Dustdevil

So cost is your primary concern over quality of education? You seriously can't afford a community college education? :? And are you actually "working" for this department, or is it a little volunteer hobby thing?

Of course, then you have to be careful to assure that your state statutes actually deem EMS to be "health-care providers." Some do not include EMTs and medics in that definition. If not, you're screwed.

Scrat did a great job of touching on most of the points that are relevant to this case, but here is one more piece of rotting wood to throw on the fire. Police dispatchers making care and transportation decisions from behind a desk? WTF?? Yeah... NJ is rotten to the core. And not just EMS. This is truly farked. :? The really sad thing is that it appears that a great many providers in NJ don't even realised how farked their system is. They just accept that whatever is, is, always has been, and always will be, so it must be good. The only people NJ is good for is wankers, because the system is structured to assure enough "tiers" that anybody who wants a piece of the EMS action can easily do so with hardly little or no educational or training commitment whatsoever. Significantly more farked than Kalifornia. And that is saying something.

Luckily for you, you don't even have to discuss the volunteer aspect to find so many things wrong with this scenario. When somebody proposed having a separate forum for each state here at EMT City, I was opposed. But I am seriously starting to think that Jersey needs its own forum. :?

Welcome back, Cotjockey. Long time, no see. I hate to hit you over the head with a nasty reality -- and no offence intended -- but you are your own worst enemy. Do you know why your community doesn't recognise your value? Because you have none. They get you for free. It's simple human nature; people don't appreciate that which they didn't have to earn or provide themselves. Why would they value anything which they have always gotten for free, and which there is always a line of people willing to do without pay? I guarantee you that the moment they no longer had hobbyists signing up to play "the game" for free, they would recognise the value, and there would be professional EMS in place pretty quickly. Don't flatter yourself by thinking volunteers are irreplaceable and that professional EMS cannot be afforded. It's a crock. But, thanks to you and your friends, they have no reason to even see what EMS is all about, much less put a value on it. There are a lot of people in this country who put their heart, soul, blood, sweat, and tears into making this a profession. I am really disappointed that you would not only call it a game, but treat it like one too. Someday, when people grow up and stop playing games with EMS, the profession can progress. Until then, people like you are the reason we continue to have no value.

Forget "Shock Trauma." Your next step should be education, not another merit badge that gets you nowhere. Get in college and start taking your support classes for a paramedic degree. Get Anatomy & Physiology 1 & 2, Microbiology, Psychology, Algebra, your English Composition and whatever courses are required by your local paramedic school so you can be ready to get into paramedic classes ASAP. This "shock trauma" nonsense will just slow you down and not give you any real benefits, career wise. Good luck!

Was she hott?

Okay, apparently this made both us and the cops look stupid. :? Most anyplace I am aware of (allowing for regional differences), we are unable to accept a refusal from somebody who is impaired AND authorised to treat/transport somebody who has made a suicidal gesture. The cop also has the authority to effect this. I don't know if these guys froze up in front of the cameras or what, but I would have to say they were wrong on all counts. The old "until they lose consciousness" rule does not apply to suicidals. As for whether or not more prompt treatment would have helped, that depends upon how long before they arrived she took them in the first place. It might have been long enough that significant absorption had already taken place. Probably not, though. And lavage could have prevented a large amount of the absorption, reducing the severity of the effects.

Brady is the best, by far. But you really won't get a lot out of it without a course leading you through it, or some sort of organised study programme. If you do the workbook along with it, then -- if you have the discipline and aptitude -- you can learn a good bit from it. I don't think I would recommend this kind of self study. It's a pretty individual thing that may or may not work for you. But if you do it, definitely use the workbook as your guide. You're not going to get anything useable from just randomly reading from the textbook. AAOS is like pre-paramedic, lol. It would be good for what you are talking about. It's like taking dummy math when you're not quite ready for Algebra. It will give you some very, very basic concepts that will be simple to understand and helpful to you, but even full understanding of it doesn't put you on par with a seriously educated medic. Taking paramedic from AAOS is like earning a green belt in Karate. It'll give you just enough knowledge and confidence to think you know what you're doing and subsequently get your arse kicked. Altogether, I'd have to agree with AZCEP, as usual. A better knowledge of human anatomy and physiology will serve you so much better than an hodge-podge of medic knowledge with no foundation of understanding. And really, how long have you been practising EMS? Are you really convinced that you know enough about your current level to start spending time worrying about somebody else's job? If so, you're probably fooling yourself.

Where were the cops? :? Why weren't they dispatched, why did EMS make the scene without them, and why weren't they called immediately after sizing up the scene? This is why it's stupid for EMS to ask for more media attention. It always just ends up making us looks retarded.

