Light!

My clinicals are officially over!  I am that much closer to finishing.  All I have to do now is finish my paper and the presentation that goes with it, pass my oral boards, 2 more tests and a final.

Hardly anything....*snort*

Sometimes you wonder...

So, my question was this:  Is this how the alarm company sent it to dispatch, or did dispatch come up with this as a summary?

Sounds

There are many sounds I hate.  I now have a new one.

The sound of a mother crying over her 18 year old child's body.

She was the one who found him unconscious, not breathing, with no pulse.

Pierced me to the heart, it did.

No parent should have to bury their child.

Surprise!!! Your turn!

It really sucks when you walk into drill night and the person charge says "Hey, remember those ideas for drill we were tossing around the other day? Why don't we do one of those!" 

This is especially hard when you were talking about scenario-based drills and you haven't had the chance to come up with any scenarios.  Not to mention that aside from you and the person in charge of drill there are only 2 other EMT's and everyone else isn't in class yet. 

Still, I don't think I did too bad.  I threw together an MCI drill, giving people slips of paper with various injuries on them, and told the EMT that they were first on scene and only had 2 more units coming immediately available, and to triage the patients.  They then had to defend their decision.  It made a lot of people stop and think about what triaging is supposed to do.  I think I need to come up with a set of cards with various injuries on them so we can do this again.

Also, I suspect that I will be called into action again to help with drills, so if anyone had any ideas for good, relatively short drills, mainly for brandy-new EMT-B's and those that are basically first-aiders, please share.  Also, any good calls that you could share (without violating HIPAA of course) would be helpful in making scenarios to help train the new kids.

Surprise!!! Your turn!

It really sucks when you walk into drill night and the person charge says "Hey, remember those ideas for drill we were tossing around the other day? Why don't we do one of those!" 

This is especially hard when you were talking about scenario-based drills and you haven't had the chance to come up with any scenarios.  Not to mention that aside from you and the person in charge of drill there are only 2 other EMT's and everyone else isn't in class yet. 

Still, I don't think I did too bad.  I threw together an MCI drill, giving people slips of paper with various injuries on them, and told the EMT that they were first on scene and only had 2 more units coming immediately available, and to triage the patients.  They then had to defend their decision.  It made a lot of people stop and think about what triaging is supposed to do.  I think I need to come up with a set of cards with various injuries on them so we can do this again.

Also, I suspect that I will be called into action again to help with drills, so if anyone had any ideas for good, relatively short drills, mainly for brandy-new EMT-B's and those that are basically first-aiders, please share.  Also, any good calls that you could share (without violating HIPAA of course) would be helpful in making scenarios to help train the new kids.

More BLS than ALS

So, I consider the system I've spent most of my time in to be fairly lP optimal. Sure, it's not perfect, but compared to the other systems I've experienced over the past 1.5 years, it worked pretty well.  For the most part, BLS calls were handled by BLS crews and ALS calls by ALS crews.  Any overlap was due to dispatch and patient reporting, which is normal.

Compare that to a nearby area in which I spend a fair but of time for clinicals.  While their system is similar to the one I am most familiar with, they seem to have far fewer BLS units.  They also have required every recruit class in the past several years to become medics (at the least, EMT-I's).  This means you have a whole bunch of ALS units running BLS calls, and a lot of medics getting burned out quickly.

And a bunch of medic students who getting a poor ALS clinical experience.  In my time in that county, I can count on one hand the number of ALS calls I have had, over at least 120 hours. 

Now, I know it may seem counter productive to complain...after all, if they want to pay me for being a glorified taxi driver, then by all means.  And I understand the desire to provide advanced care for as many people as possible.  But in this day and age with budgets being what they are, it may behoove departments to remember that our call volume is generally 80:20 BLS:ALS.  It might be a better idea to have more BLS units and strategically place the ALS units to a better advantage.  You may find you have better, less burnt out medics, and more money in the bank.

Then again, I'm just a student...what do I know?

Of Lionfish and laziness

Ok, so I haven't been super forthcoming recently.  I blame school, and a general sense of malaise about the whole school thing.  No, I'm not burnt out (except on school), but I am getting heartily bored of going to clinicals and getting shafted as far as calls go.  Not that I'm wishing ill on anyone, but someone has to get sick or hurt in order for me to garner enough checks in the boxes to make the NR-EMT folks happy enough to let me test. 

So, over semester break, I spent a lot of time at my volunteer house.  Didn't get too many calls (my white cloud-ness continues even there), but the few I got were interesting.  I did get to look all smart and stuff when we got a call for a lionfish sting (there was an episode of Bones that involved a lionfish stinging someone to death).  It was literally around the corner from my station, and I googled it on my fancy new Android phone as we were pulling up to the place.  Luckily, the patient had also used superior google-fu (though I suspect it was the kids who did it) and was already treating things in the correct manner.  The patient could have gotten to the hospital on their own, but they were newish to the area, and hadn't had the pleasure of needing our lovely local ER's, and were unsure of how to get there.  So, we had a lovely drive down, where I continued to google 'lionfish stings' and found that what happened was not so uncommon after all.

I also had the pleasure of seeing a patient in SVT (going from sinus tach to SVT) and helping the medic push adenosine, which failed to have the desired effect, but the patient converted anyway.  I swear I see more interesting things at my own station with the medics than I do when I am at clinical. 

Point in case: at a recent field clinical (in a system where the medics run everything from hangnails to heart attacks, and I'll leave it to you to guess which is more common), all but one of our calls was a BLS call.  I did get the hard IV stick when called on, so the day wasn't lost completely for me.  However, the last call took the cake, and was so ridiculous I couldn't find anything to warrant writing it up to count.  The patient called because they had been constipated for several days and their back hurt.  The patient had actually gone to work earlier in the day, and a family member was kind enough to ride to the hospital with us, leaving their perfectly good car at home.  REALLY??????  Just when I think people can't amaze me anymore, I am proven wrong.

In other news, I've been busy training.  Not just for paramedic school, oh no.  Because I don't have enough on my plate right now, what with finishing school, attempting to graduate, studying for the NREMT-P tests, and planning a wedding, I have decided that it would be an excellent idea to begin training for a triathlon.  this from someone who is woefully out of shape and has a hard time running up the stairs.  I have started a Couch to 5K program (C25K), have a cheap, beat-up road bike on a bike trainer, and have been swimming at the pool on campus.  Thankfully, my class schedule this semester allows for a bit more time in the mornings, which I take advantage of.  It also gets me on campus earlier so I can get a good spot.

So I am looking at scheduling a mini-sprint triathlon locally.  It's at the end of March, and is a bit backwards so no one freezes (generally the routine is swim, bike run...this one will be run, bike swim), with small distances (1.4 mi run, 4 mi bike, 250 m swim) that I think I can do without killing myself.  The bad part is right now I have what I think is tendonitis in my right knee.  My yearly physical is conveniently on Thursday, so I will be able to ask my doc what she thinks.

The general plan is that not only will the triathlon training get me motivated enough to keep working out, thus losing weight for the wedding, but it will also get me in sufficient shape to test for a fire department over the summer.  At least, that's the plan, should any departments in the area actually scrounge up funds to hire a class.