This^^^^
My wife was in this position recently and had the decision to take a break made for her..Take a break if you need it. It isnt worth pushing yourself that hard.
the 100% directionless thread
- Thread starter KEVD18
- Start date
This^^^^
My wife was in this position recently and had the decision to take a break made for her..Take a break if you need it. It isnt worth pushing yourself that hard.
bigbaldguy
Former medic seven years 911 service in houston
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Stay safe.
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You both bring up a good point. I don't want to push my self to the point of being so burnt at the end of school that I don't even want to work as a medic anymore. I don't see that happening as I love my job but too much of anything, even a good thing isn't good. Wait, beer might be the exception
h34r:I'm trying to figure out if I can make it work, because after what happened today it made me stop and think and it kind of scared me. It wasn't a clinical mistake, lets call it a "professional conduct with another allied health worker" type of mistake.
shfd I second what BBG said, stay safe out there!
rwik123
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lololol
DesertMedic66
Forum Troll
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Our call sign is 201. We changed it today to 2 0 Fun. We are waiting for dispatch to call us out on it haha
adamjh3
Forum Culinary Powerhouse
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I've pulled off "8-fun" "goat head" "10-ninety-leavin'" and "Hof-loading"
fast65
Doogie Howser FP-C
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I've pulled off "Mclovin", "medic fun", and "medic tree". They never seem to laugh :/
On a side note, I just got dispatched out for a code 3 kodiak transfer, looks like I'm heading to Alaska.
On a side note, I just got dispatched out for a code 3 kodiak transfer, looks like I'm heading to Alaska.
Last edited by a moderator:
bigbaldguy
Former medic seven years 911 service in houston
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57 Loading meow
57 Meow in route
57 meow at hospital
57 meow on scene
I'm not very creative I tend to stick with what works
57 Meow in route
57 meow at hospital
57 meow on scene
I'm not very creative I tend to stick with what works
fast65
Doogie Howser FP-C
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Why yes, I did just sing the Saved by the Bell theme song in unison with my roommate.
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Got denied two tubes in the ER today because they were difficult airways 
Wouldn't it make sense to let the person who's solely responsible for protecting a compromised airway in the field attempt a difficult airway in a controlled environment with someone there to swoop in and save the day if they failed?
I knew the docs too, it wasn't like I was the random medic student that walked up and was like "hey let me do that tube!"
Total tube count throughout all my OR and ER clinicals: 0
I'm extremely frustrated with that fact and the way nurses have been treating us like free labor recently. I'm down to help but I'm not going to continue to be helpful if there's no "reward" and no IVs, lab draws and ECGs are not a reward, they are tedious. No I will not walk each and every one of your patients to the restroom multiple times in a shift, that's not what I'm here for. Every now and again absolutely but not every freaking time, especially if you pull me out of a room where they are dealing with an unresponsive TCA overdose that has no blood pressure to walk crotchety old grandma to the can.
We used to play the meow game at my old lifeguard gig over the PA when we would yell at people out in the swim area.
Hey! You guys in the kayaks look at the buoys. See them? Meow paddle out past them! You are in designated swim area only."
Group on the buoy line, if you need help raise your hand straight in the air and a beach patroller will come right meow on the jet ski to help you!
Wouldn't it make sense to let the person who's solely responsible for protecting a compromised airway in the field attempt a difficult airway in a controlled environment with someone there to swoop in and save the day if they failed? I knew the docs too, it wasn't like I was the random medic student that walked up and was like "hey let me do that tube!"
Total tube count throughout all my OR and ER clinicals: 0
I'm extremely frustrated with that fact and the way nurses have been treating us like free labor recently. I'm down to help but I'm not going to continue to be helpful if there's no "reward" and no IVs, lab draws and ECGs are not a reward, they are tedious. No I will not walk each and every one of your patients to the restroom multiple times in a shift, that's not what I'm here for. Every now and again absolutely but not every freaking time, especially if you pull me out of a room where they are dealing with an unresponsive TCA overdose that has no blood pressure to walk crotchety old grandma to the can.
