In 2006, I was asked to be a advisor/possible writer on the TNT show SAVED when the show was green-lighted for 13 episodes. Unfortunately, the money they offered me was less than I was making in 40 hours much less the 80 hours I was working. Had I been younger and less attached, I likely…
Author: medicscribe
Kevin Andrews
In EMS, we cannot help but be shaped by our earliest partners. They are the ones who show us the way. I was lucky in that regard. Kevin Andrews was one of my first partners. This was back in 1989. I was a spanking new EMT — so fresh I didn’t even have my certification…
Second District
It is interesting seeing the streets you spent so many years working on the subject of film. Hartford is a small city, but like its sister cities New Haven and Bridgeport, it has always had one of the highest murder and poverty rates in the nation.
Happy Pill
I wish there was a happy pill I could take. Or better yet, since I am all into good health and clean living, I wish there was a happy pill I could give my partners. Let me explain. I had a great EMS day recently. I did a cardiac arrest, an SVT, a respiratory arrest…
Called In Sick
If I feel like death, like I will never be well again, but I am well hydrated and my pulse is only 72, and my sat is 99%, and my fever barely a 100, what must it feel like to be really sick?
Drug Seeker
So this man is, based on my experience, a drug seeker. This is not a first impression or an instinct. I say this based on seven or eight years of transporting this patient (our service transports the patient anywhere from one to four or five times a month) to multiple hospitals. The calls are not…
STEMI
“What’s a STEMI?” My partner is a retired police officer, who works once a week. He asks because just the day before, his neighbor was whisked off the cardiac cath table just before he was to have a scheduled procedure when the doctor said they had an emergency STEMI coming in. Little does my partner…
Had This Call Before
Obese septic patient from SNF 29 diagnoses including dementialabored breathing, gurgley rhonchi throughoutDiaphoretic, temp of 104.1Doesn’t fit on stretcher, keeps falling to the sideYankeur suctioning thick brown sputumGloves ripElectrodes won’t stay stuckCan’t get an IV.Can’t read the writing on the W10CMED radio on fritz“We didn’t copy your patch, you keep cutting out.”Not regular partner hitting…
The Years
If I ever had a call – a double shooting or a status seizure — where I could look back and say here is where it all came together, then I have forgotten it. What I remember from my earlier years as a medic is not so much one specific call, but rather gradual realizations…
Cold Justice
Australian author and former paramedic Katherine Howell has written her third EMS-related crime thriller, Cold Justice. Like her first two thrillers, Frantic and the Darkest Hour, it is a great read. The books have a constant character in police detective Ella Marconi, who teams with a different paramedic in each book to solve the crime….
Paramedic Awareness
I recieved email this week from a Denver paramedic working to promote paramedic awareness and recruitment, asking me to post a Youtube link. On it there are a number of excellent videos.
Community
Last week I had the privilege of attending a ceremony in which a town received a Heart Safe Community designation, which goes to towns who meet certain criteria in terms of their EMS systems and availability of training, education and public access defibrillators and other factors affecting the Chain of Survival. At this particular ceremony there were…
Youth
The mat outside the apartment door says “Coors Country.” Inside the door there are two empty cases of beer; Bud Light and Heinekin. There are two plastic garbage bags tied up and ready to be taken down to the parking lot dumpster. Straight ahead there is an open kitchen with a bar counter. Lined up…
Up the Stairs
Saturday night. 9:30. A half an hour before I get off after a 16 hour shift. It’s the worst time to get a call. Another fifteen minutes later and my relief would be in and he’d take it, but at 9:30, no such luck. I am definitely getting off late. The call is for a…
Katherine Ann
Let's Go to the Tape
If we can use digital cameras to capture pictures of crashed cars to show the trauma team, can we use video cameras to record our patients’ “seizures” for later rebroadcast — not on You Tube, but for the patient’s ED doctor and consulting neurologist?
Respect
We went to a doctor’s office for an unknown. The secretary led us to an exam room where a man in his sixties sat in a wheelchair, his chin on his chest, eyes closed, looking very tired. He had a huge distended abdomen and a hint of a yellow tinge to his skin. His wife…
The Essential Eight
We have reached the Essential Eight — eights drugs that I am not going on the road without.
Aspirin
Now Aspirin use has become so prominent that many of my patients have already taken Aspirin before I get there — either they took it themselves, were given it by a friend or coworker or a medical professional on the scene gave it to them. When I do bring them to the hospital, the first question I am asked is “Did they get Aspirin?”
Atropine
The best bradycardia calls are for the patient passed out in the bathroom. You find them on the floor, cold and clammy, no pressure, pulse in the 20’s. We used to give a full amp of Atropine, now we give 0.5, and if that doesn’t work another 0.5 mg, etc. A couple times I have given the full 1 mg by mistake. Old dogs. Still the drug works well, the pulse picks up, the patient wakes up, the skin colors up and drys out and all is well in paramedic land. “You fixed them,” the doctor says to me in the ED. Music to my ears.