yakc130

Wow. Almost a whole year, and nothing. Is anyone even around?

I got my fire card in June of 1989, and my EMT-A in June of 1990. I got my medic card in June of 1996. I did 911 in various places until 2016, and then had to switch to the privates because I couldn't find a 911 position anymore. I was too old for the FD's, or the privates that did 911 paid squat. I'll turn 60 in June. My back has finally decided that it only has a certain number of lifts into the back of the squad left. Unfortunately, I don't know what that number is. I've heard people talk about something along the lines of not letting their job identify who or what they are. But what about us? What else is there to do? Teach? Easy, but the schools are already overflowing with instructors. Work in an ER? I just got my social security statement. I have to work until I turn 67 to receive my maximum benefits. What do you do to keep the money flowing in to pay your bills these days? Am I really something more that a medic? Discuss.

The private that I work for is switching programs again. This time we are switching to "Okta" and "Traumasoft." Anyone use these? What are they like? Any info greatly appreciated.

Sorry. For some reason, I wasn't getting any notifications. Thanks. Taken care of. 👍

Damn. That really sucks. What is preventing your bicep from fully recovering? The extent of the injury? Age? Is it limiting you from doing stuff off duty for everyday normal life? I can't even imagine what I would do.

😆

I know that this is a long-shot with the volume of traffic on here anymore, but what the hell, I'll ask. Does anyone know of a source for obtaining the ring that goes around diaphragm bell of the Classic II? I don't need an entire kit. I just need to replace the ring. Thanks.

Interesting. I have registry, and I did not receive an email notifying me of any of this.

Here's my jumbled thoughts. The private that I'm at now is contracted to a "World Famous Clinic." 🙄 I think that we're doing about 100-175 transfers every 24 hours for them. I'm getting 1 covid pt every shift or so. All of them have been vaccinated. A year ago, I found out that I had it. As of the beginning of last month, I still tested positive for antibodies. My employer had a mandate in place that was effective 1 Dec stating that all employees had to be vaccinated. Even if you had antibodies, you were required to have a minimum of one shot. They had exemptions, but the last that I had heard, almost none of them were accepted. Due to the injunction that was signed, I went to work on the first. For how long, I don't know. Now, the technology they are using to make these vaccines is new. There's been a lot of stuff published about what it does/doesn't do to your body. From my understanding, a true vaccine will prevent you from getting something (polio). These are more like the flu shot. They make a guesstimate of the variant, and try to match it with a shot. You still can get it, but the symptoms "won't be as bad." Most vaccines took years of experimentation to perfect. These were done in less than a year. Depending on who's statistics you read, the numbers of infected/hospitalized/dead/dying/etc vary. Around me, they love to report on the number of new "cases." Well, if I were to go to a couple places and get tested in the same county, theoretically, each of those positive tests would count as a new case. How many are actually dying of covid versus comorbidities? Remember the reports of people being listed as a covid death even if they had a stroke or MI just because they tested positive? When the prior administration was in office, the shot was a bad thing. Now, with the new administration, the shot is becoming a mandatory thing. Vax cards were never going to be required. Masking and shut-downs were going to be a short-term thing. Here we are now, and just look. Austria and Germany have announced plans for mandatory vaccination of ALL people. Unvaccinated people will not be allowed to go anywhere outside of their homes except for work, grocery shopping, and the doctor. Police will have authority to randomly stop people and check them for their vaccination status. Australia was even worse, preventing people from leaving their houses, and crossing counties. (Unless you were a soccer team.) The people started rioting. Politics has become so intertwined with all of this that I cannot even go there without using lots of swearing. Fauci, the Wuhan lab, natural immunity , one mask/two masks, 6-foot distancing, Ivermectin, vitamin D, etc., etc., etc. I'm just so sick and tired of it all. It seems like stuff that was tin-foil hat theories six months ago is coming true now. What the hell is going on? I have natural immunity for now, but apparently, that doesn't matter. I'm a bad person because I don't want to get this new, still experimental shot injected into my body yet. I'm a paria and an outcast. Big pharma seems to be the only ones getting rich off of all of this. I want to wait for a while longer before I get jabbed. I want more evidence of how effective and what the side effects of these shots are. Then I will decide on what to put into my body. After all, wasn't that a big thing in the 60's and 70's? "My body. My choice." ?? Sorry. Rant off.

Damn shame about Mobey. I guess that we're all getting up there. Glad to hear that you're healing, Ruff. What happened to the patient that assaulted you? Any charges pending? Years ago, I had a fancy Lincoln up on the sidewalk against a telephone pole. Guy in a suit behind the wheel looked like a hypoglycemic pt. Crouched down next to the door, and asked how he was doing. Next thing I know, I'm on my ass and my jaw hurts. Dude has the car started, motor revved up, and is trying to shift into reverse, but his foot is still on the brake pedal. My partner is walking behind the car, so I reached in trying to shift it to park, or turn the keys off. Guy grabs my arm, and just chomped down on it like an ear of corn. My partner hears me yelling, sees me get loose, and the guy proceed to start laying into me. He comes over and literally falls on the guy shoving him into the seat (He was about 350 lbs back then.) We finally get him out of the car onto the ground as the cavalry arrives to back us up after our distress call went out. Turns out that the guy had been high on coke and crack. He had been driving from one side of town to the other before he passed out and glided onto the sidewalk into the pole. He developed Rhabdo and was in the ICU for a while after our adventure. I filed a report with PD. He was charged, and I went after him in a civil suit. His attorney was real smarmy about the whole thing right up until they said that I had no permanent damage from the incident, and I showed them the scar on my arm. They agreed to damages real quick after that. Not every pt is innocent.