57 Loading meow
57 Meow in route
57 meow at hospital
57 meow on scene
I'm not very creative I tend to stick with what works
We used to play the meow game at my old lifeguard gig over the PA when we would yell at people out in the swim area.
Hey! You guys in the kayaks look at the buoys. See them? Meow paddle out past them! You are in designated swim area only."
Group on the buoy line, if you need help raise your hand straight in the air and a beach patroller will come right meow on the jet ski to help you!
Last edited by a moderator:
- 7,877
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57 Loading meow
57 Meow in route
57 meow at hospital
57 meow on scene
I'm not very creative I tend to stick with what works
60% of the time it works all of the time.
Operations 35 is meow back in the city, can we get a fuel number meow?
Cup of Joe
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It was really quiet yesterday. Hopefully, now that it's 12:47AM of Wednesday, that will change...
DesertMedic66
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Rant/
Work tried to give me an EMT student on my BLS rig today. I am all for students since I am a skills instructor but for the sake of the student I turned her down so she could get on an ALS 911 car not my BLS 5150 taxi.
Then had another EMT who is in nursing school argue that EMT students should never be placed on a ALS rig and only on BLS. Yeah sorry but I disagree big time. Once in a blue moon do I actually do anything as far as patient care. I can't even remember the last time we transported a patient who was on/needed oxygen.
The way BLS is ran in my company is 90% 5150 holds. 5% medical transports. 5% running errands for everyone. Out of the 90% all it is is "your on a 5150 hold. Now hop on the gurney and we have alot of seatbelts for you. Company policy also says I have to put these 4 restraints on you. In the back of the ambulance there isn't anything to do for the 2-3 hour transport."
/End rant
Work tried to give me an EMT student on my BLS rig today. I am all for students since I am a skills instructor but for the sake of the student I turned her down so she could get on an ALS 911 car not my BLS 5150 taxi.
Then had another EMT who is in nursing school argue that EMT students should never be placed on a ALS rig and only on BLS. Yeah sorry but I disagree big time. Once in a blue moon do I actually do anything as far as patient care. I can't even remember the last time we transported a patient who was on/needed oxygen.
The way BLS is ran in my company is 90% 5150 holds. 5% medical transports. 5% running errands for everyone. Out of the 90% all it is is "your on a 5150 hold. Now hop on the gurney and we have alot of seatbelts for you. Company policy also says I have to put these 4 restraints on you. In the back of the ambulance there isn't anything to do for the 2-3 hour transport."
/End rant
I don't know what it's like in your area, but it's very unlikely that most EMTs students in my area will ever work as an EMT, and if they do, it's unlikely they will work in 9-1-1. At my previous company, we had people with over a half decade of experience still trying to get hired with the companies that do 9-1-1 or fire. We have paramedics who have 9-1-1 experience from out of state or years ago who took a break, and they are working as EMTs in a BLS interfacility transport (IFT) only company even though they have a valid paramedic card and experience. Paramedic Plus, the 9-1-1 provider in Alameda County, had on their application "If you do not have 10+ years full time experience as a medic, DO NOT FILL OUT THIS APPLICATION!)", which I think is a clear sign that we are very over saturated with paramedics in the area.
To let an EMT student ride along on an ALS unit dedicated for 911-only calls is a treat, and it might be the only time they ever do it if they live in California (since the state only requires one 10 hour ride along).
In my EMT class, the instructors kept saying "Most calls are medical, not trauma" sounded like they were toning down the excitement of EMS. EMTs from IFT companies shared dramatized stories of responding CODE 2 (in my area, that's urgent, but without red lights and sirens) or still alarms (e.g. come across an unexpected motor vehicle accident on the freeway). I think it gives students a false idea that every EMT does emergencies. Unfortunately, students don't want to believe the truth if you do tell that they aren't going to be doing emergencies. A lot of EMTs of my company were very surprised to see what kind of calls we do. Some even quit shortly after getting hired because it's not what they expected.
