JPINFV

Dude, it was a serious question that I posed. A simple "I'm not really sure, it was just an example" would have done. I wasn't trying to pick your post apart to insult you or anything and no, it doesn't make it any less valid. As I posted, there were several different lengths that you could have posted that I would have understood, but 7 years wasn't one of them. Furthermore, just because YOU aren't going that far, not that there's anything wrong with that, doesn't mean that OTHERS aren't. Now since you want to sling mud, let me ask you a question. If you are so arrogant and tightly wound that you get this wounded over a simple question, how exactly are you going to survive the clinical part of your education/training where your partner's job is to critique the living hell out of you?

God, I hate burnted out and idiot EMTs. Two cases came to mine before I left my ambulance job. The first was I was working with a new hire who was fresh out of field training. Personally, I don't mind new EMTs because they generally aren't set in their ways yet. It's also important to note that it takes a lot for me to write an incident report on a partner for behavior issues. That said, if you want me to write one against you, feel free to be rude to patients and staff, answer your cell phone in front of patients [it was a discharge and he could have just as easily left the hospital room before answering], and listen to your friggen MP3 player in front of a patient while we're transporting. I get the fact that discharges are boring, but if you're going to listen to your music, at the very least sit in the captains chair. Issue 2 God help the competiting ambulance crew if I ever find out who it was. I was dispatched to a hospice discharge. I get there and we're told the same story 3 times by the patient's hospital RN, hospice RN, and one of the family members who was getting really passive aggressive about it. Apparently the last time they discharged the patient, the other crew had the family move the patient to the gurney for them. Granted, there was somewhere around 10 family members around both at the hospital and the patient's house, but you don't just stand back and watch the family do your work for you.

^ That reminds me of this commercial

I'm sure that sanitation workers aren't nearly as numerous as basics and paramedics are. It seems to be simple supply and demand.

Thats because you use their services weekly. When was the last time you needed an ambulance for yourself or a loved one?

It's pretty common in parts of Southern California to have it where the trash men have to get out and lift the trash cans themselves. It's the same thing with where I currently live in Boston.

Where are you at where garbage men work on holidays?

Well, technically speaking, you don't have to be an EMT in California to drive. To maintain an "Ambulance Driving Certificate" [multiple choice test], you must be an EMT-B within 6 months of obtaining the certificate.

As long as she can do everything that's required of the job, including lifting, I don't see what the big deal is.

It's not that we're against L/S, we're just against something with a very low reward:risk ratio. If using L/S proved to be more useful than saving, on average, less than 5 minutes on a transport and carried lesser risk then it currently does then I'm sure that more people would support regular use of L/S during transport.

It honestly depends on your area, but the general rule is EMT-Basic. Now a question for you, why would you want to JUST be an ambulance driver?

I'll add to this. Develop good study habits NOW. I'm currently in a masters program and if I had studied this hard in high school I would have had well over a 4.0 (advanced placement for the win), and well over a 3.5 GPA in college. I would also be in med school now instead of grad school which would have saved me $50k [tuition+living expense] and 2 years of my life [grad + gap year]. Find a study method that works well for you, even if it's reading the text book for understanding 5 times. Note: Of course in undergrad the courses weren't nearly as geared to insuring people knew the material. The support in grad school is great [recorded lectures, syllabus that has 99% of the material we need for the test] and completely unlike what I had during undergrad.

There are worse things than chase car. Chase engine, for example.

^ I was intentionally not including residency because it varies greatly depending on specialty and even program (emergency medicine, for example, can be 3 years or 4 years post grad). I only included the intern year because, to the best of my knowledge, technically a doctor doesn't need to finish a residency to become licensed and practice. They only need to complete a year of residency to be able to take the step 3 exam.

Err, I'm just wondering how you came up with that number. I can see 4 [med school is 4 years], I can see 8 (undergrad plus med school), I can see 5 (med school plus first year of residency [1 year of residency (intern year) is needed to become fully licensed. This is not the same as being board certified, but the intern year can either be a part of the residency or separate), and I can see 9 (undergrad+med school+intern year).