Reviving this. What have employers been telling you? I just got an email today that I have until the end of November to get vaccinated. If I don't, I get placed on 6 weeks leave. If I still don't, it will be considered a voluntary quit. They gave us until 1 November to provide a religious exemption. It seems as if free will and privacy are dead in this country.

This company appears to have the contract. They provided a link to the company website. Looks like a decent sized company that does government contract work as a specialty. The open position was to start 20 May in Denver. I received an email prior to the start date, and another one after the start date. I can't believe that they couldn't fill the position.

So I got another email from a visiting nurse type organization offering the same set-up. They quoted a salary, but they don't say how long the contracted trip is for. It's very tempting.

Agree. My employer requires the usual FEMA NIMS certs, plus a hazmat cert to be able to deploy and do vaccinations. I don't understand how a private company can skirt the Federal requirements. Fortunately, I have gone ahead and said, "thanks, but no thanks for now" to them.

I received an email recently directly from a private company to do FEMA covid vaccinations. Supposedly they will offer me jobs within 50 miles of where I live. But there are some odd requirements. They only want copies of all of my certs and my DL. No actual job application. I did finally find out that once they accept you, they notify you of a position by text. You have two hours to respond and accept it. After doing that, you have 12 hours to complete a slew of online requirements like FEMA paperwork, classes, I-9 form, and finally their application form to work for them. The company that I received the email from is a physical therapy company. Just seems kind of odd, and sketchy. Can anyone chime in with any experiences that they may have had? Thanks.

My gripe is is about all of the inconsistent stupidity going on. It seems like the rules don't just change from day to day, they change by the hours or minutes within the same healthcare system! I'm doing transfers for an"internationally known" system. One hospital doesn't check us. Another takes our temperature. A third takes our temperature, puts a wristband on denoting that we don't have a fever, and are allowed in the facility. And then, they make us foam in, because now "it's all being recorded." All require masks. At least that's consistent. If anything, it's not the virus that would make me quit. It would be all of the inconsistent stupidity being required and chimp-screamed by so called medical professionals.

We're now wearing eyepro and surgical masks for all calls. If we do any airway stuff above an NC, it's gowns and N-95's. All pts get a surgical mask. Since I'm running out of a hospital, we're supposed to be wearing a surgical mask whenever we're inside the building. Apparently, N-95's are reusable if it was not exposed to any liquids. Not sure how to tell that. I'm feeling lucky right now. We've gone a couple of days, and the rules haven't changed on us.🙂

If you get into this line of work without understanding what you can get exposed to, you should get another line of work. I've probably been exposed to so much sh*t that my pts never told me about over the last 30+ years that it would make me have nightmares.

I've gotten an ad looking for staff to work there FT temporary. The rate was quite eye opening. Also got one looking for people to work in Detroit.

I still drop by every now and then. Unfortunately, it's more then than now. Life is just too crazy to keep up with so much going on. ☹️

And now we're getting spammed. 😡

I've been in for thirty years and don't have a degree. I started out as a jolly voli FF who went on to get his EMT-A and then finally his P-card. When I was working overseas, I met a lot (more than a dozen) people who went to overseas schools and obtained their paramedic "degree" who could quote ad nauseum from their P books, but when it came to actually doing hands on in the field, they couldn't do sh*t. There were even some who didn't even know how to change the regulator on a D tank. Some of these guys went to Aussie universities. Some came here. I even had one "degreed" medic asking me how to operate an EZ-IO in the middle of a code. This was after I had already asked him previously if he had any questions about anything. Granted, these were foreign medics, and not US medics. But they left a very bad taste in my mouth for anyone who feels that a degree makes them better than me and my education through the School of the Street. I'm sure that, just like anything else nowadays, a requirement will come out making a degree a requirement. It will somehow translate into a good thing for someone. I don't think that it will for those cash-strapped cities that have a majority of of their population on welfare and don't have the economic base to afford a degreed staff, or the rural areas that have no cash base due to being farming areas that have no major industrial tax base. You get away from the urban areas, and the majority of the services are volunteer or paid-on-call. How could they afford these people? The money needs to come from somewhere. How do you pay more, if you can't even afford the basics. Literally. Just my old, crotchety, non-degreed, two cents worth. 😉😎

Hmm. Sounds interesting. I honestly don't know with the company that I'm working for what they do. I'll ask around.

Not sure, but most likely it would be EMS. Healthcare second. My apparent issue is that I don't have any degrees in anything. All I have is experience, and that seems to be an issue. People want to deal with folks who have diplomas and degrees, but not necessarily any experience.

Twenty eight years in and I'm thinking that I've finally gotten to the point where I need to find something else. I'm tired of slinging these whales around. Actually, my back is telling me this. 😋 Anyone doing this? How did you start? Are you working for someone, or did you start your own business? What kind of experience has it required? I can't think of anything else to do. I'd really hate to just abandon all this time and experience that I have when someone else may be able to make use of it.