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Really interesting video; I'm very out of the loop on the TCCC stuff. Synthetic blood substitutes have been looked at for many years and would clearly be a game changer for some battlefield patients, but many casualties would still require early damage control surgery which realistically will...

That was a good one for sure but his role in Heat was my favorite

My wife and I love camping but I've gotten old and soft so I really like to be off the ground on a real mattress and to not have to worry about setting up or taking down a tent, especially in the rain. Also, having at least a fan is really nice when it's hot. So I thought about getting a cap for...

Bed of a pickup with a cap is a good option for a minimalist camper setup. You can also keep a tent and such tucked away in there in case you don't feel like sleeping in the truck, or can't quite get your truck to the place you want to camp.

That's exactly how things were when I started in the late 1990's. It wasn't uncommon to have a firefighter or two, or occasionally someone from a second ambulance crew ride to the hospital and help out, but that was far from a given. The baseline expectation was that a two-person ambulance crew...

Thanks for the quick reply.

What is everyone using these days to review for the NREMT Paramedic exam? Any preferred websites or books? Any of the iPhone apps considered to be a good resource?

It's hilarious that after all these years, ability to intubate is still the very first thing brought up in almost any discussion comparing nurses and paramedics :cool: The NCBSN (very loosely analogous to the NREMT) is what I think he is referring to and they do publish minimum scope of...

Congrats on 40 years. That's definitely a rare milestone. I've been one of the "haters" for a long time and it definitely has never been because I had any trouble passing the exams. I passed easily on my first attempt shortly after finishing paramedic school, in a state in which it wasn't...

The "crazy" ones who survive aren't crazy at all; they are just mentally healthy and resilient. That statement implies nothing negative all towards the majority of us who aren't very mentally resilient. It's just the world we live in now. We are all a product of our environment. What we used to...

Sorry to hear about this. RIP to the crew and I hope that their families and friends can soon find peace. These at least seem to have become much less common than they were in the early-mid 2000's, when HEMS bases were proliferating like crazy all over the country and crashes seemed like such a...

Again, we are talking about an entirely administrative and political role. This interim chief will be sitting in meetings with city and state officials making decisions about budgets and requesting funds for priorities given to her by her under chiefs and other advisors, not fighting fires...

Honestly I don't see it as a big deal at all. A big city Chief is an entirely administrative / political position and good skills in that regard combined with a strong public safety background and familiarity with the department overall would seem quite sufficient to me, at least for an interim...

The process may be easier and more flexible now 10+ years later, but maintaining the required CE was prohibitive for me at the time for reasons that I don't specifically remember. I think the requirement at the time was to take specifically accredited CE's which simply weren't available to me...

PIV's are probably the easiest application of US to learn but as you say, it still takes quite a bit of practice to get to where you can do it quickly and efficiently. I can definitely see agencies struggling with that as well as seeing it delay transport times.

Your situation is not unlike mine, other than the fact that my hiatus from EMS was due to pursing higher education in another (arguably related) clinical field. It is really unfortunate that the NREMT makes it so difficult to maintain certification, especially considering the nationwide demand...

A person can experience increased work of breathing and the associated anxiety and offer the subjective complaint of "I feel like I can't breathe" while having a normal or near-normal Sp02. An otherwise healthy and fit person can have a pneumothorax or a PE, for instance, but compensate quite...

It's common practice to avoid benzos in older folks. In that population their effects tend to be less predictable and last longer, but more importantly they are associated with an increased risk of postoperative cognitive dysfunction, which is already a much higher risk than in younger populations.

Re-watched Terminator and Terminator 2 this past weekend. Boring, I know. Just seemed timely given current events. Not nearly as good as I remembered, unfortunately.

That's a good question. It is true that most patient complaints and problems encountered in EMS are not something that you as an EMS provider can do much about. You aren't going to do anything in the prehospital phase about an obstructing tumor in the colon, a low fiber diet, chronic opioid use...