why do we continue to do cpr????

[ERDoc]

You're getting warmer, unfortunately providing rehashed media coverage of a real journal article does not quite cut it. The media often does not understand research and misunderstands the results. The articles that you provided you have also misunderstood and show just the opposite of what you say. As reaper said, get the original article published in JAMA and you will see how badly you have understood it. You then provide an article that show cities with save rates up to 45%. Hardly the .01% you talk about. I think this shows we need to do more research to see how we can reproduce these result on a larger population and not give up on something. As asys said, the problem here is the not-not knowing. Enjoy the chatroom.

[Chief1C]

Maybe you should become an undertaker, instead of a paramedic?

[Ridryder 911]

So let's stop CPR and resuscitative measures in the hospital as well. Why not? Why not stop all the medical care as described as ALS. Remember, that hospitals have a lower save rate than those in the prehospital arena in those in cardiac arrest.. What? You don't think that would happen?

I agree if CPR was another procedure, and the results was as reported we would abandon it immediately. But since there is NOT another measure or procedure that has any better results, that is the method we perform. Until then, either promote field termination on specific cases or do what is currently proven to have at least some success. The other option definitely is tilted and we know the results of it. (actually, I had this same discussion/post two years ago)....

The good thing. Paramedics are not respected enough to really carry or have a weight of what we really think matters. No medical procedures, nor anecdotal statements or even research is going to change the methods of resuscitation that comes from a Paramedic. The reasons are obvious.

R/r 911

[ERDoc]

Rid, as always you bring up good points. However, we still do thoracotomies on trauma pts despite it's dismal success rate. Despite the low success rates of thoracotomies and CPR, we still do them because they have a better success rates than the alternative (which carries a 100% mortality rate).

[letmesleep]

I have stewed over this thread now for a bit. I feel the same as a lot of the others here do, ranging from doing CPR to help the family begin the grieving process, to pronouncing an asystolic Pt. Lets throw out another scenario for the sake of argument, and following YOUR (the OP) guidelines I'm not going to provide any REAL research to back this up, so here going just a thought (or lack there of).

Why do we bother transporting and/or treating CVA Pts? Most of the time they are left with some sort of deficit, that they won't necessarily recover from physically, so why bother? Heres another, Why worry about treating a chest pain Pt? Even tho the damage to the cardiac muscle may somewhat heal over time, they are still going to be a cardiac cripple to some degree.

What an irresponsible way to approach a topic for discussion..........

[Ridryder 911]

No, what is scary is considering that the highest education for the majority of Paramedics is just two years long and they believe they know what is best for patient care. Along with those that are a lower level of being a few week long courses.

Who in their right mind, would even think that a person that attended a trade school for their education should have so much power? The same building that next door teaches cake decorating and diesel mechanics, one can hold power of determining who should be resuscitated or not. Anyone else see something wrong with this? The same folks that cannot distinguish quantitative or qualitative research or even form a paragraph with a sentence structure, should have so much power?

The most clinical performance was less than a year in a ambulance with few days of split rotation in limited various parts of a hospital. ( Now folks, there some expertise !)

Are we impressing ourselves yet?

Let's look at the hard cold facts:

Majority of the Paramedics are trained NOT educated

Very few Paramedics understand physiology and most have very little knowledge of anatomy

Majority of Paramedics are very, very limited in medical clinical knowledge and procedures and skills.

Very few understand the scientific process of research or even how to interpret data and even how to read scientific journals to make a true rationale decision. (to prove this , just look at the posts presented here)

Skills and procedures are isolated to only simple performance and usually then multiple tasks can be presented in a "tree" algorithm, not to confuse caregivers.

So before we attempt to discuss whether treatment(s) or procedure(s) should be performed, we have a lot of cleaning up and becoming qualified to even make a rationale statement or idea.

[letmesleep]

Thanks Rid, I just threw up a little in my mouth................

[EMS49393]

No, what is scary is considering that the highest education for the majority of Paramedics is just two years long and they believe they know what is best for patient care. Along with those that are a lower level of being a few week long courses.

Who in their right mind, would even think that a person that attended a trade school for their education should have so much power? The same building that next door teaches cake decorating and diesel mechanics, one can hold power of determining who should be resuscitated or not. Anyone else see something wrong with this? The same folks that cannot distinguish quantitative or qualitative research or even form a paragraph with a sentence structure, should have so much power?

The most clinical performance was less than a year in a ambulance with few days of split rotation in limited various parts of a hospital. ( Now folks, there some expertise !)

Are we impressing ourselves yet?

Let's look at the hard cold facts:

Majority of the Paramedics are trained NOT educated

Very few Paramedics understand physiology and most have very little knowledge of anatomy

Majority of Paramedics are very, very limited in medical clinical knowledge and procedures and skills.

Very few understand the scientific process of research or even how to interpret data and even how to read scientific journals to make a true rationale decision. (to prove this , just look at the posts presented here)

Skills and procedures are isolated to only simple performance and usually then multiple tasks can be presented in a "tree" algorithm, not to confuse caregivers.

So before we attempt to discuss whether treatment(s) or procedure(s) should be performed, we have a lot of cleaning up and becoming qualified to even make a rationale statement or idea.

Oh... My... God...

Dude, you are my new hero. Bottom line, this EMS thing is broken. It's been broken for a long time, and I'd love to say things are changing for the better, however I just can't. There is NO FREAKING WAY any paramedic I know is educated or qualified enough to make any of the aforementioned decisions regarding CPR, CVA or AMI. I tell a lie, I do know one. Of course, he's also an ER physician.

MSB, keep spewing your load of crap on here and you'll quickly find it will win you no friends. We are looking to advance our field through dedication to education. Your mindless dribble and lack of factual statements does nothing but continue to prove how stupid most paramedics truly are. You can't even put together a fact-based post with source links for your information. You just copy someone elses half-retarded researched view and serve it up as gospel.

Your posts suck, period.

[MSBMEDIC]

let's do this, have every medic obtain a bs in physiology and then train countless hours on practicality of being a paramedic and after 4-5 years total have them apply for a medic and then get paid annual saluary of 40,000-45,000 in oklahoma. then wait after they become new employees of a company that pays low wages due to low pay of care by private, medicare, and medicaid insurance to these companys, they have to become nremt-p, cct-p, acls, phtls, pals, and dont forgrt CPR certified.

after all this education and training you will not have one medic working the streets. THATS WHY YOU FORMER MEDICS ARE NOW RN'S AND ACTING LIKE SECOND COMING, BUT NOTHING MORE THAN WAITRESSES RUNNING FROM ONE RM. TO THE NEXT.

SIMPLICITY IS HERE TO STAY... AND WITH 75 MILLION BABYBOOMERS NEARING THAT AGE WE WILL NEED TO STOP CPR, PUT MORE MEDICS ON THE STREET, PUT LESS MONEY INTO " FIRE EQUIPMENT" AND MORE INTO EMS ( WE SHOULD'NT HAVE FIRE STATIONS, WE NEED MEDICAL STATIONS), PAY MEDICS MORE IN SALUARY, BENEFITS, ECT... IF YOU WANT THEM TO LEARN MORE

SIMPLICITY IS HERE AND IF YOU WANT US TO LEARN MORE "NURSE RATCHET", GIVE US THE MONEY.

[letmesleep]

Is it me, or is there a wave of angry posters floating around that have difficulties expressing their opinions in a calm professional manner?

hmmmm.....