Richard B the EMT

DT4EMS used to be a member of this site, but I don't recall seeing any of his postings in a while. I'll just presume I missed seeing them, not that he's not been active.

Condolences to the family, and the extended family of the SFFD.

I have to possibly go a bit off topic, by mentioning a recent court case, which has been in the news. Kings County Hospital (Brooklyn, AKA Kings County, NY) has a separate building for Psych cases, the "G" building. A woman collapsed in the Psych ER waiting area, ON SECURITY VIDEO, but nobody, nurses, doctors, or even the NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation Police, actually approached her for several hours. If anything, they just looked from across the room at her, laying face down on the floor. When someone came into the waiting area to actually check her, she had died. Several doctors, nurses, and even the hospital cops were either reassigned, disciplined, or fired, and the woman's family sued. They got a large settlement, by the way, for events leading to a "Wrongful Death".

Lemme see: NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation EMS from 1985 to 1996, that was 11 years, then the merger, and FDNY EMS Command from 1996 to 2010, that was 14 years. Leave us not forget Peninsula Volunteer Ambulance Corps from 1973 to 1996, which was 23 years...

That was a bit more extensive than what I had thought. Thank you.

Someone translate the alphabet soup of EMTATA? I am guessing it means that any patient that presents, or is presented, at an ER MUST be seen in that facility, if only to be evaluated as to stability for transfer to another facility, in an old wording. NYC system has the hospitals grouped in "Pods". If over a certain number of them request specific category "closing", all within that pod are "reopened to catchment area" in that category.

I think the OP is BLAMING them for these problems.

I've heard of a service called Skype. Would, or should, this service be useful to the OP?

careful on the name. there's a bank out there calling themselves "First Responder Bank".

The same partner for 4 years? So what? I was with the same partner (without us wanting to kill each other) for 7 years. As for the same patient being in Arrest, and ROSC more than one time? Ya got me there. More likely having Frequent Flyer Recreational Pharmaceutical abusers or street drunks.

First off, this is reminiscent of the string some months ago, from someone who basically wanted to buy a used helicopter, and go into the Medevac business. We all lambasted him on numerous items involved, some just with the helicopter before any medical involvement. However... 1) Inquire of the local and state level Departments of Health as to what needs to be done. 2) See if anyone else in the state does similar work, and contact them to ask what they did, how they did it, what expenses they have, etc. While I don't believe it will come to fruition, I have been wrong before. Good luck!

Wow, you actually said that! LOL!

For the record, I'm New Yawk Ciddy bown and raised, but my nephew was born at Wilford Hall, Lackland AFB, in San Antonio (1972).

I must borrow from the bumper stickers that say "In case of rapture, this car will be unmanned". First off, I'd look for moving no driver vehicles, then look to the skies for falling aircraft!

Well, this IS a discussion on EMT City. (Don't mind me, Dusty, just having a small bit of fun at your expense. Hope you had a good Memorial Day Weekend, with my thanks for services rendered that I probably could not have done)

All members of the FDNY EMS Command are considered public employees. As such, if someone requests it, we have to give them our name and/or badge number. I think that's under civil service law, but I admit my own uncertanty on specifics.

I had a professor at Long Island University, always dressed in a 3 piece business suit, with a bowtie, and his wife dressed similarly formal. Always seemed a bit incongruous, seeing them in front of my mostly jeans and T-shirt clad classmates. Then, came the summer day I was coming home from my overnight tour, and found the two of them on the line awaiting the bus, both in cut off jeans, and tie dyed tank tops. Admittedly, they were heading to the beach, but if I hadn't known them as professors, I never would have pegged either of them as educators by their dress that morning.

Prior to the EMS/FDNY merger, EMS personnel had to wear name tags in addition to the badge. Some wore last name, some first initial and last name, some with their title following. One wiseguy (NOT me, for once) had his badge number ONLY on his name tag. The "Duty" jacket FDNY has the EMS folks wearing now, has the last name, only, embroidered on, those of supervisory rank have their title as well as the last name. The "Turn-Out" coats have, on the backs, a reflective "FDNY", "EMT" or "Paramedic", and then their last name (supervisors have the title above the name). EMT and Paramedic's orange helmets have the badge number on the backs.

Most of the military Medics and Corpsmen I knew had just come out of the military, at the end of the Vietnam conflict. By their own statements, and quoting yours, they would be "masters of trauma, but could be weak in OB, Peds, and Cardiac."

...uh...what? Hope the reunion went well, anyway.

One longtime friend of mine is Yvette Deborah Silverman Flowers Melanson LaRochelle. She knew she was adopted, and had a twin brother out there, somewhere, but due to her being a "Black Market" adoptee, she couldn't fully backtrack herself, or find her brother. When she was 43, she registered with several organizations that arrange meetings between adoptees and birth families, and that was how her family found her. She also found out that she, raised Jewish, with "dirty blond" colored hair, in a New York City subburb a few blocks from me, was kidnapped, days after her birth, from the reservation her birth mom and dad lived on. It turned out that she was Navajo Native American! She and her then husband and children moved to "the REZ" in Tolani Lake, AZ, a short distance from her birth family, for a year, and she later wrote a book of her experiences, "Looking For Lost Bird, ", using her then last name of Melanson. Her autobiography was used as source matereial for the "Hallmark Hall Of Fame" television movie, "The Lost Child".

I don't know what I am looking at on the X Rays. I was going to say investigate for a collapsed lung, but the resumed normal breathing on the rotation of the ETT truly threw me for a loop.

We've had several strings on drug testing of personnel. I've mentioned I signed a paper saying if they told me to "pee in the cup", that's what I'd do. A newer policy is, they will randomly (so they say) pull over a unit, and test the team. They can come back the next day, following the platoon change, and test the crew again, meaning the platoon member from the previous day can be tested 2 days in a row. And, although most here have said I'm paranoid, I still have reservations on eating Poppy-seed bagels, fearing I'll get a false reading.

Just mentioning that one can get National Registry in NY State, but they don't recognize it coming in from anywhere else. I would feel it would be kind of a moot point if, when activated by your home state's Office of Emergency Management, your EMS organization responded to the next state over, as requested by that state's OEM. However, state to state,provence to provence, and in a couple I am aware of, US/Canada border agencies might have their own pre-existing Mutual Aid agreements for going over that geopolitical border. Also mentioning a story of a duo of jerks on an ambulance in Manhattan, NY, faked ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS, reports of a car crash on the George Washington Bridge, and in doing the turnaround on the Fort Lee, NJ side, stopped to pick up KFC chicken! Might not have gotten them fired if they just picked it up, and came back to NY to eat it, but these clowns sat in the parking lot in Fort Lee to consume the food.

FDNY EMS, when someone makes the determination that forced entry is needed, will call on the NYPD's Emergency Services, or the nearest Engine company, whichever has a quicker response time, to effect the forced entry. FYI, I have had several cases where after either has been attacking a locked apartment door with a 10 pound sledgehammer for 5 minutes, and all the neighbors on that floor, and others, come out to see what the racket is all about, and when we get in, we have a really sleepy "patient" asking WTF is happening. 7 out of 10 doesn't want to go with the EMS crew, either.