BushyFromOz

This proves what i have been saying all along.... I wish i had a lifepak 5 and an orange plano drug box

Ahh i see whats going on here... "roadies" is a derogatory term used to described QAP's, you may have heard the term "road scum" before? while QAP's may refer to themselves as "roadies", its generally seen as a put down coming from anywhere else Im sorry of my post is dripping with disdain, you must understand though that i have a generalisation because this actually happens on a regular basis. we do get students who go to sleep on the lounge, refuse Sig3's, tell MICA paramedics how to tube, cut QAP's off in the middle of their assessments, interject during our hand overs, tell me im putting that cannula in wrong, tell me im going outside a CPG. And we do get students telling us that they will be our managers because they have a degree (aka we will be your peers) This doesn't really effect me, but for anyone who did DAPS or the old certificate of applied science this is a huge insult, the introduction of a graduate based system also pulled the rug out from under a lot of senior ambo's career progressions, and many of them are now my closest friends. Unfortunately for you the worst seem to come from monash, which is sort of understandable, lets face it, the course there is so freaking good I understand you guys want to be there and want to learn, and yes the service does accept you for placement, but, there is no obligation on my part to have you on my truck. My priorities changed after putting on the blue shirt, i couldn't understand the ambivalence we were sometimes subjected to, but now i know why, its because you will be gone tomorrow, i probably wont remember your name, im on day 3 of 4, its 3 hours past my lunch window and 2 weeks from annual leave, ive been working with a BLS guy for 2 months and ive had to do most of the work with no backup and more often then not the ride-along are just one more thing i have to keep track of and worry about, regardless of how well meaning you are You have asked heaps of Q's in your post, ill try and answer them tomorrow (or later today as it turns out!) peace..

Yeah, i thought it was the stuff of urban legend until i saw it happen a few times myself. How are you doing anyway tim, long time no see?

I didn't agree or disagree with the comment, just said it wasn't necessarily a smart move. This actually cracks me up, first time i have heard of you guys to be called gherkins! I dont consider "gherkins" to be worthless at all. Dont make the assumption that you are somehow special in that you are doing a degree, you are the norm, as am I. I also have a degree, i did my 3 years, i did my placements, i sat next to people like you in class who sprouted "we will be your peers" BS. It was people like you who made the rest of us cringe, smart ass comments to and about roadies, insinuating you were better than them because you were doing a degree, the gherkins who sat in the loungerom chairs because doing a Sig 3 with the crew heading out the door was somehow beneath them. Reality is i am not that far ahead of you, im not one of the non degreed "roadies" you seem to hold in distain , but its precisely your attitude that gave us grads a bad name to begin with. Thats why we were considered worthless, roadies were impressed at the level of clinical knowledge we had and horrifed at the attitude because people like yourself projected that arrogant image and we were all tarred with the same brush. When you wear a blue shirt fo a couple of years you start thinking "gee, i hope i didn't come across like that" I know you think that you act in a different way and you probably do for the purpose of getting thorugh your placements, but once you get in and onto a branch, people will get a whiff of this attitude after a while. Im still amazed at how quick ambo's can smell a rat! I know, i have these on my PDA, john (if i remeber the name correctly) has done an awesome job transposing these. I believe the author has been under considerable pressure in the past to discontinue this. the CRAP CD is a great tool! I was referring to the PDF file as released by AV Never said they did. Slagging of a potential employer Wow, you do have a chip on your shoulder, just another hard done by uni student eh? Tell me, just what exactly do you feel that AV owes you? Where on AV's radar do you believe you should be? Yeah, im a bit dissapointed actually

Yeah, and the world cup rugby has teams from different countries in it, unlike these blokes with their baseball bats

Having fun today turnip? Actually, a lor of what you posted there also applies to South Africans...its actually pretty scary hgow similar aussies and south africans are. No wonder we hate each others rugby teams so much

interesting..... A uni student using the word "f**kers" to describe one of their potential employers - not necessarily a smart move So the real issue is that the unies started using a "text" that not only is not prescribed but not even available to student. this is something that should be taken up with your university. Truth is that the new CPG's wer hammered through to close to the merger and there were barely enough printed at the time to get one to each operational paramedic let alone for uni students where it wasn't a prescribed text. It also took time getting them delivered to 3000 ambos' which puts you even further off the radar. The typo's in the guidelines were also informed to staff in our ISCEP day (or whatever they are called now) and anyone who paid attention will have made corrections in their book. In fact the new CPG's have not long been electronically available on the staff intranet, and i have no idea when they will be available to the general public. To the OP, the old guidelines are not that much different than the new ones, and will be a good start at learning them. Thats an excellent piece of advice, but dont make the mistake of shooting off at the mouth to early. Any paramedic in AV "worth their salt" as you put it will not tolerate someone in a green suit mouthing of at their mess room table, even if you are right.

Yeah, is a great idea. Unfortunately the only thing ambulance services have absolute control of is the way in which graduates are recruited and inducted into the system. Its done on the principles of minimal cost and time to get "qualified" asses on seats and then wonder why grads are not as well adjusted as they could be. Its like standing in the rain and whinging your getting wet.

