AnthonyM83

Music therapy in your protocols?

Have we determined where in the airway this problem exists? Lungs are clear and he's moving good air and you don't see any inflammation in the upper airway or of the tonsils at this time, right? What does the patient feel? Does he feel this throat swelled up at all? Could the anesthetic caused problem in the opening and closing of this airway further down? Does he have trouble swallowing? Any findings upon auscultating throat area? What has he been doing today since he got back from the doctor? How long after did this start? Any other signs of allergic reactions?

Heh. Within the joke, though, there's the point to consider that few will ever end up in a psych ward or even know their stress personality type is being developed from working the job while their personalities are still forming...HS years... Hard to attribute life/personality problems with specific things in your past sometimes, but it does seem like there's an awful lot of family/marriage/alcohol abuse problems with public safety workers...hard to say how much is cause and how much is effect and account for ages.

Good point. I think the hope is if 20 other people did experiments/studies on calculating extinction rate, we'd either see a trend (and a more likely theory to follow) or see no trend or correlation among the different conclusions and realize something is not being done right...but at least we won't wrongly be following faulty conclusions. Or so we hope.

Difficulty in Bed? A lot of guys have that problem...and nothing much EMS can do for them... But yeah, I've always assumed it was Difficulty Breathing...

The USC study (the one usually referred to) accounts of severity of traumas...sometimes people don't have the resources (personnel/money/time) to include all factors, but they're usually not stupid and do consider such things...though not always. And in science, studies (evidence) is needed to support things everyone knows is true...b/c maybe every 1 in 1,000 "truths" ends up not really being a truth. It's an attempt to keep science pure...

Rid, I don't understand your reaction to this study. I'm sure there are others out there doing the studies you mention. This people simply decided to study this topic and I'm glad, because there's a lack of studies in the area. The only good one I know of is the USC one and it's starting to age already. I'd like to see 10 - 20 more studies on the topic, so we can start examining different aspects of it. Not all will have big sample sizes or some new revelation or even claim to be very significant...but I was taught that's the nature of science. It's like the shock position studies, they're all over the place. If we had several SOLID non-conflicting studies people could probably lay that issue to rest. Maybe this penetrating trauma study will lead to other ones in the future.

New JEMS article: http://www.jems.com/news_and_articles/colu...op_and_Run.html I don't know how scientifically solid this article is...but just another thing supporting that we stay and play too long with our traumas.

All our rigs have them...though no one ever told me what they're used for. I gathered from posts at EMTCity that they were used to in place of the KED and rapid extrication techniques and to quickly place under patients if they code en-route. Richard...don't you have a clipboard? Wouldn't that always be easier?

Well, with all the psych calls we go on and all the "unknown medicals" we go on, it's just bound to happen. Most aren't brutal attacks, but you often might end up getting physical...be it with a psych patient who's trying to harm themselves or a confused diabetic. Different crews also choose different stages at which to call for PD.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/beta-blockers/HI00059 Above page says beta blockers help blood vessels relax and open, improving blood flow. Which beta receptor function would that be countering? Beta receptors don't cause vasoconstriction (rather dilation in coronary and skeletal arteries)...

Read first few posts!

Huh?

The concern wouldn't be from organs hitting the spine, it would be from the pressure wave itself hurting the spine.

Yeah, that's the exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. I don't have any specific meds in mine...maybe common ones used in the prehospital setting or commonly prescribed ones, so when I see a patient who has them, I have something to associate it with... I wouldn't be making decisions based on this really...it's just for the info.

That's pretty funny. I'll only call it a whacker shirt if it's trying to show off your field. The shirt does not harm the professions image and is just good fun. Tell me it wouldn't be funny as your sleepwear or undershirt at the station.

I'd say it depends why they say it. It's a way of saying "I don't like you making fun of that, because it suggests you correlate Muslims with terrorists in your head and that sucks for American Muslims when so many people have the idea actively in their heads." (And they're right, it does end up manifesting in subtle and major ways). So, I think that's actually strong of them to say. It's not easy to say, either. (I personally don't...but I'm screwed up...I make fun of anything/everything, including personal friends who have died if I know they were the same way...BUT with my friends we all know how much respect we actually do have for other cultures and people way beyond the norm...they'd intervene in an actual racist social situation at school...) Anyway, point is, I'm fine with someone being offended. It just means we have different humors and I won't say that stuff around them....I can't blame them for not being screwed up like me....

Could we have a discussion on alpha-1, alpha-2, beta-1, beta-2 receptors? I have a brief limited understanding of them...but don't really understand how they're connected and integrated completely. It seems that a receptor can do two things that usually don't go together in the same sympathetic or parasympathetic categories (like one from each category?) and only to specific areas like lungs/heart...it gets confusing. It would specifically help, in relation to medications, neurotransmitters, physiological systems/processes (like responses to changes in BP), etc... (I'd rather not start off, b/c I'll confuse myself...) 1...2...3...go

At all? What would it be classified as (I'm not really classifying, rather trying to liken it more to blunt than penetrating)? Most other penetrating creates a direct slice/puncture that's usually limited to the area it has made contact with. It's a cutting. If it didn't cut into spine, then it won't later. But blunt trauma comes from the force distributed across the area from outside matter hitting against the body. Cavitation seems more like that force than a clear thin cut force. In the end it seems blunt and penetrating trauma are the same thing, just distributed over a wider or smaller area. We differentiate by whether it was concentrated enough to penetrate skin. Primary shock wave injury from an explosion (similar to what I imagine cavitation injury to be) seems more like blunt than penetrating (if we only have those two to liken it to since it's what the studies are dividing the trauma into)

Well, you don't have to make the decision anytime soon. In my opinion, your educational path whether you decide to pursue an EMS career or another health or helping profession should be pretty similar. Do well in HS, get a 4 or 5 year liberal arts degree at a university (I forget if college is a 4-year thing over there, too), take the basic sciences, some social sciences, English/Writing classes, etc etc. Toward the end of college, you'll have a better idea of what you want to be doing...applying to med school, nursing school, paramedic school, other grad school or some other job right after college.

Yeah, it'll never work officially, but unofficially it might work out...but that's now really newsworthy...they can have informants in any number of fields

Eh, if I might as well just give whole pt assessment results, diagnosis, then let people say treatment. :-/ The game (and criticism) was supposed to be in METHOD of each step. i'm over it

I thought mine was kind of a quick fix. Get very familiar with your map, memorize all the main streets, memorize little streets one area at a time. Just takes time, like an entire day off for each step or so...but then you're golden for the most part...you do start forgetting if you don't refresh a bit here and here.

Still seems weird to me that there's not concern for the bullet's energy dissipating causing blunt force style trauma in the neck and that swelling/compression concern from blunt trauma mentioned above. So, as long as we're good with the neuro and not altered, we're good with no c-spine? I previously said also no pain and no deformity, but if you add those, then that's pretty much clearing cspine criteria for blunt AND penetrating....so nothing new there. So main thing is neuro deficit then..

Yay for fast food. BTW, I don't know why you're "fat", but after all the "fat" patients I've carried with various health problems, I plead for all people to get to a healthy weight if possible. Both for themselves and for their family who ends up taking care of them if they develop medical problems that leave them bed-ridden.