Just a brief post. (Internet access is $7.50 for 15 minutes.) Interesting conference. I just got out of the Capnography class and it was great. I made some notes and will be posting when I return. I was on the EXPO floor yesterday and it was mind-numbing. EMS is such a huge business. So many…
Month: September 2006
A Life
I recently did a presumption. A sixty-eight year old man found cold and stiff in bed in his one bedroom apartment in an elderly housing complex in town. He died sometime during the night, curled on his side, his head pressed against the pillow, a quilt pulled up to his neck. I couldn’t imagine a…
Hacking
We spent the first three hours of the shift covering a suburban town while their ambulance was on a call. There were reports of gunshots in the city, but when the ambulance got there the supposed victim had fled. Nothing else was going on anywhere, so it wasn’t like we missed a lot. My preceptee…
Who Mash Me Up
I carry a small digital camera in my pocket. I’ve written about it before in New Frontier. It is great for taking mechanism of injury shots – the smashed up car, bent steering wheel, picture of the roof the patient fell off showing the height of the fall. The trauma team loves to see the pictures…
Tickets to the Ball
Yesterday we did a low speed MVA involving a police officer, who we took in for lower back pain. Another officer followed us in his squad car. I don’t know if I am the only one, but I always get paranoid when I am driving to the hospital with a cop on my tail. I…
Dispatchers
I worked yesterday with an EMT with extensive dispatch experience, and as always, it was interesting to hear his perspective on the dispatcher’s job. Sometimes there is a natural antagonism between road crews and dispatchers because the dispatcher is the bear of bad news, but should not neccessarily be shot for it. (Oddly, while working…
Words
Last night I gave my capnography CME. There was about thirty people there. I think it went over okay. It is hard to tell when you are standing up behind a podium and giving a presentation for the first time how well it is being recieved. Our medical control physician thought it was very good…
Size Up
This is a call I did a few months back. I wrote about it then, but didn’t post the story. Part of the reason I didn’t is because while I want to write honestly about being a medic, I have some restrictions. I can’t trash the company I work for or anybody who works for…
Waiting
I go back to work tomorrow morning at six. I last worked the Wednesday overnight in the suburbs, which really wasn’t like working because I slept all night in a bed, and only did one call at five-thirty in the morning, and I didn’t even have to tech that one. I was planning to work…
Patience
Preceptees come in all types, ranging from those who are so smart you have to reread your books at night just to keep up with them to those who think the excuse “well, we didn’t go over that in class” covers them from any need to improve further. I’ve had preceptees for whom, on arriving…