As I said earlier, it's not about walking backwards vs not walking backwards. I'm sure that 99% of ambulance calls involve some walking backwards. As you said, it all depends on the type of ground being covered. I do believe, though, that that represents a minority of the actual time that the gurney is being moved. As far as the video, a few things came to mind. First off the wheel's on the coroner's gurney do not look like they're really made for use outside. Second, and probably the most important, the coroner isn't watching the gurney. Having two hands on it would have done nothing if he was still looking as something else. He actually did have both hands on it before it fully tipped over. The gurney snagged on something and started to tip. This is when he put both of his hands back on the gurney. When the gurney came free of the snag, it was almost perfectly perpendicular to the direction of movement, which is when a gurney is most at risk for flipping. When I was working, the gurney was always moved at full height outside of special cases [patient's weight in a few cases, stairs [dropping it down a few clicks makes clearance easier when needed]]. I have nothing wrong with it being done other ways due to provider preference, but I find it being mandated one way or another to be stupid.

I'm not trying to give the impression that walking backwards never happens, but I doubt that the tip over rate for walking through the flat and level hallways of the ER is very high. Can you find that video? If the gurney was being rolled sideways when it happened then it was a case of stupidity where the "two hands" rule would not have helped. After all, there's a great idea. Train providers (or teach them physics) not to do stupid things and you won't need to write stupid blanket rules.

Wow, Massachusetts has some really stupid rules. From the above list: "13. Rolling a cot in the high position without both EMTs having both hands on cot." WTF? Are they expecting the person at the feet walk backwards or something?

To the best of my knowledge, my company only required us to carry patients in police custody [we'd get jail transports from time to time] or patients on psychiatric holds on the gurney. There were a hand full of times where a patient was walked to the ambulance, but those generally fell into patients that met the ambulance at the curve. The simple fact was that 99% of the transports were not capable of walking anyways, so it was a mute point.

Well, he is new and signatures are currently disabled due to problems with picture resizing. I wouldn't make it a habit [especially once signatures return], but I wouldn't shoot him yet.

Area 51 is the Groom Lake Facility. Area 50 is the Tonopah Test Range per Wikipedia.

Not to hijack [too much], but there is an Area 50 in Nevada. The "Area XX" designation comes from when the government used the area for nuclear weapons testing and has nothing to do with the "nonexistent" air force base that can be found on Google maps.

1. Besides getting into a university, your ACT score has nothing to do with medical school. The MCAT [Medical College Admission Test] is the test for medical school. 2. Your undergraduate school has nothing to do with medical specialties outside of getting you into medical school. 3. Your medical school will probably have nothing to do with your specality. You specialize after medical school during your residency. 3.A. While 3 might be untrue in some cases, you still have to get INTO medical school anyways. Realize that there are over 30k people applying every year for MD programs and only about 15k spots. It's not unusual for a school to get over 8,000 [yes, thousand] applicants and interview less than a thousand people. 4. State schools are your friend, unless you live in California [Too many people applying jacks up the competition]. As have been said before, you can major in just about anything. The general requirements for medical school is a year of biology, a year of general chemistry, a year with organic chemistry, a year of math [Calculus or higher. Most will accept 1 semester of Calc and 1 semester of stats], and a year of physics. Labs required as apporpriate [admission committees realize that not all schools will offer the same courses. So, for example, your university is on the quarter system and only has lab for 2 quarters, don't worry about it. If you still aren't sure, you can always call the medical school's admissions department and ask]. Humanities majors actually have some of the higher success rates, but this could be a correlation!=causation problem. An alternative, if you don't plan on working internationally, is an osteopathic medical program [D.O.]. They have the same practice rights and, for the most part, the same education. The average admission stats are generally lower, but they generally require a letter of rec from a DO.

The thing about carbon credits is that it puts a market price on pollution. Since companies that need/want [lets face it, some necessary industrial processes will always pollute] more credits buy them from other companies [not the government], it provides an incentive to decrease pollution since the company would have more credits to sell or would be able to decrease the amount that they have to buy. It's more of using the market to regulate then the feel good measure known as carbon offsets.

Carbon credits and carbon offsets are different things. Carbon credits is the legitimate [at least in my opinion] trading of polluting rights between industrial companies. This is a legal process that is regulated by the government Carbon offsets is where you give money to a company [say, a tree farm] and that company essentially tells you that your money is worth taking x amount of carbon out of the air. There are no regulations covering this and no legal benefits. It's simply a way to feel better about polluting.