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Well, many of our patients demonstrate remarkably poor judgment despite being "older." No age seems to have a monopoly on terrible decision making.

The good news is that not everywhere in the US has the problems Special K describes, at least not to the same degree. Overall, our educational and career situation certainly leaves much to be desired compared to the Australian or NZ EMS systems, but it's not all gloom and doom. There are...

Witnessed asystolic cardiac arrest yesterday with manual compressions of varying quality on an elderly and morbidly obese patient with multiple comorbidities. Eyes were fixed and dilated, but EtCO2 remained ~60 mm Hg even after a while on our vent at 12 BPM. We worked him on scene for ~30...

It's very interesting to me how many factors other than call volume seem to go into cardiac arrest frequency for the average EMS provider or system. I was surprised in another thread how widely spread our exposures to cardiac arrest are, even for those working in high volume systems with...

Hmm. Very interesting how many different factors seem to go into this apart from call volume. I'll start a separate thread so as to avoid thread jacking.

Beautifully put, and I'm glad she had the courage to be honest and forthcoming. Unfortunately, I imagine DC leadership is even now searching for a more easily handled "yes man" to check off the box of medical director.

Two more heroin ODs last night. I finally looked up my stats for 2016. I have officially given Narcan more than any other drug this year. I have had more respiratory/cardiac arrests secondary to opiate ODs than any other call type. I've used a BVM on ODs 3x more often than I've even been in a...

This is outstanding. I've not had to remove a stuck ring, but I imagine this results in much happier patients than the more destructive methods.

Ironically, my top three are probably Zofran, Fentanyl, and Narcan.

Chili dog. You may think this one will be different. You may have convinced yourself you're better than the others who have tried and failed. It's not different, and you're not better. This ends only one way, and you're wearing a white shirt.

We actually did switch out the in line EtCO2 adapter because we thought the same thing. I also trouble shot it afterwards with a new capnography set up and it worked perfectly, returning to a baseline of zero like normal. It exhibited the same characteristics using a BVM and our ventilator, so I...

I ran a bit of an unusual cardiac arrest this AM and thought I'd run a couple questions by the forum. In short, we witnessed the arrest but have no history from the patient or anyone else. A third party caller from another town contacted 911 and advised the patient had contacted her and...

I appreciate running critical calls as much as (probably more than...) the next guy, but I've had 7 cardiac arrests, 3 RSIs, 2 critical traumas, and a growing collection of apneic heroin ODs just since the beginning of 2016. Anyone have a Grim Reaper costume I can borrow?

I've only had a couple of cases of refractory VF. I would desperately love to have a protocol for double sequential defibrillation, but my medical director shot it down.

I've heard of it, but there's not a chance I would have picked up on it during the call. Interesting case!

Hahaha. Where are these people working that 11% of paramedics have not seen a single cardiac arrest or DOA in 3 years??? I mean, I guess those 11% could all be people who either started last week or only run 10 calls a year... Who could have guessed practice makes perfect? At this rate, I...

Alaska uses the MICP designation for their paramedics. I think they still use EMT I-III just to be different too.

If you'd like higher acuity, consider additional education and some kind of CCT service. Even then, most of your patients may not require many interventions from you. Overall low acuity is the reality of EMS, particularly in "busy systems." Busy services are more commonly in urban environments...

Here's another possible layout. Sorry for the small size, but seriously, examples abound on the Internet with even a slight amount of Googling.

That's not a medical layout. Here's a pretty typical interior for a medical EC130. I have been in a helicopter like this. I 100% guarantee it is used for a HEMS role quite frequently. The LifeNet lettering on a helicopter is a pretty good clue it's used as an air ambulance too.