Recent content by wadford

lol back pocket has my wallet with my certs and two pennies, folding knife, cargo pockets have extra gloves, belt carries my radio and my cell phone case. The more you carry on you the more you have the potential to lose, or get snagged by. Keep it streamlined my friend.

The initial assessment is basically to determine priority. What you see, hear, smell. All of these things help you to determine if you need to get that patient on your cot and go, or if you have a bit more time to sit and talk with them and see what's going on. Some cases, you'll have a patient...

The system I work for is undergoing a systematic change from being a partial 24 hour system to a system that runs 12 hour shifts across the board. As for how we're staffed, all of our units are ALS, usually with a medic and a basic although they can be staffed as dual medic trucks. Depending on...

With the exception of airway equipment (opa,npa, ect) most of what you might need can be improvised for on scene. Gloves, 4x4's, a tourniquet, and maybe splints. If you get there prior to EMS then you can address any life threats, hold c-spine if needed and turn the pt over to the crew when they...

I'd be interested in the scopes of practice for each level as well as how the rural systems work.

I agree with beano, change it up. Try taking sometime off, get away from where you live, do something fun. Changing districts (if you can) might help too.

At both my jobs, they carry the cardboard splints, as long as you're immobilizing the injured extremity then use what works. I was on a volunteer call once when we didn't have splints and I ended up using part of a pizza box on the kid. It worked just as well.

I so wish this site had a facebook sharing option!! This is fantastic, really well written. Thank you.

I get that, and 99.9 percent of the time I do, it's a habit. This time for whatever reason I didn't. I simply thought doing paperwork on it was a bit of an overkill.

Ok so this is a little bit of a rant. I've been doing this for almost three years now and in that admittedly short amount of time I've learned a few things. There's policy, common sense and then there are good partners. The scenario goes as follows. We get finished running three calls...

In the county I work for we have a protocol where we can choose to not place someone in full c-spine precautions if all of the criteria in the protocol are met. No complaint of neck discomfort Normal mental status No evidence of intoxication No significant distracting injury No...

Congratulations!! I bet you are proud!! It is so very true that you have to keep learning especially in this field. With new information coming out almost daily, and new equipment being field tested....well there's just no reason not to keep up with it and there are innumerable benefits to...

Most partners will have their own sort of debriefing after each call, and sometimes this will take a while (days or weeks) on really bad calls or calls that just seem to get to you. I think that CISD as a whole is a good program and can potentially be great resource to have on hand post mass...

Well it certainly isn't for the money or the respect.....though on occasion I have had the random person come up to my partner and myself, thanking us for all that we do. It's kind of nice when that happens and you truly hope that you don't have to see her in a professional capacity. For me...

I currently work 911 with my medic partner. I do agree with the theory that sometimes basic partners can get rusty with their assessment skills simply because when we arrive on scene our medics are generally doing an initial just to determine if it will be their ride. Now it is absolutely true...