New Orleans EMS A&E show! *Video*

[irishboxer384]

I think that @Smash has made some valid points and intelligently provided reasons for his opinions...it is a forum where anyone can air their views, and he has provided sound, logical reasoning, whether you agree or not with what he is saying.

 

[Angel]

its not a matter of him saying them or not, hes said them repeatedly, and still wont lay off it. thats annoying and quite frankly dumb but hey, thats just me. anyway, he can say whatever he wants now, i wont be seeing it. now everyone's happy. im so glad i discovered the ignore feature, makes for a more pleasant experience on the forum =)
good night

 

[Mufasa556]

Do you believe that not wearing a seatbelt when driving around sends a good message to all those watching this show?

Probably not, but I haven't been paying that close attention to observe when they are or are not wearing one. Nor if I did, would I decide to not wear it because the Nightwatch cast doesn't wear theirs.

I will openly admit that I don't regularly wear a seatbelt in the patient compartment. I get busy doing different things and forget. I don't believe not wearing it turns me into some rogue provider. I know we have a policy regarding seat belts and would fully accept any reprimand. From an article I've read, NOEMS management has reviewed the shows episodes and disciplined employees for mistakes and policy violations that have been observed.

Do you believe that attempting to intubate a patient without drugs, whose primary problem is likely to be a lack of circulating voume, is conducive to their survival?

While out of my scope of practice as a basic, wasnt it determined that they had an MD on board who was most likely doing his ride times? Which brings me to my final point....

Most importantly, do you believe that appearing to punish a patient by giving naloxone when there is no apparent clinical need to administer the drug, is something a professional would do?

I read a book written by one of the soundmen of the TV show COPS. He stated that the COPS crew would ride with a department for three months to film a segment. Each segment gets edited down to 7 minutes.

So, you take all the raw footage from New Orleans into the edit bay and now have to cut it down and make it fit the allotted 42 minute runtime of an hour long TV show. Plus, you're editing multiple segments of varying time into the same 42 minutes. I'm fairly confident that the editors are not EMS providers and are not too concerned with the clinical aspects. They're there to tell the story. So, with the GSW intubation or drug administration, I'm sure parts of that are cut out and as ems providers we notice these weird plot jumps from A-D and it can be confusing. Whereas for a layperson, the story flows nice and smoothly.

Egregious acts of unprofessionalism? That's quite a stretch don't you think? It's a reality based TV show not Skid Marks the reality show. We have two EMS based TV shows currently airing. Nightwatch and Sirens. I think Nightwatch does a decent job exposing people to the job we are all passionate about.

 

[triemal04]

Most importantly, do you believe that appearing to punish a patient by giving naloxone when there is no apparent clinical need to administer the drug, is something a professional would do?

I read a book written by one of the soundmen of the TV show COPS. He stated that the COPS crew would ride with a department for three months to film a segment. Each segment gets edited down to 7 minutes.

I love it when someone tries to answer a question without answering the question.

I can't understand why some people are getting so uptight and freaked out when this show get's critisized; are you one of the providers shown? Know them? Work for NOEMS? People please...it's a "reality" TV show that will live or die based on how entertaining it is. For the professionals, that means that some of the things shown will be known to be innapropriate and wrong, while a layman will just think it's cool and how things are.

And like it or not, if the content of the show, edited or otherwise, is only filled with things that are "entertaining," there will be plenty of parts that portray the people in it in a very poor light. This may be right or not, but...all there is to go off is what's shown. And if what's shown is a very poor example of a paramedic...well...c'est la vie.

 

[NomadicMedic]

I think the intubation attempt without drugs was pretty sketchy. But, it looked like an ER doc doing it, not the medics. So, they get the benefit of the doubt on that one.

The Narcan without respiratory compromise is also pretty sketchy. However, I'm going to guess that the segment was pretty tightly edited, but the medic's comments weren't exactly customer service focused.

In further episodes, I've noticed that it's less "super medic" and more truly focused on the job. It is entertainment, after all. There's gotta be something meaty to keep people coming back. After watching it more, I give it a solid B+.

