Scope of practice issue?

Only do what you are authorized to do by your company/state/county/etc.

For example for my company, one of the first lines in our guidelines states that Paramedics and nurses are equal and can preform any and all skills/treatments in our guidelines. So I am trained and certified by the company for many different skills such as IV pumps, ventilators, RSI, chest tubes, surgical crics, escharotomy, etc. However those skills are not authorized as a paramedic skill in my state or county so legally I am not able to do those.
 
DesertMedic66 said:
...For example for my company, one of the first lines in our guidelines states that Paramedics and nurses are equal and can preform any and all skills/treatments in our guidelines...
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I don't understand this mentality. My paramedic training didn't make me a nurse, and my nursing school education would not have made me a paramedic. Especially given that most flight programs want ICU experience rather than ED experience, most flight nurses and flight medics think in very different ways and bring two different skill sets. Every time I do anything prehospital my role is complementary to our medics, and vice versa, not to be the exact same.
 
We have radio coverage at my FT job for the base we work at, and I have always had security or PD respond with us and 95% of the time fire (except during wildfire season when they are working one). Just can't get in touch with Medical Control.
When our security guards are carrying SAW's or M-4's with M-203's the patients are usually pretty mellow. LOL
 
PT job; can get hairy. close to town we always have the police dispatched with us, or close by; and they don't care about the border (we overlap 2 states) and have 6 departments in the main towns: the 2 towns (Utah town, and Nevada Town) 2 county Sherriff's and 2 State Police and I have had 5 of the 6 at the scene when it sounded bad. So close to town we don't work, farther out we have been on scene the entire time without the police so if he have a problem we may really have a problem. and our coverage area is 60 miles from base east and west and 30 miles north (to the next state) and 45 miles south. We have been on scene of a wreck got a patient out of truck, loaded and got halfway back to town, and passed the trooper on the way to the scene. and when we get back to town then it is anywhere from 110-125 miles to the closest hospital.
 
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