Dustdevil

Fick off! :wink:

Huh? :shock: What link?

My idea is for the EOC to stay in their own lane and mind their own business. They have no authority to issue any such restrictions. The news media is well within their rights to put their own safety at risk to do their jobs, just like we do. Screwing with the media is just one of those things that public safety does when the don't know wtf they are doing about the real problem. Warn them of the risks. If they proceed, that is their business. You have done your job and they are doing theirs.

There's another one!!!

When you get to that second year of college, they teach you about oxymorons. :wink: Anyhow, as expected, it sounds like you are going to totally disregard the advice you asked for. :? Good luck anyhow!

Good advice. Unfortunately, too many in EMS are too young to remember that motto. Consequently, nowadays they are too busy trying to be "an Army of one." :roll:

Apparently they didn't get that memo in Alberta. Must have been lost with the TPS reports.

Meh... I'm afraid at age 20 he is screwed. Hard enough to get employment under age 21 as it is, much less with a DUI. Chances are, any reputable agency will not employ him before age 25 at the earliest. Their insurance company won't let them. I haven't grown up in the last thirty years, so most people would not have any confidence that he has grown up in the last three. That's just unrealistic. If he doesn't mind being a minimum wage non-emergency transfer ambulance attendant for a living, then he'll probably find a job. But no, he's not going to get a real EMS job for years to come. In fact, I wouldn't want to work for any agency that would hire him, and he shouldn't either. If he is really serious about the career, tell him to spend the next four years becoming a degreed paramedic (if they let him in the class). When he finishes, he'll be pushing 25 and have the DUI 7 years behind him. Then he can step right into the career with a lot more education and maturity than most and prove himself. If that doesn't interest him, then he isn't serious about the career anyhow, so screw him. But, if he's really lucky, within the next year he'll discover something much more viable as a career and move on.

This seems like a no-brainer to me. Keep the fone job and start paramedic school ASAP. Mom's happy. You're pursuing your pipe dream. Life is good! When you finish medic school two years from now, you'll have some real education, a college diploma, and you'll be in a position to get a real EMS or fire job, and you [hopefully] won't be in debt.

I certainly agree that a national standard of education and validation is sorely needed, just as it exists in every other medical profession. Until that happens, we are not a medical profession, just a vocation. That said, I still vehemently disagree with you regarding the need or even the advisability of national "protocols." Again, what other medical profession functions like that? Answer: none. The focus should be on producing intelligent and competent professional practitioners, not robots. So long as protocols are the central focus of your practice, you are not a professional. Primarily, it is their NGO status and their voluntary participation. Not to mention that, in order to maintain any participation from the states, they have to cater to the lowest common denominator of EMS, which makes their standards a joke that cannot be taken seriously by those who strive to actually attain professional status for EMS. Consequently, NREMT cannot do anything significant to elevate the profession to the next level. If they were to raise standards, states would simply start opting out of their system. They are not about to let that happen. They are not in a leadership position. They are simply providing a support service to the masses. The solution is crystal clear. Education. But the NR, the firemonkeys, the volunteers, and the politicians refuse to let that happen. Again, the path is as plain as the noses on our faces. The problem is that a much too large percentage of providers in EMS do not want change. They have found a job they can get with nothing more than 120 hours of part-time night school that allows them to wear a spiffy uniform, drive fast with lights and sirens, and get half price at Dairy Queen. You think it will be easy to convince them to give that up? Where will they work then? And what about all the firemonkeys who would be out of work if EMS were no longer a fire service function? FDs would be laying off and slowing down hiring wholesale if that happened. And you can bet that if they were required to send their people for a college degree in order to employ them as paramedics, the fire service would bail on EMS overnight. This is simple politics. Everybody wants their slice of the pie with absolutely no regard for the big picture. EDIT: Ruff hit this one right on the head! :thumbright: There is only one thing more maddening than being unable to solve a problem. That is being able to solve it, but not being allowed to. Being on my eighth month in Iraq, I can tell you that most of the insurgents and terrorists fighting here are fighting for much less justification than we have to improve our profession. And I am rapidly coming to believe that the obstructionists in EMS should meet the same demise as those terrorists.

If you think I was bashing medics or Canadian EMS, then you totally misread my last post. :? I'll let somebody else explain it, if need be, but suffice it to say I was very definitely not bashing medics or Canadian EMS. Far from it.

I do not favour age requirements. They are not qualitative or objective criteria that offer me any significant insight into the candidate's ability to excel. I find them worthless, much like the belief that practice as a basic makes you more likely to be a good medic student. That said, I do believe that a foundation of college coursework should be completed BEFORE acceptance into a paramedic programme, including the basic sciences, English and communications, psychology, sociology, mathematics, etc... If you are Doogie Houser and can knock all that out by age 16, then more power to you. That's still going to put you at age 18 before you actually finish medic school. And, regardless of your competence as a medic, we all know that for simple auto insurance reasons, many under 21 medics have a very hard time finding decent employment. Medically, I don't mind working with a young medic, even a teenager. But I do refuse to let them drive for me.

Well, here we have more proof that global warming is a load of crap. Obviously there is some record breaking brain-freeze going on in Canada lately. This is the first time I ever recall hearing one of them, much less two of them, extolling the virtues of cookbook medicine. WTF? :?

Yes, I did. Although, there must be a better way to state that. It runs a mile lengthwise, from west to east. It is a quarter mile at the absolute widest point, north to south. So the north-south measurement wouldn't really be the width, since it is measured up and down instead of laterally, right? Length can be measured in any direction, but width is strictly a lateral measurement, is it not? Any mathmagicians here?

