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Noobs

338 comments

Rookie Partner and I have a student, and because it is a female student she is “technically” under the control of RP. Not that I have any fears about RP not being able to do this. She’s smart. She’s good. But she’s sooooo impressionable. If I’m grouchy and want to do something wrong soon after, you’ll see RP doing the same thing! Screwing with drunk people! You bet! Asking dumb questions to obvious fakers…. she all over it. I’m corrupted her….

So what will happen with poor, no idea what in the hell-is-going-on-in-this-truck noob girl gets thrown into the masses? Well, we will see? We’ve given her a week of riding along, doing whatever. But next week the cord is cut. Time to run from mommy and be a medic!

Posted by on April 24, 2012 • Filed under: EMS Dispatch, ems-health-safety, ems-topics, partner, patient-management, Training, training-development

Mostly it’s the getting by thing…

2,117 comments

We all joke in ways our families, friends and patients don’t understand. See around the 3:20 mark of this video:

Godspeed, friends!

Posted by on October 5, 2011 • Filed under: administration-leadership, command-leadership, ems-health-safety, ems-topics, Failure, father, firefighting-operations, funding-staffing, Heart Strings, partner, patient-management, sleep, special-operations, TV

We’ve all been there….

2,231 comments

Sad as it may be, many medics spend a great deal of time trying to get out of doing their jobs. We’ve all been there: annoyed, over tired, and over worked. We don’t get paid any more to transport, so sometimes we seem to think that maybe the patient doesn’t really need an ambulance….

I can see how it plaid out in my head. I really can… and that is what scares me the most. In 2008, 39 year old Edward Givens died shortly after EMS saw him at his home. The medic that day told Mr Givens he was just having acid reflux and recommended Pepto Bismol. Two hours later Mr Givens was dead.

You can see it now, can’t you? Maybe the patient is being overly dramatic, or maybe it is the family. You’ve been working for 20 hours and this is your 30th call. You’re 8 charts deep and know that another refusal or no ambulance needed is less work than the transport…

But here is the problem…. it is our job to transport people to the hospital. It isn’t our job to determine whether they need an ambulance or not. If someone wants to go, we take them. Regardless of whether you think they are sick or not. We don’t diagnose. We don’t cure. We are in the business of transporting patients.

I don’t know what really happened that day in 2008, but I do know that we’ve all been there before. We’ve all spent a considerable amount of energy on not transporting someone. Maybe you’ve even had a close call. A stroke you thought was a diabetic…  or an AMI that you thought had reflux… But until now you’ve skated by.

Well stop. Stop expending so much energy trying to get out of doing your job. If you’re no longer interested in transporting patients, find a new line of work. When it comes down to it, is it worth risking someones life, your job, and your family’s livelihood on it? The medics in question here were not found to have violated any policies or procedures by their employer…. but do YOU want to live with that on your shoulders?

Posted by on March 3, 2011 • Filed under: administration-leadership, command-leadership, ems-health-safety, ems-topics, major-incidents, news, partner, patient-management, training-development

On the Truck

1,012 comments

En Route to a Code 3 “Sick Person” my partner says….

“Oh, this should be good”

Why?

“Dispatched as a sick person, stumbling, falling down. Great. Another Fucking drunk”

Oh. You listen to that crap? After the address and the part about going fast or slow, I quit paying attention. Literally.

Posted by on March 7, 2010 • Filed under: Code 3, partner • Tagged:

Unspoken

3 comments
Here at the little ambulance that could, we are scheduled by need, and thus we rarely work with the same partner. I have some partners that I love to work with, some that I dread working with, and some that I rarely, if ever work with. As a matter of fact there are two medics I have never worked with.
Every partner has a different way of communicating with their partners. Me… I usually keep to myself. I do my job, then find a place to escape. Some Chat, chat, chat all day long. Regardless of whether I chat back. Others get pissed about everything. Every time something goes wrong(from getting a hang nail to crashing the truck) they scream at the top of their lungs.
I find that GOOD partners need not say a word to communicate. My Brother-from-another-mother and I just know. We walk in, we know whose call it is, who is doing what, and why we are doing it. When the shit hits the fan, we know where eachother will be stepping, what we’re going to do, and when we will do it.
When I work with my favorite partner, we hardly talk on calls. I find that the partners I don’t trust are the ones I talk to the most. I feel like I have to make sure they aren’t f’ing my license throughout the call. But the good ones just do their jobs.
A few weeks ago I was on a call with someone I will call notsogoodmedic and I just couldn’t figure it out. She had to tell me everything she was doing. She’d ask what I wanted to do. She’d ask if we were ready—all while it was her run. I think that calls like this make everyone think we’re all idiots. The patient cant rest because they don’t know if you can handle their care… The LEO’s and FF’s think we’re disorganized and stupid… The patient’s family gets scared because we’re about to take their loved one away and they don’t trust us…
The little ambulance that could has a “reputation”. One that isn’t one most services would be looking for… I just wish that some of the medics here a) saw that reputation b) realized their actions were responsible for it c) gave a damn to change it…
Tomorrow I work with one of my favorite partners, and I can’t wait. When we get a call we both know that the other person is going to do their job and thats it. Is it really that complicated?
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Posted by on May 27, 2009 • Filed under: partner, Stress • Tagged: ,