We have posts here on EMTLife asking "What is IFT?", "What do you do in IFT?" One of my friends applied to an ambulance company, called me afterwards, and he said "Yeh, they told they do something called I-F-T, ever heard of that?"
I think that if EMTs here in the San Francisco Bay Area, and what I imagine a lot of California to be like, want a realistic view of what it's like to work as an EMT in California, they should do their ride along on a BLS IFT rig. I had a lot of fun on the 9-1-1 ALS rig when AMR was still in Santa Clara County, but if it weren't for this forum, I wouldn't have known what IFT was before hand, and even with this forum, I still had little clue about IFT except 5150 holds (California psychiatric hold).
It would benefit the student for them to see what BLS IFT is like, to go through what each equipment looks like (even though we talked about certain equipments in class, I never saw them, or we never discussed other things like evacu-AID, pedimate, or the ambulance's inverter), teach them how to write a narrative, show them the paperwork, what a DNR, POLST, CPAHC, 5150, facesheet, and PCS look like, and have them flip through the chart. I think a lot of EMTs also parrot what everyone else says "Know your protocols!" A couple of months ago, I looked at the protocols here and there, and I decided I would thoroughly go through it, and it's surprising to see how many EMTs say "Know your protocols" or "That's in the protocols", and it really isn't, and they really don't know the protocols - this include training managers and supervisors. My co-workers at my previous company seem to have a negative reaction to this and now it's "Dude, don't need to know the protocols, use common sense, don't base your medical decisions on the protocols [just to be clear, I don't, but I can't get that through their heads, a lot of protocols and policies have to do with operational related stuff too rather than medical treatment], we are only BLS, we don't need to know that stuff". At Rock Medicine (volunteer standby for events, usually concerts), I had an EMT tell me "The protocols don't apply to us because we aren't transport". I'd show the EMT ride along how to look up the protocols, some common mistakes made (e.g. in school, they taught us you need the original DNR if you're to honor it otherwise it cannot be honored, and they taught us that family and friends can proxy it if, yet in our protocols, it says to honor it no matter what, and we can transport with only a copy of the DNR OR copy of part of the patient's chart were it says they have a confirmed DNR if the DNR is not on the patient - yet we have patients who don't have the original DNR at the facility and EMTs refusing transport or saying they will not honor the DNR if the patient codes during transport because we are taught this in school), and this one may be very specific to my area, but we don't know any of the hospital names, location, major streets, and what kind of services each hospital offers (e.g. are they a stroke center?). When I started working, I knew of a few hospitals: one across the street from my school, one by my house, two by my dad's work, and that's it, yet each county I've worked in has around 20, maybe more, hospitals within an hour. If I had a student ride along with me, I hope I would be their wake up call. I obviously can't teach them all of this even within a week and most people will say that it is up to the company to teach them, but I find that even companies seem to lack at this too. Hopefully I'd either get them onto a good start learning on their own this information or they won't waste their time on this if it's not right for them.
Like I said, ALS 9-1-1 would be a treat for them in my opinion, but would just feed their fantasies more.
To let an EMT student ride along on an ALS unit dedicated for 911-only calls is a treat, and it might be the only time they ever do it if they live in California (since the state only requires one 10 hour ride along).
In my EMT class, the instructors kept saying "Most calls are medical, not trauma" sounded like they were toning down the excitement of EMS. EMTs from IFT companies shared dramatized stories of responding CODE 2 (in my area, that's urgent, but without red lights and sirens) or still alarms (e.g. come across an unexpected motor vehicle accident on the freeway). I think it gives students a false idea that every EMT does emergencies. Unfortunately, students don't want to believe the truth if you do tell that they aren't going to be doing emergencies. A lot of EMTs of my company were very surprised to see what kind of calls we do. Some even quit shortly after getting hired because it's not what they expected.