That is the only thing I have seen you say so far that I disagreed with. Hopefully, I just misunderstood you. Welcome aboard! I hope you stay long enough for me to steal you away from PRPG. :twisted:

I agree with your premise, but not with your conclusion. There are plenty of things that would be quite useful for the EMT-B to have in such a notebook. As already mentioned, pedi vital signs are elusive under stress. Lots of anatomical and physiological factoids are also good to have on hand. I don't care to remember how many years I practised without yet being able to remember which abdominal organs were where. Lists of common prescription meds and their uses are invaluable in the field. MCI triage protocols are so rarely used that it is nice to be able to quickly review them on the way to a known multiple victim incident. Glasgow Coma Scale. Stroke Scale. Trauma Scale. Pupillary diagnostics. Burn charts. That's just off the top of my head. Even just a basic should -- even an experienced one -- can benefit from access to this info on the fly. I'm sorry that I don't have any experience with any of the BLS field guides to be able to offer you any advice from personal knowledge. However, I do agree that you may be better off getting an ALS field guide instead, as the ones I have seen seem to have most of the info I mentioned above, and will allow you to reference higher for your own info. Good luck!

OOoooooh! Cat fight!! :boxing: I think I'm in love! :thumbleft:

Exactly what I was thinking! Usually, you only see this sort of high level intoxication at EMS parties. :?

Haha! Ever see the Chuck Norris movie, Lone Wolf McQuade? The siren sound they used for his Ramcharger was actually just the sound of a whelen strobe power pack discharging and recharging over and over. So, in that case, you really could hear the strobes! On a similar note, I found a brand new siren and speaker for my Tahoe at the motor pool the other day. Yeah, the camp is only one mile wide by a quarter mile high, but I'm sure I can find some use for it. Maybe park outside the female showers and yell "INCOMING! INCOMING!" over the PA and watch the parade. :twisted:

You guys haven't been going to the right parties! This is all the rage on the sophisticated party scene. All the good parties feature a "recovery room" where some idiot claiming to be a nurse or medic is administering saline and B12 to everybody who doesn't want a hangover or wants to sober up to drive home. Yeah... re. tard. is a good description. :roll:

An oft overlooked facet of the nursing shortage is the gender demographics of the profession. Especially in the 80's. Think about it. What two professions in the US are in complete chaos? Yes... teaching and nursing. Now, what two professions in the US are overwhelmingly female? Yep, teaching and nursing. There ya go. It is getting better in both fields as men begin to join in larger numbers. But in any profession that is dominated by a female workforce, you are going to have chronic staffing problems. Conversely, more and more females are joining EMS. This will help us to create a shortage in the future, so yes... if we can just jack up the education to a minimum of two years entry level, we will have a wicked shortage for a few years. But it will not remain chronic as in nursing. In fact, it will stabilise within a decade and create an overabundance within a decade like in Canadia. Problem with raising the education level is that it attracts more and better candidates. And you know how we see all these clueless n00bs now going to EMT school without spending a single minute checking out their career potential first? Well, that will continue to happen when an associates degree becomes the entry level. Possibly even more, because a lot of young idiots have listened to that tired old mantra about college being their key to success that many of them assume that a degree in any field guarantees them a wide open job market. Thus, instant glut.

Plus 5 for the most awesome first post I have ever seen here. =D> The only thing I can add to what has been said is that the above advice about going to school is excellent on more levels than you think. Not only does it look exceptionally good for you to be continuing your education (as opposed to sitting back and thinking your patch actually means something, like most new grads), it allows you to network with other professionals, giving you insight into other job opportunities. People like to hire those they meet in school. And they already have insight into your character and professionalism from knowing you there. Good luck! I been fired from a couple myself, and I am still working thirty years later. Don't sweat it.

You're not being redundant so much as you are being unclear. National Registry for which level? That makes all the difference in the answer. If it's EMT-B, then well over ninety-percent of the questions are simple ABC questions. It may be disguised as a trauma question or a diabetic question or something else, but when it comes right down to it, the question is asking you to cover the ABCs, in that order. Think ABC on each and every question, no matter what the scenario, and you will do well. How to study for ABCs? There is no studying for that. If you don't know it by now, it's too late. Good luck!

Shira, don't be absurd. You know why they pay people to mow the courthouse lawn? Empty the courthouse trash cans? Change the oil in the police cars? Pave the roads? Answer the phones at city hall? Because nobody volunteers, that's why. Are you seeing a pattern here yet? Do you think the city attorney works for free at those towns with volunteer EMS services? I think not. Neither does the city secretary or the people who built city hall. Does your community have any volunteers running the water department? Interesting, but somehow they always manage to find money for trash collectors when nobody volunteers to pick it up for free on their off hours from their real job. And you don't think they can afford professional EMS? If you really can't figure that one out, then it's probably a good thing you don't want to go to medic school. You're hurting the profession enough as it already is.

I would add to that, a lot of people trained only as paraemedics are working in remote medical positions, practicing clinical medicine these days. Offshore, oilfield, and industrial medics are expected to do all of the above things and much more, since it is a totally different ballpark from EMS, where your clinic is the final destination. Interestingly enough, most medics believe they are eminently qualified for such work. Until they start. Then there is a rude awakening to the fact that even paramedic school is nothing more than advanced first aid. Yet paramedics are increasingly tasked with providing comprehensive, remote clinical medical care. So yes, I use all of the above techniques in my practice. And yes, there is a need to educate paramedics to that standard, whether that is their ultimate plan for practice or not. After all, even psychiatrists have to learn to deliver babies.