Fire Comm in ambulances?

[keith10247]

In our fire apparatus we have fire comm units for communication from the driver and officer to the personnel in the back of the unit. Does anybody have the fire comm units in their ambulances? Our current ambulance only has a 1' x 2' window between the front cab and rear patient compartment. We have no direct communication between the attendants in the back and the driver/officer. Our helmets hang on hooks that mostly block the windows so the attendant has to peak his head in to the window and yell to the driver.

The fire comm units also allow us to hear dispatch information about the call we are currently en route to. We do not have a radio speaker in the patient compartment so the attendants in the back usually do not know what we are going for unless we have our pagers with us. The patient compartment has a remote unit for communications outbound to dispatch communications and the hospital.

 

[Jon]

I guess you are talking about some sort of headset? These aren't a bad idea, especially in a medium duty or type I rig with minimal front/back communications.

 

[paramedix]

Good idea... fortunately we dont have that problem with our vehicles. We have an open space between the passenger and the driver. You can even lean over and grab something from the front if you want to.

In general it would be great to have a system in the back of the bus, mostly its the treating EMT thats going to speak to CC or the hospital.

 

[Grady_emt]

We dont have them, but our neighboring county does. The trade name is David Clark Headsets and theirs are set up with two sets in the front and one in the back. The two in the front are hooked up to the main 800mhz radio, and the one in the back is an intercom with the front set (no transmit/recieve on 800 or med channels)

 

[keith10247]

Thanks for the follow-up guys!

This is the product that we use in our fire apparatus: http://www.firecom.com/products/

I am strongly recommending them for our next ambulance. I cannot count how many times someone has peaked their head through the little window asking "Where are we?" It is a little hard to hear with the siren going. I know some will say "They shouldnt care about where you are as long as you get them there, but they have to call the hospital with an ETA or you will have to wait for a nurse to assign you a room. If you are lucky, they may even have a bed in the room, and if you are really lucky, the bed might have a fresh sheet on it!

 

[emt9577]

The MICU crews here at Life are requesting them to go in the older MICU units. They get noisy at times, and it would be great for them to be able to talk to the driver without having to yell at him, and also be able to use the radio without having to crawl up front and use it. We used to normally only put a radio in the front of all the units, but I am not getting either two radios one in the front, and one in the back, or dual-head units for our newer MICU's.

 

[Jon]

In my home county, every ambulance has a dual-head radio that communicates with the county as well as the hospitals. Where I work, we all carry portable radios, and the county radio is up front. We use cell phones to call the ED's for notification/command... or we ask the County to do it if we have our hands full.

I don't see a need for these headsets in our enviroment, on our rigs... but my volunteer FD has been talking about them for a while... the setup would allow the apparatus operator to hear and use the radios at the pump panel, and the operator and officer could talk on the radios while responding. The rest of the crew could talk back and forth, but not to the County. Fire Comm and David Clark both make headset systems... and I think there is another "big" vendor as well.

Jon

 

[gcfd_rez31]

that does sound cool. sad to say that we don't have them in our rigs.

i'm with a private ambulance company in WA and we take alot of psych calls and it would be alot nicer to talk to whoever is driving and to not take our eyes off of the pt!

 

[Grady_emt]

i'm with a private ambulance company in WA and we take alot of psych calls and it would be alot nicer to talk to whoever is driving and to not take our eyes off of the pt!

If you have to, you can text messege your partner, then they dont even know what you are saying ie: asking for PD to rendevous with you.

 

[rayemtjax77]

that might be good is U are transporting the patient BLS and something goes wrong and you are in a loud unit. the department here that I volunteer for has it.

 

[keith10247]

A good point was just mentioned regarding how this could be used in a situation where a BLS patient becomes worse. I was doing a BLS transfer last week, it was upgraded to an ALS but an ALS unit was not available in our part of the county. One of the assists in the back had to peek his head through to tell me to switch to a response to get him to the hospital.

Another good point was just mentioned in relation to psych patients...I can see this also in relation to drunks. They could snap at any minute and you could be in trouble. I know some of the ambulances around here have a camera that the driver can watch out of the corner of his eye while driving, in order to make sure all is OK in the back and that their PT isn't going out of control.

 

[k9shadow1]

Our unit runs calls in the back country, rough washboard dirt roads. We have a dual head Kenwood with a built in intercom. It works awesome. If i'm talking to the driver and dispatch calls we can hear it.

 

[lightsandsirens5]

We have them in one of our rigs. I really like them, especally sincce our rigs are built on F-350 super duty frames and the pass thru from the box to the cab is only about 1'x1'. :unsure: Our new rig dont have them and I really miss it. Hopefully we can get it in the rig we are ordering this winter. I highly reccomend the headset system.

 

[KEVD18]

05/19/2008

so much for the old thread/anti bumping feature.

 

[gcfd_rez31]

If you have to, you can text messege your partner, then they dont even know what you are saying ie: asking for PD to rendevous with you.

that is true. i have texted before.
i have even texted a partner in the back with me that was sitting in the captians chair. during a psych, 3 hr transport. i love texting!

 

[lightsandsirens5]

Oops! Sorry, Sorry. Didn't mean to awake an ond thread!

 

[Buzz]

I just lay on the alert button or loudly voice whatever I need to say towards the front. If someone up front can't hear me yelling from the back, then there is something seriously wrong there.

 

[frogtat2]

Fire comms

Our rigs have full access between the driver/patient compartments. This makes it fairly easy to communicate with the driver when you are in the back. We have also installed radio heads in the patient compartment of the rigs so that if we are in a situation where the driver needs all of their attention on the road, then the person in the back can contact dispatch and other resources that may be needed.

As for texting, we have no formal policy on it at this time, but it is strictly frowned on when you are the driver of the rig. Nearly a year ago we had a fatal accident where 2 families lost parents and children were seriously injured because the driver of a vehicle was texting and drifted over the center line and head-on impacted an oncoming vehicle. We'd just rather not take that chance.

 

[marineman]

All of our medics carry a handheld radio that they can use to contact dispatch or the county comm. center. We also have 2 radios in the patient compartment of each rig that are used to call in the report to the hospitals or they can also contact dispatch or the county comm. center, one of the radios also has an intercom feature that you can talk to the driver but most of the guys just yell. This system seems to work well but I have no experience with headsets to compare against. My only question with headsets is are the wireless or are you bound by a cord while trying to move about working on a patient in the back?