island emt

The greater Boston area is kind of a vague description. Do you plan to live & work in Boston proper or commute as many do from the suburbs? A lot of folks have moved north to NH for lower housing costs and commute the gauntlet to get into the "circle". I know folks from Southern Maine that make the commute 2 1/2 hrs into the greater Boston area for the better lifestyle and lower costs of Maine. PM me if you want some more info. Housing costs inside the 128 circle are very high and cost of living , ie property taxes insurance are also high. Jobs vary from Boston EMS to one of the many privates that do contract 911 service in suburbia. Some of the privates are Alert, Cataldo, Trinity, & of course the evil empire. Many of the smaller cities are fire based EMS. Pay scales range from $12.00 / hr up to $23.00/hr, some with benefits others not. depends on where you go.

You were taught to recognize, the basic two shockable rhythms that an AED will shock. Did they also teach the causes of these two rhythms? What I think you were actually taught was an AED will only work if a pt is in V-tach or V-fib, as that is what the EMY-B curriculum covers. There are many excellent basic cardiology texts available with some online versions available. Happy reading!

Thank you for bringing this up Richard. It seems that we tend to forget with time the sacrifices made by our co-workers and the innocent civilians involved on that day to remember. Many of us lost someone whether a family member , friend, or work acquaintance. I had a dream the other night about my two friends who were on flight 93. It was a time of happiness and fun from the end of season race party At Lime Rock Park the month before. RIP: Joe DeLuca & Linda Gronlund. I will get to Shanksville someday to say goodbye.

Just so you know: It was not intended to demean the skills or ability of the Basic EMT. Yes the current curriculum for EMTB is lacking in so many ways, it's sad. I say this as someone who was a Basic for many years and then became an Intermediate. The additional 700 hours of education taught me how little I really knew, even working at a high volume knife & gun club in a major urban environment and 20 years part time at a motorsports venue with crowds in excess of 100 thousand spectators to treat. It was there that I had the opportunity to work with some incredibly smart & talented Paramedics who spent the time to make sure we understood the how & why of many things. They also pushed us to get educated in All of the things that make prehospital care better. instead of sitting around the station watching the tube we would go through college level A+P or pathophysiology , or acid base. Morning coffee was spent looking at & discussing rhythm strips that showed up as out of the ordinary. There are those in this profession that glide along meeting the minimums for relicensing:: & there are those of us who choose to be better and go the extra mile to improve our knowledge and our skills everyday. It is up to all of us to decide whether we want to slide along in mediocrity , or stand out at the forefront of modern day Prehospital emergency care. You decide where you want to be!

Everything is bigger in texas. The body count will be large and the private operators of this turnpike have to pay the state 100 million to start. Think there are some kickbacks going on?

WOW : where to start.::: first you need to get some cardiology textbooks and learn how the electrical conduction system works. Then get a pathophysiology text and study it. then get some A+P texts :: you get the idea. Or you could just go to collage and get a degree in Paramedicine, then you would understand WHY it's a Paramedic level intervention & how it functions. Sorry I guess that was a wee bit snarky. It's good that you Basic class didn't talk about Pacing. It is not a simple skill like bleeding control or splinting a possible FX. Whatever you do don't mess with things you don't understand or are not trained & licensed to perform. Pacing is applying a controlled amount of electrical energy to the heart at the precise moment it is needed to obtain capture to help a heart that is not functioning normally from a number of different problems or causes.

Pretty sure Mike is correct: They cannot require you to go in the bathroom or other unsanitary location. When I worked in a base type operation in NH we had one of the bunk rooms with a nice chair and desk for them. One of the women would have her husband stop by in the evening and we covered so she could nurse the baby, unless it really hit the fan. It all depends on how decent a company you work for , & how hard they need to be pushed to be decent employers.

Never lie to your Pt. they may already suspect that a family member has been killed and are looking to you for confirmation. Tell them what you know , but spare the details. Work to help them understand that everything possible is being done for those that need our help. In the drunk driver scenario BEorP gave: Tell the drunk driver not to worry as the state will be providing room & board for a while at the jail. Not a lot of sympathy there.

thats exactly what I was thinking Chris. The old school intermediates that took the I-99 update and have many years/decades of practice , now have to "relearn" so we can have less ability and procedures have been removed from the scope of practice. All of this in order to meet a commonality across the country.

what kind of bambulance?

Holy crap: Teri Is that really you ????

KSL: i do admire your spunk in defending yourself. Defend all you want, the fact is you have a OUI conviction on your record that will be there for the next ten years. Every employment application you fill out will ask if you have ever been convicted! You need to answer yes , as it will show up in a background check. However the responses you have gotten from Mike, Ruff , & myself have been very tame and very direct & to the point. They are facts as we know them from our decades of experience in the EMS industry. Risk management is a very large & important part of the business. As a service manager I spend a lot of time on risk management and hate it, but Thats part of my job. Reduce as much human risks as possible to keep the insurance companies happy. We have all dealt with a new member here with your story many times over the last decade and with very few exceptions they have gotten the exact same message and information you received in this thread. Some were gracious enough to understand facts and others not so much. Some left here with thanks, and others left with an attitude of being better than us and who are we to tell them the facts. Still others left with the panties in a bunch! Good luck in your future endeavors and white water rafting guide with an EMT cert is a bonus. Sobriety isn't a bad thing in this business.

