bandaidpatrol

That was a sin! Ruining that great old 59 Caddy! Those Bastards!

Have they released the Scope of Practive for that yet? I'd like to see if it's the same as the Ambulance-EMT-Advanced that we had over thirty years ago.

Linoleum. Didn't last for shit, and stained real easy. Mainly because if there was something on it, you couldn't see it. Only in a combination did you have a neutral floor color. No commercial car (ambulance) that I ever worked in had anything but a dark, patterened floor. If you wanted something else, it had to be ordered before the body was built. Incidently, the brown and orange checkered floor in the 75 Criterion I worked in for years, was the exact same I had installed in my kitchen at home....

There is a .jpg. You didn't highlight the entire link. If you right-click, properties, the 77patient.jpg and 77cad.jpg is cut off, so you have to drag the highlight thing down farther. http://michigan-ems.tripod.com/sitebuilder...s/77patient.jpg http://michigan-ems.tripod.com/sitebuilder...tures/77cad.jpg

Looks fine to me. Can't do anything about that. Guess you can draw a picture of an ambulance on your screen and color it in with crayons if need be.

What's that supposed to mean? This is an example of Cotillion White and Omaha Orange, inside and outside. So I used a stock photo from a website. No need to be a smart ass. Certainly better than this crap below. Really Ugly ambulance, a sin

Cotillion White and Omaha Orange were the colors specified for many ambulances in the late 70's.

Same thing that would happen if they were all tied up and had another run... Call Mutual Aid.

Don't know about you, but I charged to use my hearses as ambulances! We had so many emergencies, we even began to run and buy units that were made to be used as JUST ambulances. Started out as ten or fifteen bucks a pop, then up to fifty by the end of that era. Why did I quit? I was paying people to run the ambulance, more than EMT's were making in the 80's. But people stopped paying round about 78-79. The state gave me 10% of the bill if an elderly person didn't pay. I made 35% off the county if someone didn't pay for a funeral. It was just a hassle. So it went from a paid service run by the funeral home; to a volunteer service run by the fire dept. They had EMT's, and the manpower, I didn't want them running on my calls. I had a standard, they had shortcuts.

Unless a patient was in dire need of surgery, the attempt at limb reattachment, had signs of internal bleeding or was unconscious.. They went to the nearest place medical care was available, sort of like today. Only that meant a doctors home or office. Honestly, if they were dead, and the hospital was more than a half hour away, we just took them back to the funeral parlor. The nearest big hospital was over two hours by road, there were no choppers till after 1970, then it was a big mess getting one. Nearest hospital was about as big as our home, and they were outfitted with probably the oldest MD's in the state. Literally OLD. I'll add more later.