We have posts here on EMTLife asking "What is IFT?", "What do you do in IFT?" One of my friends applied to an ambulance company, called me afterwards, and he said "Yeh, they told they do something called I-F-T, ever heard of that?"
I think that if EMTs here in the San Francisco Bay Area, and what I imagine a lot of California to be like, want a realistic view of what it's like to work as an EMT in California, they should do their ride along on a BLS IFT rig. I had a lot of fun on the 9-1-1 ALS rig when AMR was still in Santa Clara County, but if it weren't for this forum, I wouldn't have known what IFT was before hand, and even with this forum, I still had little clue about IFT except 5150 holds (California psychiatric hold).
It would benefit the student for them to see what BLS IFT is like, to go through what each equipment looks like (even though we talked about certain equipments in class, I never saw them, or we never discussed other things like evacu-AID, pedimate, or the ambulance's inverter), teach them how to write a narrative, show them the paperwork, what a DNR, POLST, CPAHC, 5150, facesheet, and PCS look like, and have them flip through the chart. I think a lot of EMTs also parrot what everyone else says "Know your protocols!" A couple of months ago, I looked at the protocols here and there, and I decided I would thoroughly go through it, and it's surprising to see how many EMTs say "Know your protocols" or "That's in the protocols", and it really isn't, and they really don't know the protocols - this include training managers and supervisors. My co-workers at my previous company seem to have a negative reaction to this and now it's "Dude, don't need to know the protocols, use common sense, don't base your medical decisions on the protocols [just to be clear, I don't, but I can't get that through their heads, a lot of protocols and policies have to do with operational related stuff too rather than medical treatment], we are only BLS, we don't need to know that stuff". At Rock Medicine (volunteer standby for events, usually concerts), I had an EMT tell me "The protocols don't apply to us because we aren't transport". I'd show the EMT ride along how to look up the protocols, some common mistakes made (e.g. in school, they taught us you need the original DNR if you're to honor it otherwise it cannot be honored, and they taught us that family and friends can proxy it if, yet in our protocols, it says to honor it no matter what, and we can transport with only a copy of the DNR OR copy of part of the patient's chart were it says they have a confirmed DNR if the DNR is not on the patient - yet we have patients who don't have the original DNR at the facility and EMTs refusing transport or saying they will not honor the DNR if the patient codes during transport because we are taught this in school), and this one may be very specific to my area, but we don't know any of the hospital names, location, major streets, and what kind of services each hospital offers (e.g. are they a stroke center?). When I started working, I knew of a few hospitals: one across the street from my school, one by my house, two by my dad's work, and that's it, yet each county I've worked in has around 20, maybe more, hospitals within an hour. If I had a student ride along with me, I hope I would be their wake up call. I obviously can't teach them all of this even within a week and most people will say that it is up to the company to teach them, but I find that even companies seem to lack at this too. Hopefully I'd either get them onto a good start learning on their own this information or they won't waste their time on this if it's not right for them.
Like I said, ALS 9-1-1 would be a treat for them in my opinion, but would just feed their fantasies more.
I don't know what it's like in your area, but it's very unlikely that most EMTs students in my area will ever work as an EMT, and if they do, it's unlikely they will work in 9-1-1. At my previous company, we had people with over a half decade of experience still trying to get hired with the companies that do 9-1-1 or fire. We have paramedics who have 9-1-1 experience from out of state or years ago who took a break, and they are working as EMTs in a BLS interfacility transport (IFT) only company even though they have a valid paramedic card and experience. Paramedic Plus, the 9-1-1 provider in Alameda County, had on their application "If you do not have 10+ years full time experience as a medic, DO NOT FILL OUT THIS APPLICATION!)", which I think is a clear sign that we are very over saturated with paramedics in the area.
To let an EMT student ride along on an ALS unit dedicated for 911-only calls is a treat, and it might be the only time they ever do it if they live in California (since the state only requires one 10 hour ride along).
