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josh rousseau

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Does the paramedic wear the radio or do the emt and paramedic both wear radios
 
Yes. No. Sometimes. It depends.

There is no one answer to this question and it varies greatly crew to crew and person to person.
 
Ohh makes some sense thank you
 
I've worked for 4 EMS services, only 1 of them even had portable radios for the crew too begin with, and that was a fire department based service where everyone (both EMTs on the ambulance and the 4 crewmembers on the engine) had a portable radio and everyone was expected to bring theirs in on calls.

Of the remaining services I've worked for, all private companies, only one had something similar. It was one of those worksite phones that have a push to talk feature so they could essentially function as a portable if need be (and that's how they were used ~90+% of the time, as a portable to talk to dispatch, sometimes the other crew from your station, or another crew for whatever reason.....plus the occasional spam phone call lol). On calls, dispatch/management didn't care who carried it in, as long as someone did. My personal experience was whoever was driving tended to carry it, but that was all crew dependant. Some guys who were attending that shift liked to carry it since that was the same phone used to call in to the hospital (for the handful that wanted one). So no, no hard and fast rules regarding who carried it (or a longer-winded way of saying what Desert said while I was still typing this lol). I would imagine most services that only have a single portable for the crew would operate the same way, i.e. as long as someone carries it, they don't care who exactly does.

The other two private companies I worked for didn't even have that, just the issued pagers. If you were away from the rig, and needed to talk to dispatch, or have an extended conversation you'd have to call them on your cell phone, which could be a pain on occasion but was an infrequent enough occurrence that it wasn't a huge deal.
 
if you work for a decent 911 EMS agency, both the EMT and paramedic will have radios. The reason for this is primarily safety related (if you need to call for help), and the radio is your direct communication to dispatch. And you might have to work separately from your partner during a multi patient incident, or if one of you needs to get additional equipment from the truck to help with a sick patient.

If you only work in IFT, then the probability of you needing emergency assistance is much lower, so you might get one or no radios at all, especialy since you are normally always with your partner or within shouting range.

As long as you have some way to communicate with your dispatch center, most agencies won't care who carries the radio
 
Jim37F said:
only 1 of them even had portable radios for the crew too begin with
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Jim, were the other 3 purely IFT companies?

DrParasite said:
if you work for a decent 911 EMS agency, both the EMT and paramedic will have radios. The reason for this is primarily safety related
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+1, if you don't have a radio, you're out of the loop.
 
CAAS accreditation requires both crew (or *all* crew, really) to have portable radios. That's what I was told.
 
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EpiEMS said:
Jim, were the other 3 purely IFT companies?
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The 1st company I worked for was pure IFT only, they only had pagers.
The 2nd company likewise had pagers only but was both 911 and IFT. It was also street corner posting only....so someone had to be in the rig at all times, which could be fun if you wanted to run in to use the bathroom at the business you were parked in front of lol. At least once I was ordering from Chick-Fil-A, swipe my card, look over out the windows, and the rig started flashing its red lights (our agreed upon signal that we had a call).
The 3rd Agency was the FD based EMT program where we all had portables (well more specifically, the ambulance had 2 portables inside it for the crew to use, they didn't issue a portable to every individual)
And my 4th company was the one that was primary 911 with some side IFT that had the single push-to-talk phone in each rig.
(my current FD that I'm still in training for, once again has portables for each spot on the trucks. I'll have to verify later, but I'm pretty sure the City&County EMS Agency also has portables for each of their crew members)
 
Jim37F said:
The 1st company I worked for was pure IFT only, they only had pagers.
The 2nd company likewise had pagers only but was both 911 and IFT. It was also street corner posting only....so someone had to be in the rig at all times, which could be fun if you wanted to run in to use the bathroom at the business you were parked in front of lol. At least once I was ordering from Chick-Fil-A, swipe my card, look over out the windows, and the rig started flashing its red lights (our agreed upon signal that we had a call).
The 3rd Agency was the FD based EMT program where we all had portables (well more specifically, the ambulance had 2 portables inside it for the crew to use, they didn't issue a portable to every individual)
And my 4th company was the one that was primary 911 with some side IFT that had the single push-to-talk phone in each rig.
(my current FD that I'm still in training for, once again has portables for each spot on the trucks. I'll have to verify later, but I'm pretty sure the City&County EMS Agency also has portables for each of their crew members)
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In LA County any paramedic ambulance is required to have a portable radio. So we had one (at Bowers) it rarely if ever, got used. Like literally once. Probably because someone needed the batteries for their Bluetooth speaker.
 
We both wear one. But one monitors ems, one monitors pd.
 
NPO said:
So we had one (at Bowers) it rarely if ever, got used. Like literally once.
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were you an IFT system, or a 911 system? and if you were 911, and you never used your radio, how did you communicate with dispatch?
 
In my service, all staff have portables. Anything less is a safety issue and i wont put a truck on the road without them. Even when we have students and other riders, they get a portable
 
chriscemt said:
CAAS accreditation requires both crew (or *all* crew, really) to have portable radios. That's what I was told.
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CAAS can mandate bannanna flavored lip gloss if they're so inclined; that has about as much to do with what actually happens as the price of tea in China.

I worked for a CAAS accredited service a few years back. They waved their CAAS badge around like an Olympic gold medal. On a good day, each truck got one radio. On a really good day, it might work half the time.

A real service provides a radio for every member, repairs or replaces them forthwith when they fail, and has backups to facilitate an immediate return to full service capabilities. Anything less than that is, well, pretty standard.....
 
hometownmedic5 said:
They waved their CAAS badge around like an Olympic gold medal.
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CAAS seems to be a bit...weak...

I'd be curious to know how often they do surprise inspections...
 
My service is CLASS accredited and they're quite proud of it. Unfortunately I've seen too many shady agencies with a CAAS logo to care much.

It's all good in theory, but ultimately it's just like the Better Business Bureau, pay for a badge.
 
I can tell in about ten minutes if a particular be service is worth a damn or not, and I do t need the opinion of a buy a better rating agency like CAAS.

Maybe CAMTS means something, maybe not; but CAAS is worthless IMNSHO.
 
josh rousseau said:
Does the paramedic wear the radio or do the emt and paramedic both wear radios
Click to expand...

When I'm in the field both the RN and Medic carry UHF radios and we trade off who carries the VHF/800 radio and satellite phone.
 
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