I tend to disconcur with your view of history. I hope that's not part of this report... To sum it up, as an ambulance attendant in "the 60's", we did the best we could with what we had. Industry was just not on our side yet. We grew out of several professions; battle field surgeons, barbers, home nursing and funeral directors. Battle field surgeons and medics and corpsmen created the procedures that we use today; barbers were often the only persons available to provide stoppage of bleeding-less surgeons on battlefields hundreds of years ago, nurses riding to hospitals with ill patients in hospital wagons - few nurses-many ill patient, and the need to transport someone laying down. That is where funeral directors came in, we picked up victims on stretchers, and transported them flat in our hearse be it a wagon or a car. So, naturally, this was the best idea for a modern ambulance. We already had the car, and the bed; why not make a little money on the side? And I do stress a little. I can go into great detail on the history of pre-hospital transportation, but you'll have to do that research yourself, all the back to a hammock strung between two camels. The ambulance A hearse is different from an ambulance, the floor of a hearse has rollers on it, an ambulance needed wheel and post cups, and a flat surface to roll the bed on. For that purpose, they created the Combination Professional Car. It was an industry standard that the floor panels could be flipped over, so as to allow for the unit to be used for both a hearse and an ambulance. Color was another concern; black was a morning symbol for those in grief, but a stress trigger for those in need. So, we needed something that fit both profiles. White was angelic, and comforting. We chose white and maroon for all of our ambulances. But we did have hearses that were all black. For the most part, a combo car had just one red light, two spot lights, one white and one red, and a siren under the hood. It had one row of cabinets in the front, and open floor panels. These were all nicely decorated, to make it an acceptable appearance. The landeau panels with the funeral spires could be removed to reveal "Ambulance Service" etched in eisenglass windows. The cots didn't raise yet, and the bar to hook it to the wall was kept under the floor during a funeral. We could transport three on the floor, and two on the ceiling. Even with the cot in there. The cot was a Ferno-Washington, it had a feather mattress, covered with duck canvas. We also carried two folding stretchers, with "U" shaped feet, it could allow the patient to be set up, just like the ferno cot. We also carried two folding stretchers that lay flat to hang from the ceiling. The weight limit for the hooks was 175lbs. The folding stretchers came from Junkin, our funeral service supplier. The equipment We carried just about the same things you have now, to a point. We had two Keller-Blake Traction Splints, four flat stretchers for accident victims (it was known that accident victims should be kept flat, still and warm), eight blankets, two pillows, 100 Cravats, 15 Rolled gauze Bandages, 400 4" gauze Squares, three pairs of scissors, two surgical hemostats, a carton of 100 tongue blades, four large battle dressings, two 22x18" battle dressings for burns, One of each Adult and Child E&J Oral Airways (They were made of steel), two oxygen bottles- cross between a Jumbo D and an E cylinder-made of steel, they were kept in our E&J Lytport 1 Resuscitator-Inhalator-Aspirator units, four 28" box splints, four 24"x3" splints, four 18"x3" splints, four 15"x3" Splints, 1 Emergency Birthing Kit-set up for a twin delivery, clean sheets wrapped in foilpaper for burns, boric acid for burns, sandbags for head stabilization, wash clothes and towels, a glass pitcher of clorox, a bottle of spirits of ammonia, a "Hope-Puritan Bag-Valve-Mask Assembly", soap, thermometers, rolls of cotton, salve, eye and head dressings, one oxygen tent, a few emesis basins, a vomit pan, a urinal and a 3' x 18" wooden board to perform CCM on. We also carried a first aid box, usually an MSA pre-filled kit, or a salesman sample box. Another good one was a carton to hold radio tubes. The training We didn't have "EMT"'s till the early 70's. But after 1966, we did have to be trained. I was trained in 1952. Standard and Advanced ARC First Aid. That was that. But along the way, we did receive other training. Oxygen, CCM (Closed Cardiac Massage) Yes, before the BVMA was brought about by AMBU and Hope-Puritan, if a resuscitator wasn't on hand, we did mouth to mouth. In 1963 a course came about called the Ambulance Attendant, it was the earliest organized training I had. It was advanced first aid, oxygenation, resuscitation, airway insertion, airway suctioning, splinting, defensive driving, CPR (came after CCM, it was also called CPCR-Cardio-Pulmonary Cerebral Resuscitation) and Childbirth. I'll get into the training and equipment for the earlier ambulances later on.

If in doubt, lay em out.

There already are 52 levels of EMS training, why not add a couple more... :roll:

We would ask for an insurance or assistance card, both, so as to not make the patient feel that we are making an assumption. Either way, they would sign a paper stating that our billing agency could bill what ever insurance program they have, or send them the bill. Whether or not they could pay, did make a difference, that was my pay check. Someone has to pay no matter what. Either their insurance, the state, medicare, or out of their pocket.

I've not been offended, I didn't read most of the posts anyway.

I've lost four grandchildren to "SIDS".

It was from the lady that wanted to Boycott the site because they wouldn't allow her to post crap about non-union EMS systems. :roll: Probably wouldn't have mattered, except for the fact that it was the same post on sixty different threads.

After we got rid of the cots that didn't have multiple level adjustments, we had one-man cots that also folded into a chair (knee bangers). We usually just went in with the monitor, oxygen and IV/airway box. That was enough, the IV box was made of plastic that was folded at the edges and the corners were brass, stood about two feet high, really heavy. If it was on the top floor, we took a the real stair chair, same as the ground. We didn't dare leave the cot outside, or have the ambulance open.. Otherwise, it would be stripped by the time we got back out.They would steal the cot, then some mob team would try to sell it back to a service. It was a lucky day if you were able to buy it back. Do you know why they call the selfloaders, "one man"? Because the other guy got killed using it.

