Category: Uncategorized

I had an interesting scenario this weekend that I think could be a harbinger of things to come in EMS. With the growing obesity in the population, ambulance companies have started putting bariatric ambulances on line. The ambulances come equipped with special wide load stretchers that more comfortably accommodate the larger patient. Years ago before…

I had a patient a few days ago who I found very annoying. She was a woman in her late sixties with cold and flu symptoms. What was annoying to me was she refused to speak in anything but a whisper. I can’t hear you, I would say. But she would keep whispering. I asked…

Baby Medic just posted about doing three codes in two days. He includes this snippet: Thirty-nine years old, the family said, and they thought she was alive this morning but they couldn’t be sure. Someone thought they heard her get up and make coffee. “The lady deserves a chance at that age,” the doctor said…

If you are a football fan, have you noticed lately how many more players sport dreadlocks under their helmets. You watch the player on the team you are rooting against run with the ball and you can’t help but think, someone ought to grab that guy by his hair and tackle him. That would be…

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) This happens all the time. You get called to the nursing home. There is a sign on the patient door that says “Contact Precautions.” The staff tells you you have to wear a mask and a gown to enter, so you put it on. You are told the patient has MRSA…

In my post of yesterday, I wrote the following: While my preceptee prepared the tube, and our crew did CPR, as an experiment I applied a nasal capnography cannula to the patient to see how well we were ventilating with just CPR and bagging. I have heard it suggested that this is an excellent way…

At night I empty my pockets on the dresser. Once a week I clean the dresser top off. Crumpled gloves. ECG strips. Narcotics slips. Med lists scribbled on a notepad. An empty drug or saline vial. Four ECG electrodes stuck together. The call is for the man who can’t be woken up, cold to the…

I have been thinking about all this rant business, and promised some thoughts on it. I was on the phone the other day trying to get an issue resolved with a telephone person and I was frustrated and trying to get her to understand my dilemma and how it wasn’t my problem, but their problem….

Why do we rant in EMS? That’s what I want to write about. I want to write about it in a way that is not a rant, and I want to write about it in a way that will help to stop me from ranting because I don’t think it is a particularly attractive quality….

I’ve pretty much been a stickler over the years about carrying gear. You get a call — whether its chest pain, a fever, or a fall — you bring all your gear in. Monitor, house bag, 02. You never know. Many years ago, I was working with a partner named Steve. Good partner. We had…

I consider myself on the cutting edge of pain management. I have worked within the state and region to increase the amount of morphine paramedics can give patients on standing order and I am very aggressive with my use of morphine. You have pain, I want to take it away. Instead of screaming with pain,…

The call is for a possible stroke — a fifty-year old cancer patient can’t move her right side. I’m thinking it’s not a stroke. Maybe weakness, maybe a tumor. But it could be a stroke. We’ll see when we get there. The woman is lying in bed. Her eyes look up at me as I…

For years I have been on the regional medical advisory council. One of our responsibilities is to come out with the regional paramedic guidelines. It is always very exciting for me to get to use a new guideline for the first time. I think we worked on this for so long, went though many drafts…

Some towns’ police departments call us to check out prisoners’ medical complaints, typically those suffering from jailitis. The cops get annoyed when we bring the stretcher in. He’s not going to the hospital, we just want you to check him out, they say. If you want to make the cops happy, you finesse a refusal…

It was twenty minutes before my crew change when the tones went off. A fall at a local restaurant. I shook my head. I had dinner out plans for the evening that were going to get shot to hell now. Outside the restaurant we found a polite well dressed man in his sixties sitting on…

We were there last night. The call came in five minutes before my crew change. Husband said wife was too weak to get up and he was too weak to pick her up. Sounded like a lift assist. Pick her up, put her in bed, get a signed refusal. I could still get home at…

We’re on our way back from the hospital when we get sent non-priority to a motor vehicle accident for shoulder pain. The accident happened awhile ago, but one of the patients has decided they want to go to the hospital now so we are being sent. The police direct us to our patient — a…

A long procession of cars, many with their windows whitewashed “RIP Hector” line both sides of the narrow road deep in the cemetery. I kneel on the lush grass. Family and friends dressed in black suits and dresses press against me as I try to calm the young woman who thrashes about and cries out…