Dispatched: Injured From Assault - A Messy Scene

[Melclin]

Language barrier so assessment took a long time with my broken spanish! But yeah, as assessment with vitals might have been nice. Then again, if it only takes 20 seconds, why not start getting out of the neighborhood and make the transport decision later?

Fair enough, with the language barrier. I suppose you could do you vitals on the way. Scoop and scoot is important in this case, I understand that. I still feel you need to actually build a picture of whats going on before you make any clinical decisions. Taking vitals en route is more difficult and less accurate than on scene. You have to know where you're going before you start going there, but I suppose if the situation was such that you'd be driving the same way initially anyway you could do that. Still as a rule I would say baseline vitals should be taken on scene, as soon as possible.

Also, engine medics are per union rules. And most medics only have 2 paramedics on them. We run 3 man crews and we had a rider that day.

Why do firetrucks have medics on them? Why don't the medics come in an ambulance? Seems kind of silly driving to a sick or injured person in a fire truck. Sorry, I'm still trying to wrap my head around some aspects of American EMS, humour me.

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[WuLabsWuTecH]

The city firetrucks carry AED and a jumpbag. 32 of the 34 engines also have a full compliment of drugs. This allows the engine to treat cardiac calls and other calls if the medic in their district is already on a run while waiting the additional 3-4 minutes to get another distric't medic there. For example, yesterday medic 27 was out on a run and medic 11 which is in the next district over was in. When a call came in that was in Station 27's service area, Engine 27 could take care of it in 3 minutes. Medic 11 would take about 8 minutes to get there.

Also, yesterday we were doing standby EMS for a festival (but as a fire dept we were still allowed to leave should a call come in). Well, there are 5 surrounding districts who's medics were all on runs. So no matter where the next call came in, we would be the medic assigned to it. Unfortuantely, that's a 15 minute response time if the call was on the other edge of our adjacent district's boundaries, but their engine could get there about 5 times faster than we can.

Finally, the union requires that all FF's take a Paramedic Class. Many, many people disagree with this, but since it would be unfair to pay 2 groups of people roughly the same wages, yet have one group run 10 times as many calls, it was decided that an engine/medic rotation would be set up. 6 guys covers an engine (4) and a medic (1). On Day 1, A & B are on the medic, C,D,E,F are on Engine. Day 2, C,D are on medic, A,B,E,F are on the engine. You get the drill. It's actually more complicated since not ALL FF's are medics since some are still in school, but you get ths gist.

Finally, yes, the could pay medics more (and do, they get a 5% bonus when working on the medic) but paying them a lot more than the FF's caused outrage since even though FF's work fewer calls, the union deemed them just as important of a service and by giving medics more money, would mean cutting FF's wages.

 

[FFMckenzie]

The city firetrucks carry AED and a jumpbag. 32 of the 34 engines also have a full compliment of drugs. This allows the engine to treat cardiac calls and other calls if the medic in their district is already on a run while waiting the additional 3-4 minutes to get another distric't medic there. For example, yesterday medic 27 was out on a run and medic 11 which is in the next district over was in. When a call came in that was in Station 27's service area, Engine 27 could take care of it in 3 minutes. Medic 11 would take about 8 minutes to get there.

Also, yesterday we were doing standby EMS for a festival (but as a fire dept we were still allowed to leave should a call come in). Well, there are 5 surrounding districts who's medics were all on runs. So no matter where the next call came in, we would be the medic assigned to it. Unfortuantely, that's a 15 minute response time if the call was on the other edge of our adjacent district's boundaries, but their engine could get there about 5 times faster than we can.

Finally, the union requires that all FF's take a Paramedic Class. Many, many people disagree with this, but since it would be unfair to pay 2 groups of people roughly the same wages, yet have one group run 10 times as many calls, it was decided that an engine/medic rotation would be set up. 6 guys covers an engine (4) and a medic (1). On Day 1, A & B are on the medic, C,D,E,F are on Engine. Day 2, C,D are on medic, A,B,E,F are on the engine. You get the drill. It's actually more complicated since not ALL FF's are medics since some are still in school, but you get ths gist.

Finally, yes, the could pay medics more (and do, they get a 5% bonus when working on the medic) but paying them a lot more than the FF's caused outrage since even though FF's work fewer calls, the union deemed them just as important of a service and by giving medics more money, would mean cutting FF's wages.

So your telling me the captain the engineer and the two firefighters are all paramedics? How do they get crusty old captains to go to medic school?

Im going to be one of those people to go ahead and say thats stupid. An engine company with just firefighter medics is sufficient. The captain and the engineer/Lt have other things to do than patient care depending on the nature of the call.

Not to mention how many captains have you ever seen that are engine/truck captains that do patient contact unless its a MCI.

They are usually the IC and doing all the radio work and the engineer is often the one doing the PCR and handing stuff to the firefighter/s.

I just find that ratio 4 medics on one engine to be ridiculous waste of training and time. Unless that engine is staffed 6-0 with 4 firefighters then yea....

In the end it sounds like the union did not really help the firefighters in the big picture. I dont understand who would gripe if the medic gets payed a bit more at the end of the month that was there incentive to go to medic school and take much more responsibility.

I think that most medic firefighters should get even more than they do in the first place they bare allot of the responsibility of the call.

If it means I get payed less who cares they are earning that extra pay!!!