Paramedic administration of vaccinations

[VentMedic]

After looking at those two, my point stands. I'm not arguing that paramedics who administer H1N1 vaccine are doing so outside of their scope of practice, nor that the state isn't legally treating this as an emergency. Normal, immunocompetent adults who don't work with high-risk populations and don't have critical jobs don't really need vaccinations.

Health care workers who are taking the necessary precautions around patients are not the ones getting the flu. If there weren't patients presenting to EMS and the hospitals with the flu, the health care workers wouldn't even be at risk. If you have read or even seen some of the patients getting H1N1, you would know this is not the typical flu.

The Bill I linked to you for MA is also covers all of issues that should have been covered before Hurricane Katrina. The CDC link shows how many of the states are now prepared. The flu is only one example. Yes an area can run short of nurses and many other health care works. The MA Bill, as do others, addresses licenses from other states being recognized with a pandemic or disaster strikes. It was because of Hurricanes that Florida addressed Paramedics giving vaccinations. They have had a section in the Public Health statutes for many years. It is sad when a state waits for a disaster to happen and then wonder why important issues hadn't already been addressed. It is also sad when those in EMS don't see their own role in a disaster or pandemic. EMS should be just as prepared as the hospitals.

Right now, even though we haven't declared a "state of emergency" our hospitals are full and we are using agency and traveling health care workers. That was something the hospitals had been trying to cut back on. However, when a patient arrives in the ICU for treatment of Flu associated ARDS, they may be there for a month easily. We've even expanded our ICUs into makeshift wings to accommodate the overflow.

You are thinking too one dimensional here. Paramedics can be allowed to give vaccinations but it consists of a little more than just doing an IM injection. A little education or information about how, what and why should go with it. If an elderly person or parents with their child ask questions, the Paramedic should be able to say more than "because we can".

Sidenote: I saw a bit of a documentary the other day that ended by talking about the next emerging infectious disease that threatened to become a pandemic: H5N1. It's amusing how quickly that seems dated. Not that it's gone away, of course, but we're also not all dead from the Canada geese in our backyards.

You only saw a bit? Did you see the parts with the different strains which is also related to why we are now calling the flu we have here in the U.S. H1N1? Did you also know there are variants to it which makes testing very complex?