Recent content by drjekyl75

The county I'm in is finicky at best. We actually have our IV kit set up with sets from each of the hospital and try our best to use their stuff if we are going to their facility. If the patient is bad they get what they get. More than once I've had nurses ***** that we didn't use the extension...

You can make good money teaching, but the hard part is the marketing side. When my buddy lost his job he taught CPR for a year to get by. He cold called every Doctor, Dentist, and Chiropractor within an hour drive to inquire about teaching the staff at those offices. He taught nights and...

When I started most of the local companies paid the 16 for 24 hr. shift. You got paid while you we on a call and if you were out 3 or more hours they paid you for the full 8 hrs. There were some SLOW rides back to the station if you were close to the 3 hours.

There's a few different set-ups in the area I work in. The county I work the road in is 100% private ems for all 911 calls. Due to a huge change in the tax base over the last 20 years there is not enough money in the budget to fund full time fire/ems. The county where I work in the hospital is...

The entire county I work in is Private EMS only. Due to a huge reduction in the tax base the last fire run EMS municipality ended about 6 years ago!

In the city I live in, Firefighter/Medics start first year @ $48K they also get a meal stipend from the township of $1,000/year and handle only emergency medicals. Paramedics in the same area for private EMS companies that do the interfacility transports and run only back-up emergencies start at...

The other company I work for www.swartzambulance.com

I had another, "What got me" moment this past week. I've been doing this for awhile so most things don't bother me, but we were dispatched to a local Medical Imaging office. They wanted transport to the ER following x-rays on a 5 year old girl. Long story short she complained of pain in her left...

The system I work in we exchange drug boxes and replace IV fluids at the hospital pharmacy. A couple of the hospitals for whatever reason have pharmacies that are a 10 minute walk from the ER. Take advantage of the down time because there will be days where you barely get a chance to breathe. My...

It's different for everyone, when I was a new EMT I worked with a paramedic who was really good. We got a call to her uncle's house and he was in cardiac arrest. She worked him as hard as anyone could and he didn't make it. I at the time couldn't fathom how she was able to keep her composure...

I'm not sure about the success rates of candidates of the schools in your area, but some near me have a reputation as "EMS Factories." They always have large numbers of students that enroll and graduate the program, but only a small handful actually pass national registry. I had a student riding...

We did a demo on a few units and wound up going with disposable cpap masks. Not sure if you've looked that route. http://blssystemsltd.com/cpap_em.html

My company runs in multiple counties and each have slightly different protocols. For the most part EMT-B's can: Combi-Tube / King Airway Aspirin Nitro (patient assist) C-Pap has come and gone a couple of times Epi-Pen autoinjector Albuterol (patient assist) Glucose (oral) Pulse Oximetry...

In Michigan, there are a ton of paramedic schools, but the quality of them varies greatly. Within a 30 minute ride of my house there are 11 schools and only 2-3 actually have a high success rate of turning out candidates that pass the NREMT written

While not the same as practicing on a live patient, we have medical control physicians that come in once a year to our company. The doc's go over proper technique for intubation and different scenarios for which type of intubation should be used. We then have to nasal and oral intubate the...