briguy222

I work as an EMT-B at a retirement community in PA. We are only BLS here and there have recently been some arguments about what we can and what we can not have in our medical supplies. I know there are only the 6 medications we can administer and or assist with but people have been telling us that we are not allowed to stock and or use certain things on site. The supplies in question are saline solutions (bottles and eye solution), anti-biotic creams, ammonia inhalants, medicated swabs, burn and or cooling gels, and any other little things like those. I was just wondering if we really are not allowed to use these or even have them available for use. And if we can not physically administer these things, can we supply them to the patient so they can administer it themselves. Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks.

31% Dixie. You are definitely a Yankee.

Once again, thank you everyone for your comments and input. It really helped and solved a lot of arguments. Keep 'em coming if you want, the more thoughts and ideas the better.

...one more thing, i know scenarios can change and peoples reactions can differ, but is there and average time it takes for someones hypoxic drive to get knocked out and if so how long does it usually take until it does?

I just wanted to get some feedback on a certain scenario we had on a call with a COPD patient... We were dispatched to a call involving a patient with COPD who stated he was having trouble breathing on his in-home oxygen unit which was set at 3 lpm via nasal. We then put him on our own oxygen at 15 lpm via nonrebreather. After a couple minutes I asked how he was feeling and he stated that he felt much better. Shortly after, the paramedics arrived and walked into the room asking what was wrong. I told the medic that he has COPD and the medic bit our heads off asking why we had him on high flow oxygen. To my understanding, it is ok to give a patient like this high flow oxygen. I am also aware of the chance of knocking out the hypoxic drive, but if the patient wasn't getting enough oxygen with what he was already on, what are you supposed to do? I just thought that I would throw this out there and see what others say. Were we right or wrong in what we did and should we have even put him on oxygen? I was taught to never deny a patient of oxygen and that is usually one of the first things needed to be done.