Richard B the EMT

I, personally, am still flipping a coin as to if it was Pratt or Sam on board. I also ask if Pratt's nephew, a Chicago FD Paramedic, was on board, as he was shown a few moments before the ambulance was loaded (with the witness protection patient, not the explosives, which were already, obviously, in place), telling Pratt that he had been accepted to Pre-Med school. How many of you were aware that Steve Bushimi (spelling?), the actor portraying the patient, is a former fire fighter, with the FDNY?

Seemed to be a commercial for malpractice insurance.

Wait a minute! With that sameness, how the heck can I march to my own drummer?

Hey, Tech212: NEVER get too attached to any doctor or nurse character on ER, as they will move on to another job at a different hospital, or get killed by a previously undiagnosed psycho patient, or die of cancer while in Hawaii. It is like the daytime "soaps" just takes longer to tell the tale.

Follow this link to the guy I mentioned, with a further link at Youtube to a descriptive article at the New Yorker magazine. Also, my error, it was only 41 hours. Still way too long, as an hour is too long not to be noticed!

This was much more dangerous than that guy who got trapped in the elevator for 3 days, which has so recently been on Youtube.

Phony News Item:

That would be like "Cops", then? Then, that would be like the old Shatner narrated "Rescue 9-1-1"?

FYI, from the FDNY's own site... http://www.nyc.gov/html/fdny/insider/event...8/051408a.shtml And as for actual activities by the FDNY... http://www.nyc.gov/html/fdny/insider/event...8/051408c.shtml

Still not seen that show. Is it filmed as a "ride-along", staged by actors/actresses, or a dramatic recreation of an event as it allegedly happened?

Laura Anne asked, re pronouncement of death You might ask your state Department of Health that question. I specify as so often mentioned, almost as my "Mantra", It falls under what is and is not allowed at each level of certification or licensing, by title, and is called, I think, level of practice.

As one of the last of the non cable or direct TV subscribers, who is still using back-of-the-TV-"Rabbit Ears", I have only heard of the shows on the polling list, but not seen them.

No, really, EMS49393, tell us how you really feel (said I, with extreme sarcasm indicated)?

Ruffems, 2 things. One, the fool got fired for the excessive speed? Good!, And Two, this is something should have also been mentioned in one of the strings on excessive speed for ambulances. Thanks for the information, nonetheless!

Actually, I like Doug's response!

To my admittedly twisted mind, and other twisted minds on EMT City, yes it does! Also, yes, moms do all the work, and that is why it is called "Labor". Anyone else assisting just stands there with a catcher's mitt, with words of encouragement, "C'mon mommy, c'mon mommy"...(POP)..."It's a girl!" FYI, with me having been on ambulances from 1973, I have been the one with the catcher's mitt, figuratively speaking, only 2 times. One of my friends, on his first day working for the FDNY EMS, on his very first call, delivered TWINS!

My thoughts on hearing about this case all day on CNN are, Jet Blue is going to pay him off a sizable amount of $$$, as, should this go to court, Jet Loo...oops...Jet Blue will have even more bad publicity on themselves than the initial bad publicity this day of the story breaking.

Ncmedic309 describes a bad call by saying You must be (either) dedicated, (or a glutton for punishment) because you are still hanging in there!

I was only able to open 3 of the 4. Those 3 all have a UK feel to them (one actually states Ireland), and I am of the opinion that they show more graphic stuff unedited in the UK than the USA. However, it does, in my opinion, make the points intended.

The "system" in NYC is confusing, even to those of us working within it.

