Dustdevil

And I would strongly suggest not taking paramedic school until you have finished those other college classes. But I doubt you'll listen to that advice.

:shock: Not only is Vistaril IM ONLY, it is IM by a very specific technique only! Not many times in my career that I have found myself refusing a physicians order, but IV Vistaril would be one of those cases.

The one that made me slow down most was the one that said: :shock:

The main difference is that, at no time should you tell the pilot to stop while you start an IV. :wink: I have never identified myself to the flight crew as a medic. If they were to make an announcement asking for medical assistance, I would go. But I am with Akroeze... I never really thought about identifying myself ahead of time. Sounds sort of cheesey to me. But hey, if flight crews want us to do that, I don't mind. I obviously fly a LOT, so I would like to know how crews feel about this. But I am betting they get tired of all the volunteer EMTs with their FD t-shirts, track-suit wearing wives, and feral kids coming up and trying to impress them with the badge they bought from Gall's. So, who was the dude in the civilian clothes, SO?

Uhhh... and I suppose I shouldn't wear kevlar because anybody who would shoot at a nurse shouldn't have an AK-47 in the first place, right? :?

LOL! You couldn't pay me enough for that one! :shock:

Hmmm... I thought Canadia was doing the BCG vaccine thing. No? If you haven't had the vaccine, and you can get it, I highly recommend it. Although, even with it, nobody wants to take your word for it and every farking employer still insists you get a PPD, which of course turns out positive and they freak. :roll:

I'd go with the one in Portuguese, personally.

As a primary crewmember, or as a third-man?

Yes, but this is a possibility in all patients. If you're going to try and BS people, at least go back and cover your tracks first. :roll:

Godwin doesn't make the laws on the Internet. So until Al Gore says it's over, let the debate continue!

I'll see your 5 and raise you another 5. :thumbright:

And I'll never figure out where these people get this idea in the first place. Okay, I understand the FD part, but it is a total fallacy for all the rest of them. RN instructors HATE EMTs! PA and MD schools don't give a crap. They aren't any more impressed with it than a summer volunteering at a nursing home. And it does not help you in any way. All it does is take up valuable time that you could have utilised achieving REAL stepping stones, like college courses that count towards something. People who say that are liars. They're lying to themselves. They're not using EMS as a stepping stone. They're using EMS as an excuse to fail ever going to nursing or medical school. They know they'll never make it, but this way they'll just spend the rest of their lives telling people "I could have gone to med school, but I decided I loved being an ambulance driver instead." And there will be much laughter and eye rolling.

Dude, that is the least valid analogy I have heard here to date. :? We're not talking about poor countries. Who even cares about what poor countries think? There isn't a "poor" country on this continent. There may be a lot of poor people, but that is because their government is corrupt and mismanages their resources, not because the country is poor. And you should also notice that those countrie who actually have benevolent governments who take care of their people (Kuwait, UAE, Jordan) love us. Only those with repressed people hate us because that is what they have been brainwashed to believe. If you can make your people believe that it is the Infidels and their evil cultural imperialism that makes their lives miserable, you don't have to worry about them figuring out that YOU are the problem and overthrowing you. And yes, they still take every dime from us they can get. Even those countries that hate us try to extort money from us (North Korea, Iran), even though Iran is far from poor.

This is true. I re-took EMT-B with the Army last Autumn. It was a course for people who were ALREADY practising Army medics, not new enlistees. And, sure enough, there were quite a few boneheaded failures in NR. I heard they all did okay the second time around though. Yes, they probably would have done better had they added a little more time to the course. But really, I believe much of the failure was just as due to the ridiculously ambiguous nature of the NR exam itself. CLS are not medics. They are just line soldiers and marines who are given hardcore battle first aid training. It is not their job or their focus. It is not a backup. It is simply a military equivalent of "first responder" training they are given in order to be able to get lifesaving care to casualties as quickly as possible. Their ONLY focus is battle injuries. Nothing else. They are not even close to replacing a corpsman.

Definitely. A MagLite to the back of the head works wonders for correcting your driver's poor driving!

:?

You can't say **** here. It's in the rules. :wink:

There are tonnes of such places. In fact, the larger and better departments across the country don't give a rat's arse what your certification is, as the only thing that counts on your hiring process is Civil Service points. No matter what you've done in the past, they're going to send you to THEIR academy, and probably to THEIR EMT school too. Most people who are hired as firefighters in this country have zero prior training or experience. I dunno where this idea of training before hiring got started anyhow. It's not that common, in my experience, Floridia not withstanding.

Good luck in court with that one. I can assure you that your medical director is going to testify against you at both your assault trial and your decertification hearing.

Dignity is a lot to ask from a medic in America. For the most part, you are talking about people who don't even have any self-respect.

I want to know what YOU think it is, not what some anonymous wiki dork thinks it is. Unable to think or speak for yourself these days?

Plenty of those over the years. Almost always involves drugs or alcohol. Of course, right after cellfones became inexpensive enough for everybody to have one, the calls to 911 went up fifty-fold. Cellfones were still a fad, and people were looking for any excuse to make a call. Especially if it was a FREE call, like 911! So for several years, every guy laying on the shoulder trying to change a flat tire got called in by six different passers-by as an auto-ped. And, of course, if two cars were on the shoulder together, half a dozen people called that in as a major accident. There's a semi-conductor factory in my hometown right alongside the freeway. They have those orange glowing sodium (I think) parking lot lights that are very bright. And they have a huge evaporative cooling unit on the roof that billows vapour clouds into the cool morning air. Combine the two, and it looks like the building is on fire big time. EVERY MORNING at least three people call that building in as being on fire. FD doesn't even respond anymore. They stopped years ago. Now they just call the plant security and ask them to step outside and look, lol.

Code is the normal term for a cardiac arrest in the hospital or long term care setting almost universally in the US. Notice I say it is the term for a cardiac arrest, not for actually WORKING a cardiac arrest. So, a patient can "code" without actually receiving CPR or other care. "She coded" means she died or suffered full arrest. Now, again in the hospital setting, there are varying degrees of codes floating around. A "full code" means that this patient will be treated to the full gamut of ACLS and BLS care in an attempt to resuscitate. The other two types of "codes" I have encountered in the hospital are, of course, the "no code" which has (or family has) refused CPR for, and the "chemical code," where the family doesn't want you beating on the chest, intubating, shocking, or otherwise molesting their loved one, but do want you to try pharmaceutical interventions. "She's a full code" means that IF she arrests, she is to receive the full nine yards. Because of the frequency with which those two alternatives are utilised in in-patient care, nurses will very commonly specify the type of code they are referring to.

Interesting question. I am not personally convinced that the extra period of time to "say goodbye" is a positive thing. I have been in that position with loved ones in the past. Once it was a good thing. Another time it was not. And really, I'm not sure that it is really any easier to deal with the loss, given that extra little bit of time. If it helps somebody, then yes, it's a good thing. But is it worth risking lives for? I don't think so.