In the nursing home, Mrs. Brown sits in her wheelchair, two feet from the television in her darkened room. The blue hues illuminate her face. Our stretcher rolls past in the hallway. Each door is open. The story on every channel. In stillness, they watch. We are still young, the children call to them. Craddle…
Author: medicscribe
Pink Sneakers
She has become a regular. She calls early Sunday morning. “923, respond for the abdominal pain.” The dispatcher gives the street and apartment number. It’s always her. We have stopped bringing the gear in. We just wheel the stretcher in and leave it in the hallway, and then walk up the three flights of the…
NTG and the Hero medic
My favorite stories are when medics talk about great medics from their past. The stories can be made up, exaggerated or true, but with telling they achieve the status of folklore and the medics in them are our Paul Bunyans and Davy Crockets, our Supermen and our Columbos (the great TV detective played by Peter…
It Depends
Here is a question that I recently considered. If you have a critical patient who you are worried may crash, when do you do the IV? At the patient’s side, on scene in the ambulance, or en route to the hospital? The key is that you need to have the IV when you need it….
Christian Schmeck
Christian Schmeck passed away a few days ago at 59. I saw his obituary posted in the EMS room at a local hospital. I suspect most of the newer EMTs who saw it didn’t know who he was. I first met Chris over twenty years ago when I worked at the state health department. He…
How EMS is Like Baseball (But With Better Food)
I think EMS is a lot like baseball. It can be fairly slow-paced (boring, if you prefer), but it has its moments of excitement. You have your days when you don’t even remember the calls you did they were so routine. Like in baseball, you can stand around all game in the outfield waiting for…
The Wheelchair
The call is for an unresponsive in a wheelchair on a street corner in front of a social services agency. A woman who works at the agency flags us down. She says she has a man in a wheelchair who is unresponsive. She does not know him. He is not a client there. She says…
What I Carry
A reader (Lucus) queried me about what I carry on my when I am on duty: I have a stethoscope around my neck. In my right shirt pocket, I have four small blank index cards. In my left pocket I have a pen, a pack of gum, and my I-phone. I have trauma shears on…
Everyday EMS Athlete
There is a profile of me over at Greg Friese’s Everyday EMS Athletes, a feature of Everydayemstips.com.
EMS Changes
The number one treatment change in EMS in the last twenty years is the increased emphasis on painmanagement and comfort care. Albert Schweitzer said, “Pain is a more terrible lord of mankind than death himself…. We must all die. But that I can save him from days of torture, that is what I feel as…
Annual Cold Report
Decreased
I pride myself on my assessment skills, my finely tuned senses — the ability to see, hear, touch, smell, taste, and whatever the sixth sense is – I do that one well too. But lately, I must confess I have been having some issues with the hearing. I auscultate the patient’s lungs and hear nothing….
Backing In
I was in a parking garage over the weekend when my exit was held up by a woman in a SUV who took about five minutes to make all he turns necessary to back into a parking space. I was thinking why not just drive in straight? Why do you have to be parked for…
Routine
It never ceases to amaze me when it happens. When routine saves you. I was talking with another EMS Clinical Coordinator recently, and he said he did not understand why some medics seem to check the blood sugar on virtually everyone. Why don’t they do it only when it is indicated? I argued that medics don’t do…
Pain-Why Call Now?
I used to get upset when the call was for an old fall or fall yesterday or fall last night. The same when I’d get called for abdominal pain and a person says they have been having the pain for two weeks or three months. I got upset because the nature of the call was…
Drones
I am one of my own favorite comedians. Perhaps you have seen me on the Johnny Carson show? No, perhaps not then. Sometimes I really crack myself up. I am easily entertained. I don’t perform publicly, other than in small bit roles for my partner and patient while on the job. My latest gag has…
Maps
When I was a boy my father used to bring home maps for my sister and me. We would spread them out on the floor and he would pay us a nickel for every river we found or every mountain range or sea. As a result of this practice, I always did well in geography…
Straight Blade
We are called for the violent psych and told to stage for police. Years ago we would have just been called for the violent psych. Once we got there, if we needed the police we would call for them, or depending on how the call came in, they might already be there. This morning the…
A Younger Man
The snow started in the afternoon earlier and harder than expected. I got the kids inside with some DVD’s and pizza. I cracked the thermostats up to give us some heat in the event we lost power that evening, which was the worry with the autumn trees still being so full of leaves and the…
EMS Towns
Many years ago, I was a taxi cab driver. Us cabbies used to talk about cab towns. What was a good cab town and what was a bad cab town? A good cab town was always hopping. People used cabs instead of cars. There were no traffic jams. The rides were of conversation distance. You…