In my EMT class, the instructors kept saying "Most calls are medical, not trauma" sounded like they were toning down the excitement of EMS. EMTs from IFT companies shared dramatized stories of responding CODE 2 (in my area, that's urgent, but without red lights and sirens) or still alarms (e.g. come across an unexpected motor vehicle accident on the freeway). I think it gives students a false idea that every EMT does emergencies. Unfortunately, students don't want to believe the truth if you do tell that they aren't going to be doing emergencies. A lot of EMTs of my company were very surprised to see what kind of calls we do. Some even quit shortly after getting hired because it's not what they expected.
We have posts here on EMTLife asking "What is IFT?", "What do you do in IFT?" One of my friends applied to an ambulance company, called me afterwards, and he said "Yeh, they told they do something called I-F-T, ever heard of that?"
I think that if EMTs here in the San Francisco Bay Area, and what I imagine a lot of California to be like, want a realistic view of what it's like to work as an EMT in California, they should do their ride along on a BLS IFT rig. I had a lot of fun on the 9-1-1 ALS rig when AMR was still in Santa Clara County, but if it weren't for this forum, I wouldn't have known what IFT was before hand, and even with this forum, I still had little clue about IFT except 5150 holds (California psychiatric hold).
It would benefit the student for them to see what BLS IFT is like, to go through what each equipment looks like (even though we talked about certain equipments in class, I never saw them, or we never discussed other things like evacu-AID, pedimate, or the ambulance's inverter), teach them how to write a narrative, show them the paperwork, what a DNR, POLST, CPAHC, 5150, facesheet, and PCS look like, and have them flip through the chart. I think a lot of EMTs also parrot what everyone else says "Know your protocols!" A couple of months ago, I looked at the protocols here and there, and I decided I would thoroughly go through it, and it's surprising to see how many EMTs say "Know your protocols" or "That's in the protocols", and it really isn't, and they really don't know the protocols - this include training managers and supervisors. My co-workers at my previous company seem to have a negative reaction to this and now it's "Dude, don't need to know the protocols, use common sense, don't base your medical decisions on the protocols [just to be clear, I don't, but I can't get that through their heads, a lot of protocols and policies have to do with operational related stuff too rather than medical treatment], we are only BLS, we don't need to know that stuff". At Rock Medicine (volunteer standby for events, usually concerts), I had an EMT tell me "The protocols don't apply to us because we aren't transport". I'd show the EMT ride along how to look up the protocols, some common mistakes made (e.g. in school, they taught us you need the original DNR if you're to honor it otherwise it cannot be honored, and they taught us that family and friends can proxy it if, yet in our protocols, it says to honor it no matter what, and we can transport with only a copy of the DNR OR copy of part of the patient's chart were it says they have a confirmed DNR if the DNR is not on the patient - yet we have patients who don't have the original DNR at the facility and EMTs refusing transport or saying they will not honor the DNR if the patient codes during transport because we are taught this in school), and this one may be very specific to my area, but we don't know any of the hospital names, location, major streets, and what kind of services each hospital offers (e.g. are they a stroke center?). When I started working, I knew of a few hospitals: one across the street from my school, one by my house, two by my dad's work, and that's it, yet each county I've worked in has around 20, maybe more, hospitals within an hour. If I had a student ride along with me, I hope I would be their wake up call. I obviously can't teach them all of this even within a week and most people will say that it is up to the company to teach them, but I find that even companies seem to lack at this too. Hopefully I'd either get them onto a good start learning on their own this information or they won't waste their time on this if it's not right for them.
Like I said, ALS 9-1-1 would be a treat for them in my opinion, but would just feed their fantasies more.
Not out here where EMT's actually do run 911. They should do 911 ride alongs out here.
DesertMedic66
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EMTs in this area do get on 911 ambulances. 3 months out of EMT class I was hired at a 911 provider and I had no experience. And while California only requires 1 ride along the school that I instruct at requires 4 twelve hour shifts to be able to pass the class. And the school only sets up ride out contracts with 911 providers and never sole IFT or sole BLS companies.