In the following article, the daughter of 2 of my friends wrote of a call where she mistook her own pulse for the patient's. There is no indication, or contra-indication, as per the article, that she had her fingers feeling for a pulse in an incorrect position. Has anyone else ever heard of this happening? The parents are both good EMTs, but I have never met the daughter, but can, as can anyone in EMT City, commiserate that she "lost one". http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/nyregion...amp;oref=slogin -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- May 4, 2008 New York Observed The Man in the Blue Pajamas By JEN UMLAS MY parents were volunteer emergency medical technicians for two decades, so I expected I would be great at the job. I certainly had parental support. When I mentioned to my mom in 1996 that I was thinking of becoming an E.M.T., she all but picked me up and carried me into the training hall, right down the block from our house on Eaton Court in Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn. I imagined that I would be like my mother, a technically competent E.M.T. who also was not afraid to get dirty and had a knack for providing psychological first aid. Instead, I took after my father, who looked like Super Mario and got almost perfect test scores but was not so great with actual patients. Still, I had a good stretcher-side manner and I could splint and bandage as well as anyone. I loved walking onto an accident scene and knowing exactly what I was supposed to do. I felt like Dr. Cameron, the compassionate immunologist on “House.” Gerritsen Beach is a tiny corner of southern Brooklyn, and our unit, the Gerritsen Beach Volunteer Fire Department and Ambulance Service, had only one ambulance. If a call came in when the ambulance was already out and more than five minutes away, the dispatcher called 911 and we reported to the scene in the rescue truck, treated the patient, and then signed the patient over to the city E.M.T.’s when they arrived. That’s what happened one day in the late 1990s with John, a 75-year-old who was lying on the couch of his home in his pajamas, light blue as I remember, when we arrived. He reminded me of the men in my Grandpa Tom’s bridge club, all gray hair and thick glasses and hearty laughs. He had been having chest pains, and as it turned out, he had undergone bypass surgery less than a week before. The officer of my crew herded John’s relatives into the dining room to give us privacy. Our driver helped me take John’s vital signs. His blood pressure was low, but acceptable, his breaths were coming often enough, and his pulse was fine. We gave him oxygen and I smiled reassuringly to let him know that this kid in jeans and a sweatshirt — I’m short and blond, and was in my mid-20s — was capable of taking care of him. He closed his eyes to rest while we waited for the ambulance. I was eager to have John on his way to the emergency room at Coney Island Hospital, less than 10 minutes away. I knelt beside him, keeping my fingers on his wrist, constantly feeling his pulse. That beat meant that things were basically O.K., that there was nothing to do but wait. Then, however, as I looked at his face through the oxygen mask, it seemed as if John wasn’t breathing regularly. I asked our driver to take a look. When a person’s breathing becomes inadequate, his pulse soon weakens, but because John’s pulse was strong, I was not sure what was going on. Because I’d been an E.M.T. for only two years and went on a few calls a week instead of a few a day, I hadn’t built up much experience. The driver, who was about my age, was even greener than I was and had somewhat less medical training. The officer had 15 years on us, but she was dealing with the family. The driver moved the patient’s mask aside and called his name loudly. John took a deep, gasping breath. Relieved that he was at least breathing, we relaxed a bit. After another minute, the city ambulance pulled up outside and a clean-cut, uniformed E.M.T. appeared behind me. “He’s taking a few gasping breaths a minute, but his pulse is good,” I said, trying to sound confident. The man exchanged a look with his partner. The two city E.M.T.’s had John moved to the floor in case we needed to perform CPR, and then attached their defibrillator to his chest. I moved my hands away because I knew that anyone touching a patient would have his or her pulse appear on the monitor, too. But the partner waved me back toward the patient. I put my hand back on John’s wrist and, when I looked at the monitor, I immediately knew why I had been motioned back. There was only one pulse. Mine. John’s heart had stopped sometime in the last few minutes and I had done nothing because I’d thought that my heartbeat was his. WHEN John’s pulse was beating, the pulse in my fingertip was weaker than the one at his wrist. So when I took his pulse, I felt the beat in his wrist instead of the one in my own finger. But when John had no pulse, I could still feel a thump against my fingertips. People with thick skin could tell the difference easily. The rest of us had to learn. The E.M.T.’s had me start CPR. If I had started it sooner, I thought to myself, John would have had a better chance. Also, he was swollen from the surgery a few days earlier, and his chest, covered in stitches, felt like foam rubber. Soon, still hoping, we were speeding with John in the ambulance toward the hospital. Later that night, I told my mother about confusing my pulse and John’s. She said I wasn’t the first person to make that mistake. She was offering me absolution, but I didn’t think I deserved it. The next day, John’s family called to let us know that he had died. I wasn’t surprised. In my first class, one of the students had asked the instructor: What if we kill someone? “You can’t kill a patient,” the instructor had replied. We weren’t doctors or even paramedics. There was no danger of our giving someone the wrong drug or making some other potentially fatal mistake. “You can only fail to save them,” the instructor said. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

OK, I came into this one thinking "Licensed Practitioner". Thanks for the 411.

Perhaps not the same itinerary, but... A man was always praying to win one of the multi-million lotteries, and decided to improve his odds, and used one of those phones and ask God directly. "God, I'll do anything you want, to win the lottery". "What is it?"

Lone Star said So, Lone Star, do you have any Herpetologist friends to ask how long most hooded cobras take to generate venom after being "milked" of it? I still think that even a milked cobra would have had their fangs become puncture wounds on the baby if it had actually struck, instead of using it's snout to, for lack of a better term, "punch" the baby in the head.

Jake beat me to it!