In the late 1970s and 1980s, the G——Motor Lodge out on the Turnpike was the place to take your girl for a swinging good time. Mirrored ceilings and heart shaped Love-Tubs. The brochure featured a hairy-chested mustachioed man in a velvet bathroom holding a bottle of champagne in one hand and a filled glass of…
I was on Park Street last week headed into El Mercado to get some pernil (roast pork), yucca and tostones for lunch when a gentleman came up to me and showed me his overdose kit. He said he’d gotten it at the local needle exchange program. He said he had already used it once when one…
One of the best innovations in EMS in recent years has been the introduction of intranasal medication through the use of an atomizer. We currently carry three drugs that we can use intranasally. These are Narcan, Fentanyl and Versed. After several years of experience now with all of these drugs through the intranasal route, here…
I am working with a young man who I have mentored since his first day as a volunteer at my old suburban post. I have tried to teach him the right way to do the job – to be thorough, to be considerate, to be empathetic, to be professional. We have done many calls together…
I have been a full-time paramedic for over twenty years and a part-time hospital EMS coordinator for over six years. Over the years my ideas of who the best paramedic is have changed markedly. I used to think the best paramedic was the one with the swagger, the one without fear, who never hesitated to…
There are any number of different ways to give a verbal handover report at the ED. All sorts of mnemonics. What form you use may depend on what your hospital expects. I try to tell a story. But I don’t tell a story in the same way I would write one. A written story takes…
A comment and discussion on my previous post sparked me to revisit a post I wrote 9 years ago about the issue of working a body for the practice. Practice Here’s what I wrote back then: My preceptee needs a code. He probably needs a couple. He hasn’t done one as a medic yet. He’s…
On October 15, the new American Heart Association Guidelines for CPR and ECG will be published. Then we will get the answers to the big questions many of us have wondered about? 1. Has epinephrine in cardiac arrest seen its last days? 2. Should paramedics continue to intubate cardiac arrest patients? 3. Will traditional CPR…
When I was 12 years old, I was a good baseball player. I loved the game and had great hand-eye coordination. I was a contact hitter and a slick fielder. In the regional Little League tournament, I made a diving backhanded catch of a line drive at 3rd base that people talked about for years….
This past week I had the pleasure of reading an advance copy of a new paramedic memoir. Kevin Grange’s Lights and Sirens is an authentic, compelling narrative of Grange’s journey through UCLA paramedic school and field internship on Los Angeles’s dangerous streets as he trains to save the lives of victims of heart attack, stroke…
Working at the hospital and on the ambulance, it has been heavy duty Ebola lately. Memos, flyers, posters, policies, and lots of questions. I have written power points, given talks and had many conversations on Ebola. Every day I read the CDC site for updates, which are numerous. I have even, along with two of…
On February 21, 2013 I wrote the post In Praise of CEMSMAC, to celebrate the courage of Connecticut’s top EMS doctors to back the draft document on spinal boards proposed by the National Association of EMS Physicians (NAEMSP), and to use that document as a guideline to developing statewide guidelines limiting the use of long…
We find our patient by the elevator doors in a public building. He is on all fours, dry heaving, and shaking. He says he is in terrible pain. Security tells us he is a visitor to this public building. They don’t know anything about him other than that he has been screaming that he is…
This is the first I have written since May. I did not mean to stop writing. I had many thoughts, but just never got around to putting them down. Why no posts? A variety of reasons, primarily time. As I get older I find myself less sure of myself and my ideas. I can spout…
Many of us in EMS love gadgets I remember when I started another EMT sold me a “whup kit,” which was a holster that attached to my belt to hold my tools. I didn’t get a big one, just a modest sized one. It held a pen light, trauma shears, bandage scissors, tweezers, and a…
Yesterday the Connecticut Emergency Medical Services Medical Advisory Committee reversed its position from a year ago and voted to approve Intranasal Narcan as a sponsor hospital option for first responders and BLS services in the state. This does not mean that all first responders and BLS responders will be giving Narcan. It only means that…
There is a heroin on the streets in the North East now that is putting many abusers into respiratory arrest and killing those who do not get medical attention. The heroin is mixed with fentanyl. It seems every several years this mixture comes out with predictable results. Twenty years ago, it was called Tango and…
You should never have been precepting. You did not have enough street experience, not to mention you were not even old enough to buy a drink when you started. But these days like too many of your peers, you go from EMT school to paramedic school without putting in the time on the road. Sure…
Darkness. Cold. Reflection of fire in the water. Hoses on the ground. Onlookers. The stretcher, pulled by my partner and a firefighter, races through the scene to the the unknown victim carried out of the building. Behind them my feet are up in the air. I am three feet above the ground, suspended parallel, my…
I recently was sent this video documenting what is soon to be an extinct practice — at least in our state.