I used to have a partner who did stuff like that on purpose. Mostly to the rigs of rival services. He also had this way of showing people how he really felt, by using a "charcoal bomb". To make one of these bombs, you take old charcoal paste.. yes.. paste.. and fill the fingers of rubber gloves with it. The paste was mixed with water for patients, but it was like tooth paste in the tube alone. He would sit at the rear window, cut off the fingers and toss them out windows when we drove by their rigs parked along the street.. Stupid, yes, but it made a hell of a mess. Also worked with a blob of it surrounded by wet toilet paper. Made white rigs look like dalmations.

Probably the funniest story I have in my bag of tricks, it's been a long, long time... But it was close. The police didn't have radars, so they were basically on a guessing game by timing cars from point A to point B (a line painted across the street). We had just bought a brand new, streamlined Cadillac ambulance, boy she was a beauty! White paint, with chrome everywhere, chrome siren, tunnel lights, trim and mid strips, bumpers and handles. The spedometer started with zero and went up to one-hundred-sixty. I'd never seen that before in my life, and never did after either, who in their right mind would want to go so fast... I would. We had a bad wreck one night on highway 219 south of Warren, Pa. Car load of highschool kids were drunk, ran off the road and hit a steel post that was filled with concrete. What a mess, no seat belts, or safety glass, three were thrown out and DOA, one was horrifically trapped. We carefully dis-entangled the boy, and loaded him up. I radioed back home for a hearse to come for the rest, and off we went. The nearest hospital that took ambulances was about 65 miles away in Williamsport, Pa. We didn't waste anytime getting there, had it up near seventy on highway 220. On the way back, there was four attendants on board, we stopped to get a pop at a little store, and my brother asked me how fast I thought she would go. Well, we found out.. Luckily we had four attendants on board. Because I just barely saw that Penna. Motor Patrol car along higway 15, but we went by him just as fast as the telephone poles. I heard my father screech "holy sh*t, we're going 110".. About that time the siren on the police car turned on, but we were long gone. Unfortunatly, they did have radios, so when I saw the two cars blocking 15 at Mansfield, I threw the back lights on, my brother hopped on the cot, they put the resuscitator to his face, and pretended to be doing artifical respiration. The officer came up to my windows and said "What the hell do you think you're doing, you whizzed by that patrol so fast he couldn't tell if it was a car or a rocket.. Well, what do you have... I interrupted, and said we got a man having a heart attack (he was barely 17 years old), I'm going to the cardiac hospital in Williamsport. They didn't second guess me, and waived me on by. I got a few miles up the road, turned off on a side street.. and we all had a good laugh on the way home. Don't you suppose we would have been running lights, and siren, and been driving toward the hospital, instead away from it, if I had a heart attack victim on board?

:? Work a decomposing body? I suppose if you dumped type specific blood, NS, LR, EPI, Atropine, bicarb and lidocaine into the embalming machine and just kept pumping it around you could put them on a respirator and leave them that way for about a hundred years. May want to flash out the internal organs though, or that may bring up a problem. But you wouldn't want to use a trocar because that would seriously screw up your chances of getting the blood to the lower extremities. As for the darkening flesh, maybe add some tissue preservative, less the formaldehyde, as then you wouldn't have a snow balls chance in hell of getting them back when it's possible two hundred years from now. May as well just save the CNS in a cryogenic freezer somewhere. Gives me an idea to blog.

Our ambulances, the Welles Funeral Home fleet, said "Radio Dispatched - Oxygen Equipped - Trained Attendants - 24 Hour Service"

Why, do you have pea soup in your eyes? No punctuation, bad grammar, and several misspellings. But I suppose if he wanted to be an English professor, he wouldn't have became an EMT. eh? :roll:

We've had those for over twenty years, good on a chopper, waste of O2 on an ambulance.