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A few years ago I wrote an iPhone app to log call times. I got good feedback about it but I never updated it and now I miss it. Yesterday I decided to re-do it as a super simple web page. It's hosted on my service's website http://www.swanamb.com/times It's free, no registration, no ads...

I was on a call recently for an unresponsive female with an unknown downtime. HX of ETOH abuse and family members stated "she was on meds for it", there was no evidence of alcohol on scene. Nor an evidence of an overdose She remained unresponsive, had irregular respirations at a rate of...

I learned about a cardiac arrest in my community recently. As often happens, the police were on scene before us. They do CPR and we provide them with AEDs. In this case, I know that the patient was shocked once and our paramedics were on scene almost immediately following that. I then heard...

For those that have not heard of Google Glass http://www.google.com/glass/start/how-it-feels/ it is a heads up display that takes voice commands. It is always online (via 3G or wifi) so it can retrieve anything that a regular device can. Most demos include "ok glass, record a video" and...

66 YOM found unresponsive in bathroom. Unknown down time estimated at over 2 hours. CBG was 18. Very diaphoretic and cold with snoring respirations. D50 administered and pt was verbally responsive in under 2 minutes. Question: (yes I know "it depends" and "every patient is...

Earlier today my office mate (42 YOM) said he felt crappy and he looked pale and clammy. I felt no radial pulse and took his bp (about 92/70, ish), his pulse was at least 120. This resolved itself in about 10 minutes where he had a strong radial pulse and a slower but irregular heart rate. He...

A bit of backstory. My father in law is 82 and has a 12 year history of Parkinson's. He's pretty advanced now and has reached a point of severe mobility issues, primarily when walking. If he wants a drink and needs to walk into the kitchen he can stand up from his recliner but will...

[I'm reposting this from the EMS subreddit, which apparently doesn't get a lot of readership] So you are dispatched to http://i.imgur.com/63xzp.png (caution - gore). Ultimately, I would apply a trauma dressing, pad and splint in place and transport. I'm BLS so obviously no pain management...

So I'm a basic with aspirations. When the call is low-ish priority I like to try and look at the LP15 before the medic. I can usually correctly make some of the simpler observations like A-Fib (and really if I can't see that I can't see a normal sinus rhythm). Friday we had an A-Fib patient...

I saw a photo recently of a 20 something female that was locked out of her house. She decided the best way to get in was to kick out a window (alcohol MAY have been a factor). The photo was of her foot showing a clean cut a few inches above her malleolus and the comment said that the...

Hello and welcome to "short attention span theater"! I'm your host, Simusid and I have a remarkably short attention span. I'm also a tremendous geek and today I'm fascinated by MakerBot, the 3D printer. You can actually "print" physical objects out of Lego(tm) plastic! See more here and...

We're a small service of about 50 providers. We have about 2300 calls per year in a suburban setting. We've had the same medical director for at least 8 years. I've only met him a couple of times, he's a nice guy, young-ish, and as far as I know does a competent job for us.... but very status...

We're a private non-profit 911 service. We are not affiliated w/ our town. We're dispatched by fire and are generally directed by the fire chief. Once in a while we have scenes that are appropriate for Incident Command. An example might be a 4 car accident on the highway, there might be 4...

I have a non-EMS friend who is an Angel Flight pilot. He flies patients to/from appointments a couple of times a week. I think his patients are mostly chronic "sick" people, not critical. It sounds like most of them are cancer patients who need to go a long distance to a large hospital for...

I had an interesting opportunity yesterday to ride with the president of one of our local hospitals. We are serviced by two local hospitals and according to our logs, we send far fewer patients to his facility. He was very clear up front with us that his visit was to find out why this is...

My service wants to buy two powered stretchers and I'm looking for feedback on Stryker Power Pro and Ferno Powerflexx+ (or similar). The most recent thread I see with a search here is from 2006. I do see todays thread about the Stryker Power Load system, boy I do wish we could afford that but...

Lets say you are an EMS Manager (General Manager, Operations Manager, QA Manager etc). What would you want to see in a single daily/weekly summary screen in order to get a snapshot of how your service is performing? What is important to you for overall monitoring/management/improvement...

I know that every medic treats scenes a bit differently. Some will walk into a house with nothing. Some want just a first in bag, etc. And obviously it depends on the nature of the call. My General manager is VERY big on "bring the care to the patient" rather than figuring out what you've...

We just approved $85K to build a class V non-transport ambulance "flight truck". This will let us staff our 2 911 trucks with staff and junior medics (typically 6 years or less of experience) and the Class V will be given to the senior medic to proceed to the calls as necessary for oversight...

Interesting article here http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/devices/the-shocking-truth-about-defibrillators about various failure modes of public AEDs. This got me thinking about our local AED maintenance plan, which is basically a best effort affair. We manage a total of about 25 that we own...