And in my dictionary, it is "criticising." I don't speak American. I speak English. But I withdraw my criticism. You didn't really misspell anything. You just flat out used the wrong word. Not sure which is worse. And some FDs use none of those. I never heard of them. Must be a northern American thing like snow and transit stations. While you're on a roll, perhaps you can tell us what "priority three" means?

Good! Maybe that will encourage losers from Texas to move there! :twisted: Just don't tell them the truth, that $7 dollars an hour is the tax rate in Kalifornia. But yeah, Spenac is right. Seven bucks an hour isn't a salary. It's a stipend.

I missed that. I gave up after viewing the main page, the EMT page, and the Paramedic page and not seeing any employees pictured, just a bunch of ambulances. It's definitely a cheesy website. Microsoft Front Page is so ninties. :roll: I give them credit for the entrepeneurial spirit though. Mom and pop operation that progresses pretty quickly. I'd like to see more of that going on in this country, and not just the continuing growth of AMR and Rural Metro eating up all of the privates.

You seem to be jumping to a conclusion about exactly who JP is criticising. And you also seem to be misspelling the word "their." What is an "MFF/R"?

Aim High Be All You Can Be If you have the guts.

Good advice, Murph. Long time, no see. Welcome back!

Ditto on all of the above advice. In addition to taking the paid job, I would quit the volly thing altogether. It is more likely to hurt your development than to help it. And it is definitely hurting the profession. You have to decide if this is going to be your profession or your hobby. If you try to make it both, it will stunt your professional growth and burn you out. EMS is a job, not a lifestyle. Work your hours, then go home and be normal. Five years from now, you will hopefully be a medic and still questioning whether or not you are ready each day you put on the uniform. I still do after thirty-four years. The only thing that changes is how often you sweat. Best of luck!

Zip, are you sure you're from England? Because you're having some pretty serious problems understanding some pretty basic English. Not only was Rid not talking about temporals, he went out of his way to make that point clear. :roll:

That's easy. Go to the one that is accredited! Ooops... that's right. NONE of the medic schools in Mass are accredited. Congrats, JC! You're past the hard part now. Too bad you want to waste it all as a firemonkey. :wink:

Child molesting = good. Diabetes = bad. I hate Kalifornia. :roll:

:oops: You mentioned theories twice in there, and when I went back to quote, I just grabbed the wrong one. And, although I didn't properly address it, your second "theory" was even better than the first.

And until such time as somebody does do that, I think we are prudent to go with the current body of knowledge, as well as the empirical evidence, which shows us that when we give NTG, their pain decreases, strongly suggesting that it is helping perfusion more than it could be hurting it. Of course, this is mildy reminiscent of the MAST controversy, where we assumed that, because the manometer was going up, we were helping the patient, which turned out to be a mistake. While this is not wholly analagous to the NTG scenario, it does illustrate the caution that must be exercised when putting your faith in empirical evidence.

Exactly! Hell, I didn't even deduct points for posting this in the wrong forum. What more do you want from me? :?

Dude, AZCEP was the one who royally pwn3d your arse, not ERDoc. Yet. All ERDoc did was ask you a question, which you obviously lack the ability to answer.

I wasn't misquoting you. In fact, I wasn't quoting you at all. I was paraphrasing what you were trying to say, which was blatantly incorrect. Better for me to point it out to you than to try and take that story to a lawyer or the media and get publicly reamed. Not like anybody here knows who you are. Wrong again. I wasn't talking about the quality of volunteers. I was referring to the concept of volunteer EMS in general. Had you kept up with the numerous discussions on this matter, you would know exactly where I and most of the seasoned professionals here stand on the matter. Yes, there are some great medics who are volunteers, and there are some shite medics who are paid. The shite paid medics hurt the profession. But ALL volunteer medics hurt the profession, no matter their competency. It's not about individual medics. It is about EMS overall. Wrong again. Even you admitted earlier that my first post in this thread was constructive. And it certainly didn't display any sort of attitude. In fact, it was quite neutral in tone and strictly factual. You liked that. But now that I am saying some things you don't want to hear or admit, you want to close your eyes. Listen bro, several posts back, Akflightmedic said he didn't like old, fat partners with bad knees and bad backs. That describes me to a tee! Did you see me take it personal, get all bent out of shape, and start whining over that? No. Facts is facts, whether we like them or not. If you're going to get your feelings hurt over semantics and turn your head from the message because you don't like the messenger, you're not long for this field anyhow. Buck up, bro. We're on your side here, or we wouldn't even be entertaining your questions.