If you're really upset with the content, 44Blue Productions has a website with contact information. Drop them a note.

 

[Tigger]

Ok.

 

[chaz90]

Agreed with above. The intubation attempt and Narcan were the worst things I've seen on there. For some of the other things that I don't necessarily agree with, I try to imagine that they too are constrained by protocols they don't have control over and have to do the best they can with what they have. There are absolutely some cliches and things they say that drive me nuts, but then again I have colleagues that say some of the same things. We're all entitled to different opinions on what EMS is about, and I'm training to maintain some semblance of recognition that not everyone thinks the same way I do.

 

[Burritomedic1127]

@Smash Most likely you didnt watch the latest episode but tell me if you think a medic buying toys, with his own money, for potential pediatric patients is an egregious lack of professionalism? Or the medics that attempt to fix an electrical breaker on a call for a patient? This is real life stuff. EMS calls are rarely well orchestrated perfect ground breaking acts of medicine, its all customer service. Now I'm not saying everyone should call 911 if their toilet is broken, but these acts previously mentioned show true professionalism by "helping" the pt by any means. Remember at the end of the day were here to help people and not count up how many badass "tubes i dropped" or "lines i started". What would be unprofessional was if no effort was made to "help" someone on a non medical 911. Alot of people, from other public services as well, could have easily pawned off the work due to "thats not my job".
The cliches has slowed and havent seen any more random doctors showing up out of nowhere for intubations. Show to me shows the real side of a busy city EMS system

 

[Smash]

@Smash Most likely you didnt watch the latest episode but tell me if you think a medic buying toys, with his own money, for potential pediatric patients is an egregious lack of professionalism? Or the medics that attempt to fix an electrical breaker on a call for a patient? This is real life stuff. EMS calls are rarely well orchestrated perfect ground breaking acts of medicine, its all customer service. Now I'm not saying everyone should call 911 if their toilet is broken, but these acts previously mentioned show true professionalism by "helping" the pt by any means. Remember at the end of the day were here to help people and not count up how many badass "tubes i dropped" or "lines i started". What would be unprofessional was if no effort was made to "help" someone on a non medical 911. Alot of people, from other public services as well, could have easily pawned off the work due to "thats not my job".
The cliches has slowed and havent seen any more random doctors showing up out of nowhere for intubations. Show to me shows the real side of a busy city EMS system

You are correct, I have not. The medics doing that sort of thing should be commended for their humanity and humility, it is highly admirable.

You are right that not all calls (indeed very few calls) are well orchestrated, perfect or groundbreaking, although we should be striving for these things every time. And I also agree that a large component of EMS is customer service.
So I will pose you just one of the questions I asked that no-one seems to want to answer: do you believe that giving a patient narcan, when there is no apparent need for it, and apparently in order to punish them, appropriate behaviour from an EMS professional?

Maybe they have shown a little humanity in later episodes, and again, that is to be commended. But unless they are going to treat all their patients with that respect, the bad taste remains in my mouth.

 

[Angel]

No one wants to answer because none of us was there, neither were you. So you don't know what the medics intentions were nor do you know what happened before or after. You're judging them based on a 5 minute snippet of a call that's been cut and edited down. Is that right?
Can we move on now?

 

[triemal04]

No one wants to answer because none of us was there, neither were you. So you don't know what the medics intentions were nor do you know what happened before or after. You're judging them based on a 5 minute snippet of a call that's been cut and edited down. Is that right?
Can we move on now?

And so are you.

Everyone is basing their opinion, good, bad, or indifferent off a highly edited and cut down "reality" show.

You can either answer the question, or admit to the hypocrisy of it.

 

[Angel]

Not sure how else you can interpret a guy buying dolls for scared pediatrics, or calming a nervous expectant mother and doing something most no one would, touch her with your bare hands *gasp*
How dare they?
Are we even watching the same thing?
I did answer the question, you don't like my answer?
Too bad.

