Have you ever used your EMT skills when you are off duty?

Jim37F said:
But to be charitable, yes if I was present, and a member of my family needed CPR I would absolutely jump on the chest. I don't think there's anyone here who wouldn't, but that's a pure hypothetical, and not a "what have you done" type as the question asks...
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If a member of your family needed CPR, and if your entire family was present, don't you think that you would be more qualified to give CPR than the members of your family that are not EMT's? Don't you think the other members of your family would step aside and defer to you and let you be the person to administer CPR (as opposed to one of them administering CPR) simply because you are an EMT?






 
NomadicMedic said:
You are clearly not an EMS provider.
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Correct.


NomadicMedic said:
Have you used your truck driving skills when you were off duty?
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Not really.

The closest thing I can think of is when I made a road trip from Chattanooga, TN to St. Louis, MO in my car, I did not have to use a map or GPS to find my way to St. Louis. I knew how to get from Chattanooga to St. Louis because of my knowledge of the interstates that I acquired from trucking.
 
MrCurious said:
If a member of your family needed CPR, and if your entire family was present, don't you think that you would be more qualified to give CPR than the members of your family that are not EMT's? Don't you think the other members of your family would step aside and defer to you and let you be the person to administer CPR (as opposed to one of them administering CPR) simply because you are an EMT?
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As has been said, it's easy to instruct someone else how to do CPR. wouldn't it therefore make more sense for you to instruct them on what to do and monitor their effectiveness while you use your skills for more advanced things such as maintaining airway, or even provide a more accurate report of what's going on to 911?
 
DrParasite said:
ummmm.. sure... but CPR is CPR, and if you are going CPR on a family member, it's a really bad day

I mean... yeah... my EMS training has helped me not do certain things....

Let's see.... I have not stick anything in my son's mouth when he started seizing... I also took off his clothes and took the blanket off him because his fever spiked....

When my son fell out of his high chair when my wife was feeding him, I didn't panic, I didn't call 911, but I did calm down my wife... she was more of a wreck than he was.

When my son fell down the stairs, I picked him up, made sure he wasn't dying or had anything broken, and walked him back up the stairs.

When my son was sounding croupy, I listened with my stethoscope, and told my wife we need to take him to the ER....
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What does croupy mean?

 
ffemt8978 said:
As has been said, it's easy to instruct someone else how to do CPR. wouldn't it therefore make more sense for you to instruct them on what to do and monitor their effectiveness while you use your skills for more advanced things such as maintaining airway, or even provide a more accurate report of what's going on to 911?
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Yes.

The spirit of this thread is how an EMT would likely be the leader in the first aid given to the person who needed CPR, even if the EMT is not administering the CPR himself.
 
Like I said upthread, i had a trucking teammate whose parents were EMT's, and his parents used their EMT skills to treat their other son when their other son had hypothermia.

I also used to be a trainer of truck drivers. One of my trucking students was a former EMT. His name is Mike. Mike also used to be a forklift driver at a Coca-Cola Distribution Center. Mike told me about how one time one of his co-workers at Coca-Cola was unconscious and needed CPR. I don't remember why Mike's co-worker's heart stopped working, but it was probably a heart attack. Mike told me that one of Mike's other co-workers was administering CPR on the unconscious man. Mike said that this other guy did not know what he was doing. So Mike said that he got him out of the way and administered CPR himself. This is an example of a former EMT using his EMT skills when he was not on duty as an EMT.
 
MrCurious said:
Not really.

The closest thing I can think of is when I made a road trip from Chattanooga, TN to St. Louis, MO in my car, I did not have to use a map or GPS to find my way to St. Louis. I knew how to get from Chattanooga to St. Louis because of my knowledge of the interstates that I acquired from trucking.
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You've never backed you car into a tight spot without using the rear view mirror?
 
DrParasite said:
You've never backed you car into a tight spot without using the rear view mirror?
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I could back a car into a tight spot by using the rear view mirror (and the side view mirrors) before I became a trucker. So that doesn't count.
 
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ffemt8978 said:
As has been said, it's easy to instruct someone else how to do CPR. wouldn't it therefore make more sense for you to instruct them on what to do and monitor their effectiveness while you use your skills for more advanced things such as maintaining airway, or even provide a more accurate report of what's going on to 911?
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I have seen that phrase "maintaining airway" in several different threads on this message board. What does "maintaining airway" mean exactly?
 
MrCurious said:
I have seen that phrase "maintaining airway" in several different threads on this message board. What does "maintaining airway" mean exactly?
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I'd recommend you at least take a CPR for Healthcare providers course at a minimum. At this time, you don't have the fundamental knowledge needed. I appreciate your desire to learn, but without that necessary foundation, the answer to your question won't be effective.
 
ffemt8978 said:
I'd recommend you at least take a CPR for Healthcare providers course at a minimum. At this time, you don't have the fundamental knowledge needed. I appreciate your desire to learn, but without that necessary foundation, the answer to your question won't be effective.
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Since ffemt8978 does not want to answer the question, can someone else tell me what maintaining airway means?
 
I mean it means to maintain the airway. To understand what that means properly, you need multiple chapters from EMS training curriculum on everything from Anatomy and Physiology to what an Oropharyngeal Airway (or maybe Nasopharyngeal Airway) are and how they work and what the dangers of emesis are in someone who can't maintain their airway, and several other related issues, that cannot be properly written out in a blog post, when what you're asking for is a (well several) full on lessons from a training program.

No offense meant, but since you've already claimed an interest in signing up for such a program, the fastest and easiest way for you to get answers you'll actually understand is to go through said program. From there, if there's something you still don't understand, we can help explain or clarify, but that can really only be done effectively with someone that already speaks the basic language with the basic foundations of the knowledge needed to hold the discussion properly in the first place
 
MrCurious said:
Since ffemt8978 does not want to answer the question, can someone else tell me what maintaining airway means?
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The joys of asking a question on a forum...you get the answers you're given, not necessarily the ones you want.
 
Plus 1 for the Dad Joke.

@MrCurious I kindly suggest you work on your delivery because as others mentioned you’re coming across as a bit condescending to a group you’re wanting to learn from.

I think the irony in all of this is that you have something in common with @ffemt8978 and not just the EMS experienced-to-novice ratio.
 
VentMonkey said:
Plus 1 for the Dad Joke.

@MrCurious I kindly suggest you work on your delivery because as others mentioned you’re coming across as a bit condescending to a group you’re wanting to learn from.

I think the irony in all of this is that you have something in common with @ffemt8978 and not just the EMS experienced-to-novice ratio.
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I was avoiding mentioning that because it doesn't really pertain to the conversation, but yeah.
 
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