Recent content by EMTMama

When I first started working for my IFT company, I had been forewarned about the egos of the flight crews, and to put it politely, that they could be high-maintenance. My experience has been very different though, and with the exception of one snapping at me over something stupid, I've really...

This is my IFT company as well, minus the 911 stuff because another company holds the 911 contract. We do a lot of emergent (or "stat calls" as our dispatch calls them) calls to contract facilities, as well as the occasional FDGB (fall down go boom) calls at nursing homes. For our particular...

Some of your responses have been pretty funny! :lol: A couple points of clarification: 1. I'm female (hence the "mama" part of my SN). 2. My company mainly does IFT, yes, but not all calls are BLS. We do a LOT of ALS calls as well. I'm frequently the only ILS truck on for my company. A...

Yes and no. Last time I checked taxi drivers didn't start IV's, administer O2 or medications. We still treat patients that the nursing homes neglect. Still not appropriate. Driving is merely one aspect of my job, just like wiping butts is merely one aspect of theirs.

Yeah no kidding.

EXACTLY!!!!! And yeah, I know "it's what you do, it's not who you are" blah blah blah...I'm a fairly reasonable person...just treat me with the level of respect you'd want to be treated with because the fact of the matter is, like it or not, IFT IS needed. No way could our 911 system handle...

Haha...AWESOME! I may do that. Believe me, I can be an *** at times as well, but try the polite route first.

Linuss - that's it exactly. I don't expect a patient to know. It doesn't bother me at all if a patient uses that term. But someone in the medical field...ya, they should know. I may get to that point where I ask if they'd prefer to be called a butt wiper too if I'm having a particularly *****y...

I think it's more the tone that accompanies it. The ones that do it seem pretty put off that we're there needing information....after THEY called US....to come get THEIR patient.

LOL I bet it would too! :) If I see her again, maybe I'll just ask her if she has some adult diapers to change. :P (I'm being sarcastic, of course)

I've heard this too. I've even heard that states may require paramedics to have a degree at some point.

I've been with my IFT company for nearly 9 months now. I'm getting pretty irritated by being called an "ambulance driver" by CNA's/LPN's/RN's. I'm not sure if I'm being referred as that because of the company I work for (I'm wondering if they don't realize I'm an EMT because we're mainly an IFT...

I was getting ready to say the same thing. I'm not diabetic and I've had trouble with hypoglycemia for years (A1C is always normal).

Sasha - you forgot the parts where dispatch gets the diagnosis wrong, so you THINK you're going to a 911 call, turns out you're not. Or the long-distance IFT's every day of your shift (which is what happened to me this past week - 1200 miles in 3 days). :P

Who knows if they were or not (smoking it right before). If it really was all day, and then they drank heavily, I think the combination would have been a factor. But - we'll never know for sure.