I know this is anecdotal, but i have spent a great deal of time asking this question of people within our clinical department, particularly clinical managers and our frontline educators. the general reply i get back is that, yes, the clinical aspect developes much quicker in terms of skills and A&P and yes, grads understand their guidelines much quicker than the traditiona diploma entrants who were recruited off the street and placed through a 3 years training program. BUT they also feel that critical decision making and general self confidence is taking far longer to develope than before. The obvious reason why is that we are guided through decision making / scene management / differential diagnosis etc etc for a perid of 6 months and then weened of this support over the next 6 months. Under the traditional method of training and education this guidance lasted for 3 years. I think the real issue is that although these people meet the standard to be "qualified paramedic" they are then placed in a position where they may then be working with junior oficers, which snowballs this loss of decision making skills. I guess another reason is we are taking on hundeds of grads a year partly due to workload increases, but more to do with baby boomers retiring in large number over the next 5-10 years, so we loose this experience, people who have been qualified for 20 years may not have the same A&P knowledge as a grad, but they are far superior in organisation, scene management, dealing with people and critical decision making. Its thier guidance that grads need, not another bloke like me who has been on the road for 2 years. It will take a decade or two to get this experience back. One instructor once told me that grads are generaly good clinically, but teaching them to figure out the best place to park the stretcher and not lifting very patient is hard work! My best mate and i both started uni at the same time, i did ambulance he did nursing. When we both graduated and and had been in our respective job for about 12 months, he told me he could probably get through his career while rarely making an autonomous decision, he thought we were nuts making provisional diagnosis and formulating treatment with not much in the way of facilities and on limited time. Now hes a 2nd year med student doing A&E placements at a major trauma centre and still thinks ambos' are nuts and wholly under supported by the health system Maybe this is a rural thing, but more often than not i feel we operate alone with probably less knowledge deffinately less diagnostic ability and probably more accountability than your average graduate nurse. As a side note, guys in the peer support network have evidence there has been a massive increase in the amount of referrals for mental health issues since VIC went to a graduate only entry scheme. Problem is that the data is not specific, we dont know if this because younger people are more inclined to seek help than the "old hands" (cultural/generational thing) or that grads/young people find it far harder to deal with the stresses of this job. My guess is its a bit of both

No kiddding. I believe that the universities are partly responsible for this in the way they approach education. There is an aweful lot of chest thumping BS that goes on about how "special" degree'd paramedics willl be, you know, way fo the future kinda rubbish. Throw that at a bunch of 18-19 y/o kids and we get an inflated sense of importance after 3 years. This is entirely the fault of the ambulance services NOT having a proper post graduate training program. Uni's are interested in - making money - and as such will take as many applicants as they can, charge you a shit load of cash for less than 20 hours a week face to face teaching so you an go home and smash yourself in self directed learning. Mass produced. Ambulance services are interested in sticking as many qualified asses on seats as possible to make their stats look good, and that means taking these mass prouced ambo's, throwing them in a truck and giving them their stripes as soon as possible. Here we had a 2 years GAP program, meaning you average uni student was 23 when they qualified after finishing uni. A loit can happen in 2 years as we all know. Since the great "merger" with Metro in melbourne, the official GAP course is now 12 months, but scuttlebut suggests that "near competent" students are being early exited formt he program at 9 months to make way for the next mass produced batch of students Now we get 21 year old qualified ambo's, who cant cook a slice of toast because they left home at 18, lived on campus at uni with someone else cooking their food and cleaning their room for them while the pissed their spare cash up the wall with their mates at the pub every wednesday and friday night I understand the shortcoming of the university model, and theres nothing phil could say i wont agree with. But there is not 1 ambulance service here that makes an attempt to cover those shortfalls either.

What all these arnie lovers fail to understand is that chuck doesn't NEED go to Iraq to visit anyone Chuck brings Iraq to him.

In this neck of the woods that would be called discrimination.

Bloody hell. It seems that everytime i turn this thing on theres another story of a chopper going in. Crazy..

Eweness is a good chick.

I saw that, interesting idea. Why, you blokes were alwas gonna win it. Truth be told theres a south afican fella at work now, maked for some interesting conversations....... we pick on our resident Kiwi! No kidding, i got married, built a house heaps of stuff going on. Hey chick

Hi, im a returned city junkie, i used to frequent tthis place intensely but have not been here for over a year due to some overly complicated personal matters. The fact that the aussie/USD conversion rate is a little better makes paying a bit easier too Anyway, hi to people i dont know and to the people i do know, Suck it, im back

Thanks for reminding me why i have not gotten back into johnnies timbo! As long as the organisation fails to sort out these people it will remain a frustrating place to be. Go hard buddy!

"naughty things that give you rashes" "the little man in the boat" "grandpa and johnnies little secret" "Daddy gives mommy love bumbs" "incest - a game for ther wholoe family"

Only if the manufacturer couldn't be bothered meeting those standards, the Europeans have been meeting stringet emission standards for years with diesel, and the japanese manufacturers have been meeting the demand as well. Ill keep my 3L V6 TDI Sprinter

Its nice to see EMS is taking steps to reduce fossil fuel consumption

Yes, imagine our babies!

Our IC guys use Hydrocortisone 250mg for severe respiratory ditress (yeah, go figure) So your asthma, COPD'ers etc etc. They are chnaging Dexemethesone in the near future.

Man, some big ego's on this thread I would be classed as a "stay and play" person in most cases, and with the exception of some clerly defined points in our guidelines such as penetrating trauma, there is no real excuse in my situation that precludes me from having a professional obligation to my pt to assess properly and begin supportive measures appropriate to the situation and then move to the vehicle. Of course this is a fluid situation and is entirely dependent in the patients condition. If you tell me that the sicker the pt the earlier you should move them to the back of the truck to commence treatment, i would argue that those are the pts you should be assessing more thooughly and initiating care with before you move them. One of my favourite people at work once chastised me for "wasting time" placing IV's in my chest pain pts before moving to the car. I wont argue that definitive care for this patient is in A&E. For the sake of 90seconds, getting that IV before we move gives us options if the pt craps out on us before we get to that back of the truck. Hers my favourite line for explaining scene times "Dont rush but dont waste time" Yeah, we all love an oxymoron

Thank you doc, now, if you people will excuse me, im going to medicate myself with some temazepam so i may actually sleep tonight