 

[triemal04]

Not sure how else you can interpret a guy buying dolls for scared pediatrics, or calming a nervous expectant mother and doing something most no one would, touch her with your bare hands *gasp*
How dare they?
Are we even watching the same thing?
I did answer the question, you don't like my answer?
Too bad.

...I don't know what any of that was about. Really.

You haven't actually answered Smash's question. You refused to answer by saying:

No one wants to answer because none of us was there, neither were you. So you don't know what the medics intentions were nor do you know what happened before or after. You're judging them based on a 5 minute snippet of a call that's been cut and edited down.

But you go on to ignore the simple fact that the entire show is made up of times when

none of us was there, neither were you. So you don't know what the medics intentions were nor do you know what happened before or after. You're judging them based on a 5 minute snippet of a call that's been cut and edited down.

That is hypocrisy.

I don't know, but am very curious; why are you getting so upset over this show? Are you just a super fan of it?

 

[Burritomedic1127]

Where I work there is a very bad heroin problem (along with everywhere else) but I'll average 1-2 overdoses (there's been many more in one day) per 24 hour shift. That being said, our protocols, medical direction, and local hospitals took awhile to get on the same page with Narcan administration. Initially, we were told to administer Narcan off of unresponsive (nodding off) and decreased respiratory drive, which some medics and basics here, gave Narcan for a patient just nodding off. For awhile the hospital was fine with this, but then they became upset when incompetent providers would slam 2mg and now the pt's is combative. Other side of the coin, our company would be getting complaints that medics/emts didn't administer Narcan to a patient nodding off. It was a lose/lose. Now everywhere is speaking the same language, doesnt matter is they are unresponsive or nodded off as long as they have and adequate respiratory drive with good saturations and end tidal. During that initially time period, pt's were definitely threatened with Narcan to stay awake with no intent of actually giving the medication. 9/10 the junkie hears Narcan and they"ll wake up and start telling you how they are allergic to it and blah blah but look at that, they're awake and breathing.

Would like to watch the whole scene again but I'm agreeing with angel on this one, we don't know how it was cut up or what he was seeing in his assessment. Also we don't know how handcuffed they are to their protocols either.

Also for the sake of discussion, that provider seems to have left NOEMS. Say he did give Narcan for no strong reason (very subjective), could we attribute burn out? We all have those 1-2 ****ty providers at our workplaces that do dumb things, but does that means everything else done after that, like the things earlier in the thread that were commended), are disregarded?

 

[Burritomedic1127]

I know this question was directed at angel but no I'm not a super fan. Not to get too deep about how the media/televsion can influence peoples opinion based on what angle they air a report/show, but I'm calling it as I wasn't there and I don't know all the facts.

I had a brief stint on a local FD here, when I got a call for the dump truck that hit telephone wires and pulled down the telephone pole. The telephone was about 25ft from a minivan with nobody inside, witnesses of the accident reported that no one was inside the car prior to the accident. Later on that day, you hear on the TV, "mother and infant merely escape with their lives form a falling telephone pole." You could only laugh at how pathetic it was

 

[Angel]

So anyway, I will say, the episodes keep getting better and better. I like that the last one showed their home life just a tad, Dan has a nice house! I was rather impressed by that. I wonder if next season will be the same crew or different ones.

 

[One Confused EMT]

Is there still somewhere online I can see it?

 

[NomadicMedic]

It's on amazon video.

 

[SandpitMedic]

Anyone else watching the new season?
They seem a lot better than last season.

Although, during the 1st episode, watching Holly rub her face and eyes with her gloves during the code was like... Ew! Then she put the expo marker she'd been scribing with in her mouth... Double ew!

That's all I could focus on... How she will be patient 1 (right after patient 0) of some plague on mankind or bio/chem contaminated patient.

 

[escapedcaliFF]

Lets all remember its TV. Its heavily edited to make it more exciting then it really is. The medics chosen to be on the show are done so for ratings reason. They are trying to make it like COPS but will never be able to make it that good.