What a joke. I notice they FAIL to provide any statistics that would support this move. That's because there probably are none. Most medics go through an entire career without ever seeing a true anaphylaxis. And those that do usually find that SQ epi is inadequate to make a difference.
This is going to cost the bankrupt City of New York a lot of money for zero return.
Think so? Were do you run, AJ? Rural, city, or suburban? Because in my run area (suburban and city) we see a true anaphylatic emergency at least once a week. By the time we show up, the person is unconscious or barely there, obvious difficulty breathing (a few arrests too) and all the other symptoms with it. Maybe city folks are too stupid to avoid peanuts, I don't know.
Either way, we deal with this a lot. Usually it's the Benadryl treatment that does the most good, and the epi injection buys time to get the IV in. This is always done by ALS, obviously.
But as Epi-pens are an BLS skill, provided you have medical control of course, I see no reason not to have them available so long as they still require medical control to administer. When I was still running as BLS, we had a couple cases of a major reaction where our unit showed up before ALS, and they even said they wished we could have dropped an Epi-Pen to stave off the reaction a bit until they were able to make it.
Besides the reasoning you usually have of wanting everyone to get mediced up instead of passing more and more down to the Basic level (a valid complaint, but not pertinent to the current discussion), what don't you like about this prospect? You worried people are going to be too eager to use it and do it needlessly? I wouldn't want to trust basics with that call either, necessarily, because you would be putting a lot of responsibility into a very little education. But as I said, so long as Medical Control authorization is still required and it would be their call and their call alone, I don't see why it wouldn't be a bad idea to have them on hand just in case.
