Recent content by Free-B-EMT

My daughter works for Security in a retirement village. All Security personnel are EMT-B's. With over 2000 senior citizens spread throughout 8 or 10 multi-story buildings she is kept very busy responding to everything from cardiac arrest to Jazzie Scooter accidents. It never gets boring!

Does anyone have any information regarding regulations on placing a vehicles ID number on the roof? My volunteer squad is in the process of buying a new ambulance and one of the options is rooftop numbering. It's a $500.00 add and members are questioning if it is necessary. This is in New Jersey...

How far did they get? All the way home! As it turned out, the person who stole the rig was a patient that this crew had brought in a few hours earlier for intoxication. He decided he wasn't going to hang around any longer. When he saw the crew come in with another patient he pulled his IV and...

This may be a little off topic but just last week one of the volunteer squads in my area had a rig stolen from in front of the hospital while they were bringing the patient into the ER. Some bonehead left the keys in the ignition but the situation has raised all kinds of controversy over whether...

In my area there are no county based incentives at all. My town offers LOSAP (Length of Service Award Program). It is basiclly a retirement fund that the town contributes money to based on the number of hours logged per person per year. You have to serve a minimum of 5 years to receive anything...

Rid, I'm a volunteer EMT-B and I will agree with you 100% that the training is wholly inadequate for the job we are expected to do. Even though it goes beyond the 150 hours that you mention because of on-going education requirements, it is still severely lacking. I personally would love to be...

The point is, and by the way it's not my point but the study's, is that it doesn't really seem to make a difference to the patient's outcome whether you are ALS or BLS in the long run. If we take it one step further, according to your link, all we need for the best patient care is a car.

Fuel for the Fire There seems to be quite a few people with very strong and varying opinions on this subject. There was an independent study carried out in Canada over a 3 year period that addressed the patient's survivability when treated ALS vs. BLS in a prehospital setting. Try googleing...

Clibby, Sounds like a nice set up. I'm in NJ where as volunteers we are BLS only. ALS is run out of the local hospitals by request from our dispatchers to a central ALS dispatch. As far as on scene command, my squad does not even have as much as a crew cheif for each crew out there. No one is...

Vizior I agree with you. The first due unit should take IC until further help arrives. All of our members have been required to take ICS 100 & 300 so they have a basic concept of what the incident management is all about. The problem seems to be that, since we have no real line officers, no one...

No we do not have officers that respond to any incident, except if they happen to be on duty at that time. The fact that they are an officer gives them no more authority than any other member. The officer positions on my squad are more of an administrative position than anything else.

This question is for the volunteers out there. I was a volunteer firefighter for 20 years before moving to a new town where I joined the volunteer first aid squad. Since the fire dept I belonged to was very much into command and control at the scene, I was very surprised to find out that my...

Having been a volunteer firefighter for 21 years and in the construction business for 30, I can say without a doubt, that these things kill. Fire / smoke doors have a purpose. They are there to prevent the spread of fire, heat and smoke to other areas of the building so that the occupants have a...

I actually had a call involving a bite from an Eastern Timber Rattlesnake. The patient found the snake lying in the road and wanted to save it from being hit by traffic. He grabbed it by the tail and it swung around and bit him on the hand. After throwing the snake off the side of the road, the...