. Medic schools in the U.S. vary. The degree programmes all require a couple semesters of A&P, but many of them don't require microbiology or chemistry. And not all of them require the courses prior to beginning the medic classes, just before graduation. The non-degree tech school programmes very rarely require any sort of educational prerequisites, and they only give you a few hours of very basic A&P within the normal coursework. Certainly nothing even coming remotely close to a full A&P course. That's why U.S. medics can proudly tell you there are 206 bones in the body, but can usually name less than thirty of them, much less describe the functions of the cranial nerves or explain any kind of endocrine processes. But they all think they should be allowed more scope of practice and to practise as RNs without a bunch of extra book learnin'.

Cool. Flags don't make you podunk. Some really big cities wear them. And, like I said, I love and respect the flag probably a lot more than most people. It has just been my perception that it's usually small towns that wear them, so they give off that image to me, but not everybody. The important thing is that everybody actually be UNIFORM, and have the same thing in the same place on the exact same shirt. Too many small departments just say "white shirt," and then 20 different people are wearing 20 different styles of white shirts with different patch arrangements on them. Nothing says "podunk" more than that. Well, then there are those who wear the uniform shirt with the faded Wranglers with the Skoal can outline on the arse, and the ornate western belt with the gaudy buckle bigger than the wearer's brain. That's pretty podunk too. Whatever you do, don't let people wear the flag AND another patch on the same shoulder. Two patches on one sleeve is so tacky. And try to pick a shirt style that doesn't have the sewn-on badge tab. It looks so off-the-rack to have those holes on your shirt when you aren't wearing a badge (please tell me you aren't going to wear badges). Anyhow, sounds like you may be in a good position to start laying the groundwork for moving professional. I'm glad you have the city's support on that, because that is the hardest obstacle to breach! Uniforms are a good step. Just be careful to make them look very, very different from what your PD and FD are already wearing. If you want individual attention and consideration, you don't want the city looking at you like you're just a part of them. Otherwise, you're going to end up being thrown in with the FD, leaving some of you who worked so hard for it out of a job opportunity. Good luck!

Well, if you don't understand the human body, you have no hope of understanding disease processes. And if you don't understand disease processees, you have no hope of diagnosing them or determining an intelligent treatment plan for them. So pretty much, it helps you to be a decent medic. Again, if a school doesn't require it, it probably sucks.

And your failure to stick with a single story is equally amazing. First you're a hospital pharm tech. Next, you are "working" for a "department." Then you're back to working in a hospital. Is it any wonder I am having trouble keeping up? Maybe it's just the lingo. Are you calling the pharmacy a "department" of the hospital? Or are you saying that you "work" for an EMS agency type department? Well, that is not what you originally said. And I'm probably not the only person here who has no idea wtf you are talking about with all this "contracted" and "non-contracted" stuff. Yes, but it has nothing to do with the question you are dodging. You're still not making any sense. You don't want to go to the college because the college sucks. But the same college teaches this "shock trauma" course and it doesn't suck? If that is the only difference between the two, then I agree with you. But that is not what you said. You said the college sucks. I'm not trying to debate what you are saying. I'm just trying to understand what you are saying. You may well have a very valid point, but I can't understand what your point is, as it seems to be changing by the post. Ooooh, Mr. Tough guy! Listen, Bro. You asked for input here, and that's what you're getting. You're having trouble making yourself clear, and that is the main problem. It appears that another problem may be that you don't wanna hear anything you disagree with. But again, I can't understand enough of what you are saying to determine that. The only person I am trying to make look better here is YOU. We're just offering advice based on the stupid mistakes we have all made and the things we've learned by living this profession for longer than your cherry arse has been alive. You'd be wise to accept such things in the spirit in which they are intended. If not, like I said, I ain't losing sleep over it. It's your life. Good luck with it.

All excellent advice, Ed. I wasn't knocking your advice. I just think it is important to view those statistics in a context. Remember, most people in EMS have never taken a statistics course, and therefore have no realistic idea of what to do with them or how to interpret them. If a school has a very low pass rate, that is a bad sign and one should look very critically and sceptically at that school. However, if a school has a very good pass rate, it is not necessarily a good sign. A school can be crap and still have a great pass rate. Basically, there are three main ways that a student passes the ACP or NREMT exam. First, he receives superior quality education and truly understands the material. Second, he receives enough test-specific training and coaching that he is able to figure out the test questions. And finally, third, he's just such an uber smart dude and good student that he passes anything, no matter how crappy the school. Now, only one of those three scenarios is a positive reflection on the school, yet that accounts for probably only a third of their passing students. If a school has a very high pass rate, and a very low dropout rate, that is a good thing. That means they are probably excellent educators who can take just about anybody and turn them into a good medic. But if a school maintains their high pass rate simply by washing out all but the smartest people before exam time, then it doesn't really say anything about their quailty of instruction. And it probably means that if you aren't one of the uber smart kids (what were your science and math grades like in high school?), then you might not do well at this school. They may be taking the easy way out by not really focusing on sound educational techniques and just teaching the test to smart kids who test well. That means no personal attention when you start having trouble with a certain section of the curriculum. Then you flunk out before you ever get to ACP, just so the school can claim a high pass rate. Those that actually graduated were the cream of the crop, so it's no wonder they passed ACP first try. Remember, statistics are deceiving. Definitely don't go with an established school with poor pass rates. That is a given. But if you have a choice of several schools with decent pass rates, do not let the higher pass rate be your determining factor. It is terribly misleading.

Which is, as you put it, a joke. What exactly does this hospital hire somebody who isn't even an EMT to do anyhow? So again you dodge yet another question. If you have not taken any classes from this college, what leads you to believe it is a joke? And with zero EMS education behind you, how would you even know if it was a joke? Dude, whoever told you that "shock trauma" was a good idea is the real joker here. But hey, go be a loser. It'll help you blend in with the rest.

The military is about the only organisation that observes the thing about reversing the flag to keep the blue field forward. The Army has gone to reversed flag patches (stars on the right instead of the left) because they wear them on the right shoulder. The Air Force and Navy wear the flag on the left shoulder, so they can use standard flag patches. The Marines don't wear a flag at all. In the civilian world, I've never seen a reverse flag worn. The Boy Scouts wear a flag on the right shoulder, but it is a standard flag. Every police or fire department I have ever seen wearing the flag wore a standard flag on the right shoulder too. I think it looks better than the reversed, and raises fewer questions from people wanting to know why your flag is backwards. I'm a pretty patriotic guy, but I've always seen a flag on a civilian uniform as giving you a really small-town, podunkish look. Seems like it is mostly tiny rural fire departments and cops that wear them. Most professional EMS organisations don't have a place for the flag, since the agency patch and the certification patch together take up both shoulders. If you want to be really podunk, you can put the flag patch above a breast pocket.

That's cool, Bro. Your philosophy and advice are good. I like your style and admire your outlook. This is probably a great asset to your students. I just wasn't sure where you were coming from on the EMD thing, as I am so used to the mindless idolatry of EMD that has taken root over the last two decades without any real supporting evidence. This is just definitely one of those things we have to seriously re-think. Thanks for the intelligent discussion.