Former Membership Roster

[planetmike]

In the course of cleaning out my building, I found ALL of our old call reports from 1960-1988. They were buried in the back of a closet that was packed full of old equipment. While interesting to look through, we have no need to keep these old reports now. I’m going through them and building a list of our members and the dates they were active. I am looking for ideas on what to do with this data, I’m thinking one kind of an art installation that can grow into the future. That would help tie our current members into our past.

 

[EpiEMS]

ALL of our old call reports from 1960-1988

Oh man, that is just *begging* for a retrospective review of...something! Like use of MAST/PASG, or backboards, or...or...ratcheting tourniquets?!

I'm getting all...epidemiology-y thinking about it.
How many reports are you looking at?

 

[RocketMedic]

As far as the calls go, agencies need to keep documentation for seven years past the call date for adult patients, and seven years past the age of majority for pediatric patients. With data this old, there's no need to keep any of it, most of those patients are long since deceased. Iron Mountain is your friend.

 

[planetmike]

How many reports are you looking at?

I started looking through 1979’s folder, just because that is the stack of reports that was on top. The month of April had about 200 reports or so. There are eleven banker’s boxes total. So I’d estimate each box has 1,500 reports. So we’re looking at 16,000+ reports. In 1958 we ran 32 calls. In 2015, our agency ran 1,400 calls (nights and weekends only).

It is kind of cool seeing how documentation has changed over the years. Carbon paper forms, to multi-sheet carbon forms, to a different form for BLS vs ALS calls, to our current 6+ page reports generated by ImageTrend.

 

[EpiEMS]

I started looking through 1979’s folder, just because that is the stack of reports that was on top. The month of April had about 200 reports or so. There are eleven banker’s boxes total. So I’d estimate each box has 1,500 reports. So we’re looking at 16,000+ reports. In 1958 we ran 32 calls. In 2015, our agency ran 1,400 calls (nights and weekends only).

It is kind of cool seeing how documentation has changed over the years. Carbon paper forms, to multi-sheet carbon forms, to a different form for BLS vs ALS calls, to our current 6+ page reports generated by ImageTrend.

Wow. That's awesome. I think the mix of medical/trauma calls would be interesting to see over time, especially in terms of what the cause of injury was.

 

[NomadicMedic]

Wow. That's awesome. I think the mix of medical/trauma calls would be interesting to see over time, especially in terms of what the cause of injury was.

...And the treatment and how the narrative was written.

 

[EpiEMS]

...And the treatment and how the narrative was written.

Definitely.
I'm hoping to hear about lots of KED extrications and MAST application

 

[NomadicMedic]

Rotating tourniquets and EOAs.

 

[EpiEMS]

Rotating tourniquets and EOAs.

EOAs - wow, they're still selling them!