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Morning all, from cold and icy Missouri! The service I work for has shifted in the last year from Broselow to Handtevy for treatment of pediatrics. In a nutshell, it cuts back on the need to do all of the calculations, especially if you're in a very stressful situation. It works more with milliliters than milligrams. Volume over dosage. With the addition of the app for our phones, I can have a pretty good idea of how much of a specific medication I would need to give BEFORE I arrive n scene. If anyone else is using it, how do you feel about it? Has it helped you? I have been off EMTcity for a few years so if it has been addressed, sorry to bring it back up. Thanks!!

So Dwayne mentioned something in another post that got me thinking. This was his quote: So, let's talk about it. I know we don't deal with a lot of pediatric patients, but it happens and it seems like, especially for the itty bitty ones, restraining them safely can be a delicate task. I know that our captain chair has a fold down child restraint harness, but what about infants? What are the policies/equipment your service uses to ensure that infants are safely secured during transport, or do you have such policies in place? I would have to look, but to be honest I'm not sure that we actually do have a policy set in stone regarding this. My last pediatric call was a four month old with a fever, and as we picked him up while the mother was headed to the hospital herself (she stopped because she heard him gasping and was concerned) she had the car seat ready to go. Luckily, the mother was able to help guide me through securing it to the stretcher (it was a reverse facing car seat and I was a bit lost trying to find a spot on the back to loop the belts through, not knowing that the hooks were on the sides of the seat), but I know that there may not always be a car seat available to me. So, what do you do in such situations? Do you have any special equipment that you carry on the truck (infant restraint systems, car seats, etc)? Or do you sit mom or dad on the cot and have them hold onto baby? What about critical infant calls where you have a lot of work to do? Do you throw them on the stretcher and hope for the best? I think we are supposed to be getting specialized infant restraint somethingorothers that attach to the cot and have child/infant-sized belts, but they're not out yet.

I am taking the National Registry Paramedic Practical in a couple of weeks. I live in Kansas City and have been unable to find a tutor here to help me practice for the test, so all of my practicing has been memorizing the sheets and reviewing over the phone with EMS friends. I moved here from NY, so I don't know many people in the EMS world yet. Anyway, the Pediatric Respiratory Compromise sheet has me a little confused. One of the critical criteria is to initiate ventilations within 30 seconds of starting the station. When I look at what must be done first, I am not sure how to accomplish it. Does anyone have any experience with this station? Thank you for the help.