the 100% directionless thread

Aprz said:
We were talking about atrial tachyarrhythmias. One of the treatment is a drug called Diltiazem, which is in the paramedic national scope. It's not a common paramedic drug in California (I'm a California paramedic). I asked about giving it and it's bolus dose, and that's when people thought something was fishy with me. One other member did point out that it is not a common drug in California, but it was enough to make people think I was the next meth head Rob, I mean... medicRob, Sasha, or MrBrown (I guess never blatantly said he was a paramedic, but people felt like he was faking by allowing people to believe that, or something like that?). We had a string of people who were very vocal about science, advancing EMS, and a lot of them turned out to be fake. There used to be a lot more drama here, haha. It's honestly toned down a lot here, and I kind of feel like a lot of members who post here are more stereotypical of Fire/EMS arguing about the basics like having thick skin and boots probably because we are mostly made up of real EMTs and paramedics now, lol!
Click to expand...

Or it goes the opposite way and you get called being out of touch with the field when you have too high of expectations for medics. Or you get accused of not understanding adult medicine because you suggest solutions that are predominantly used in peds cardiac, many of which are now being used with adults in this covid crisis...
 
Peak said:
Or it goes the opposite way and you get called being out of touch with the field when you have too high of expectations for medics. Or you get accused of not understanding adult medicine because you suggest solutions that are predominantly used in peds cardiac, many of which are now being used with adults in this covid crisis...
Click to expand...
Don't you know that we are suppose to tear each other down in this field? You must be a fake paramedic too!
 
I preached this back in 2004, and maybe it's time to start preaching it again:

WE NEED MORE MENTORS! Both on here (EMTLIFE) and out in the field.

We need to build people up. Train them. Develop them. Help the become a great EMT or Medic.

We need to keep working on becoming better. As employees, as employers, as command staff.
 
Chimpie said:
I preached this back in 2004, and maybe it's time to start preaching it again:

WE NEED MORE MENTORS! Both on here (EMTLIFE) and out in the field.

We need to build people up. Train them. Develop them. Help the become a great EMT or Medic.

We need to keep working on becoming better. As employees, as employers, as command staff.
Click to expand...

As long as people actually want to be mentored...
 
Chimpie said:
I preached this back in 2004, and maybe it's time to start preaching it again:

WE NEED MORE MENTORS! Both on here (EMTLIFE) and out in the field.

We need to build people up. Train them. Develop them. Help the become a great EMT or Medic.

We need to keep working on becoming better. As employees, as employers, as command staff.
Click to expand...
That’s a great thought, but everybody already knows everything, so.....
 
DesertMedic66 said:
county ambulance provider has cut 4 shifts per division so a total of 12 shifts cut from the schedule.
Click to expand...

Leave it to AMR to do the most AMR thing ever.
 
CALEMT said:
Leave it to AMR to do the most AMR thing ever.
Click to expand...
You know AMR, once they hit a compliance of 95% they start cutting units to save money until the compliance drops and then they bring back all the units and start offering double time...
 
DesertMedic66 said:
You know AMR, once they hit a compliance of 95% they start cutting units to save money until the compliance drops and then they bring back all the units and start offering double time...
Click to expand...
They cut every single BLS unit one day
 
CALEMT said:
Leave it to AMR to do the most AMR thing ever.
Click to expand...
We are doing the same thing in a way. If there are open slots, they're just not getting approved. Just sucks, because I'll either get an hour long nap or run back to back calls requiring me to actually do work. The latter is when this short staffing hurts.
 
Peak said:
Has your department reached out to any other departments to deploy an ambulance in district? Is CSFD running their ambulances? What about EACH? Is anyone staffing all of the extra ambulances in black forest, fountain, hanover, et cetera? Has AMR brought in extra staff or ambulances?

I'm sure that ya'll are running more calls, but that doesn't mean that it is a result of simply seeing more patients.

@VentMonkey I have the joy of helping to organize much of our response at a hospital and system level. FYI no hospital in EPCO is on any kind of ICU or ED capacity advisory or divert, nor have they had any signficiant amount of advisory in the past few weeks. The stress on EMS has been strictly based on EMS preparedness.
Click to expand...
We aren’t actually running more calls. Volume is down by quite a bit. I am aware of what the divert statuses are, I can see them on the screen quite easily.

Our time on task has skyrocketed and that is what the staff killer is. Only one provider (the paramedic) in the house to do an assessment and then dispo the patient. Home care arrangements take a while. Refusals take longer to avoid contamination. We’re doing tele medicine with our medical control of we want. If we do transport, the crew is responsible for the full decon process that occurs at the hospital. Not to mention the hours spent at the station working on policy or solutions with non traditional materials. I want to pull our fire medics off engines and put them on the ambulances to split the workload but if a crew gets exposed we’ll burn through our paramedic ranks very fast so I don’t know what the answer is. At least if I or the other ambulancego out we have people to step in right now.

It’s a smallish department with limited admin resources. We can’t even pool with the neighbors as they are even farther behind and just await us to come up with a solution. BF, Wescott, they all just ride our coattails.

None of the county departments are up staffing as they don’t have the staff. Black Forest and Falcon barely have the people to staff their regular trucks and often are often dropping units. AMR is doing ok as they can send BLS to alpha calls now. CSFD took all of their ambulances out of service and added an engine company for reasons I will never understand. Security can’t handle their own call volume anyway as they keep taking over transports for other districts without adding staff. EACH won’t run off base. Fountain only recently started paying people at night so I doubt they’ll have the money to upstaff.
This system has always been a bit ragged and of course it’s magnified now. I don’t think anyone is surprised by it. But for me and my guys, we’re on our own for the foreseeable as none of this is getting fixed anytime soon.
But again, it means literally nothing to say “the system is weak and now they’re paying the price.” No ****. I ride in a red truck with a blue shirt. Until those colors change, my ability to make substantive and rapid change is...limited. The best I can do is try to work to protect the line folks and that’s what keeps me up at night.
 
DesertMedic66 said:
You know AMR, once they hit a compliance of 95% they start cutting units to save money until the compliance drops and then they bring back all the units and start offering double time...
Click to expand...

Yeah... ain't my problem anymore lol.

Tigger said:
Very happy my op refuses to cut even BLS right now.
Click to expand...

IIRC your division is a pretty densely populated area, that probably helps.
 
Just push every button until something happens.
 
CALEMT said:
Yeah... ain't my problem anymore lol.



IIRC your division is a pretty densely populated area, that probably helps.
Click to expand...
CALEMT said:
Yeah... ain't my problem anymore lol.



IIRC your division is a pretty densely populated area, that probably helps.
Click to expand...
The city is 180 square miles and the rural response area is 1200 square miles. But the rural part is so sparse that we only post one “county” car.

I think the silver lining is a new a contract for the city starting soon and the ops manager wants to make sure we can handle it ahead of when it starts. BLS doing alpha calls is also new last month so I think they’re keeping BLS on to beta it a bit more.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top