BLS Medical Director Interaction

EpiEMS · Feb 25, 2015

Very curious to hear how much/little BLS providers have with their service's medical director -- I, for one, have met mine once, but only in passing, and this is on an ALS service. what do you feel is the appropriate level of BLS providers/medical director level of interaction?

NomadicMedic · Feb 25, 2015

I think an annual CE session, with the medical director setting up his expectations for BLS, is probably more than enough. Really, the medical director shouldn't have to be intimately involved with a BLS service, unless he's overseeing remediation for QI issues.

However, I think medical directors should be involved in training and oversight for ALS providers. (But that's a whole 'nother topic)

Ewok Jerky · Feb 25, 2015

Very little. Medical directors have better things to do than teach BLS to peeps who should already know it. Even ALS, maybe a yearly get together, or occasional in-service for protocol changes. Medical directors should be more interactive with upper management making sure that the right indivudals are able to do there job and create a functional hierarchy.

RedAirplane · Feb 26, 2015

In my non-traditional first response role in college, my medical director was my primary care doctor as well as that of most of the students. He also ran the clinic on campus.

Chewy20 · Feb 26, 2015

We see ours all the time at CE and in the ED when hes working his rounds.

DesertMedic66 · Feb 26, 2015

It's not practical for us to meet with our medical director. Usually are medical directors are currently working in an ED somewhere. Since we use a county wide medical director, he would have to meet with a lot of providers (rough guess would be around 1,000).

However he does do some CE classes. As for protocol up dates we due what's called train the trainer (our FTOs get trained by the county EMS people who in turn train us).

Tigger · Feb 26, 2015

One of our three doctors comes up once a month for case review. Those are my favorite sort of CE, especially since they have access to the hospital EMR so we can get a followup on interesting patients beyond someone's vague recollection.

cfd3091 · Feb 26, 2015

He often stops by various stations just to talk and provide some insight on things. He is an excellent teacher. He makes up scenarios and asks what you would do to handle this patient. Of course they are mostly ALS type interventions but not always. Sometimes he seeing if you know when to keep it simple. He actually was at the station I was working today. We learned a lot.

Underoath87 · Feb 28, 2015

As everyone stated, medical directors shouldn't be preoccupied with BLS matters. Per my former managers, a medical director isn't even needed for BLS services in Florida (I haven't bothered to look that one up).

BlueJayMedic · Feb 28, 2015

We have a base hospital program that encapsulates about 10 services and has 12+ docs that can be reached by calling our base hospital patch number. We have annual service training sessions that give BLS providers their 8 hours mandatory CME credit and ALS 8 of their 24 total yearly CME required hours. We meet the head of the program once on initial certification if we're lucky and we will get her on the phone every now and then when we call. During the day the call directs to whatever doc is on via their cell and after hours goes to whatever ED doc that is working the trauma centre in the middle of the coverage area. We get a base hospital doc number at the end of the call for documentation and 9 times out of 10 we don't even get a name.

Eleventy7 · Feb 28, 2015

Our medical director goes over protocols with my boss every year. I talked to him once about meatloaf during my orientation before I knew who he was. Follow protocol, provide great patient care, and you really don't need more interaction than that. If we're really lost the ER doc is only a phone call away.

Tigger · Mar 1, 2015

Our medical director also occasionally responds to calls when he is bored and hears sirens. He throws a sharpied "medical director" traffic vest on and then provides on scene orders for maximal pain relief.

RedAirplane · Mar 1, 2015

Tigger said:
Our medical director also occasionally responds to calls when he is bored and hears sirens. He throws a sharpied "medical director" traffic vest on and then provides on scene orders for maximal pain relief.

That's awesome.

NomadicMedic · Mar 1, 2015

Tigger said:
Our medical director also occasionally responds to calls when he is bored and hears sirens. He throws a sharpied "CANDY MAN" traffic vest on and then provides on scene orders for maximal pain relief.

Fixed that for you.

Tigger · Mar 1, 2015

DEmedic said:
Fixed that for you.

Troof. I'm still waiting for him to do a chest tube in the back, it's going to happen.

ERDoc · Mar 2, 2015

I think a lot of it just depends on the size of your system and how it is set up. I came through the volley system in Suffolk County, NY. Our county medical director was responsible for something like 101 agencies (VACs and FDs) with a couple thousand EMTs and several hundred ALS providers. It's not really a set up for much hands on interaction. After I left the system they started carrying narcs and from what I understand, each agency has to have it's own medical director to oversee the narc program and each medical director can only oversee 5 agencies. I would imagine at that point it just depends on the doc.

samiam · Mar 2, 2015

At one of the systems I was at, they had ER residents do a 3 month rotation as the Medical Control Person and they had a fly car to respond to bigger calls or just when they were bored. It was also setup for MCI's with a really cool oxygen snake with like 20 attachments. It also had a bunch of cool advanced stuff in it.
*Edit: They actually were required to 4 non MCI/Trauma/Cardiac Arrest calls per 24 hr shift so they could build a better rapport with the medics. All of the EM residents also do a "grand rounds" twice a year where they suit up and learn how to use all of the EMS/Fire equipment.

Eleventy7 · Mar 2, 2015

samiam said:
*Edit: They actually were required to 4 non MCI/Trauma/Cardiac Arrest calls per 24 hr shift so they could build a better rapport with the medics. All of the EM residents also do a "grand rounds" twice a year where they suit up and learn how to use all of the EMS/Fire equipment.

Love it.

Nightmare · Mar 4, 2015

samiam said:
At one of the systems I was at, they had ER residents do a 3 month rotation as the Medical Control Person and they had a fly car to respond to bigger calls or just when they were bored. It was also setup for MCI's with a really cool oxygen snake with like 20 attachments. It also had a bunch of cool advanced stuff in it.
*Edit: They actually were required to 4 non MCI/Trauma/Cardiac Arrest calls per 24 hr shift so they could build a better rapport with the medics. All of the EM residents also do a "grand rounds" twice a year where they suit up and learn how to use all of the EMS/Fire equipment.

where do you work? i wanna work there!

samiam · Mar 4, 2015

Nightmare said:
where do you work? i wanna work there!

You would have to move to Michigan!

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