KSL: It's not the employers that don't want to take the risk of hiring someone with a DUI. It's their Commercial fleet insurance carriers who will not allow them to have a driver with that on their record. Many will require a 10 year period of clean, no infractions record, before insuring an individual. Do some reading up on risk management and actuarial statistics. You will see that the facts show a driver arrested for OUI will be 14 times more likely to reoffend within 5 yrs, than someone who has a clean record. Thats why you will not be able to get hired. I'm with mike on the contents of your last post. OH PITY ME for making a mistake and breaking the law and getting convicted. Yes a youthful indiscretion will follow you for a long time. Try getting a CDL [commercial drivers license]::: NOT happening Try getting a pilots license::: NOT happening Try getting a railroad engineer's license ::: Not happening. Are you seeing a pattern here??? There is a reason for laws against drunk driving.

Actually Bill: He was lucky that an ambo was that close. Back in the mid 70's I was stationed about 80 km north of that beach at a small navy comm site in ExmouthWA. A little over 200 thousand acres of antenna fields that covered the upper half of the Northwest Cape. We were 250 klicks north of canarvon. There is nothing but a couple of large stations between Exmouth & Canarvon and the road in places isn't much more than a couple of tire tracks through the the bush. One roadhouse about the halfway point that served up really good beer and road burgers. Whatever got run down by the road trains was ground up and cooked. Sheep , cow , horse, Kanga, didn't much matter. Boy I sure miss those trips. We used to fish all up & down that coastline for great whites and sell the sharks teeth to a jewelry maker for necklaces for a buck Aus a piece. {at the time us dollar was 94 cents to Aus $}. I would imagine that some things have changed since We left there in 1976, but I'd wager it's still a very remote place in the WA landscape.

GHOSTBUSTERS

Yes there are possibilities to work as an ER tech. inside, warm & dry, nurses bitch & bed changer. However read my above post about the investigations committee. If you don't get licensed to practice " it becomes a moot point!

In Maine a dwi might be cause for the state to not grant a license to practice. Each application that has a yes answer to any of the criminal conviction questions on the licensing application is sent to a review committee which includes a deputy attny general . They have the ability to grant or deny a license after they review & investigate the individuals record. Other states have the same type of system. As far as getting hired in a back seat tech only: There might be a service somewhere that will hire a non driver. I've never known of one in 4 decades of practice, unless it was in an industrial setting such as a camp or factory.

Most states require a full criminal background check prior to being licensed as a prehospital provider. My state has a background check and it is re-done every three years at license renewal. There are some such as New Joisey that don't and apparently thats a system with many criminals involved judging by the press reports. The only sure answer is going to come from the wisconsin state EMS office. As you have read in other posts, an OUI/DWI will make you uninsurable for most ambulance services as a driver for a period of 5-10 years. It's just the way insurance carriers are, can't fight the system.

Chris: I don't think there is a quantifiable minimum of hours that is a go/no go when it comes to the practice of emergency prehospital care. Yes there are certain skills that erode a little when not used regularly. whether you start 10 IV's per shift or 10 per month, it's not something that you forget how to do. Once you learn 12 lead cardiology you don't forget the basics, you only learn how little you know. On the other side of this equation, you are spending much more time in critical thinking skills and assessments of your pt's in Cardiac ICU & step down units, than you would ever do on the job in the street. you are using much more invasive technology than you would normally on the street. You won't forget your basics when you are using many of them regularly, just in a different setting.. Now a relatively newbie might not have the same exposure and experience levels to feel comfortable not practicing daily those skills and assessments which are new to them.

tastes like chicken ....... I think I've toted a few pt's in that weight class lately

What would you do if called to provide service to a patient at a nudist camp?

Ruff: thats the point I was trying to make. Of ALL the women in the country : why those two were offered membership? Politics and power is the answer.

So what: they caved in to sponsors demands and offered membership to 2 women. #1. is the most powerful politicly connected Black woman ,who could have possibly run and won the presidential election against Obama. She was the brains behind 8 yrs of the Dubya administration. #2 is an incredibly rich banking CEO with connections to seriously large old money who already belongs to several other exclusive country clubs, and is not likely to cause a fuss or pee in the potted palms.

Just because they mis-used a million dollar piece of city property for a foolish stunt ????

I've been in EMS since 1971: Most days I still feel like that and still have the same fire in my belly as back then. Now that being said, There are many aspects of EMS that I choose to no longer participate in. I don't work 24's anymore, I don't work in the hood anymore after spending 10 years in a very violent knife & gun club area. I don't really get excited as I once did over a good or bad call. It is a profession and a calling that takes a certain type of personality to remain in for any length of time. I still enjoy meeting my customers and have learned so much from them over the years.