Recent content by JonathanGennick

Well, I'm sorry I ever got into this discussion. If you never did anything similarly silly early on in your career, then you're a better man than I am. I don't recall whether the numbers were upside down like 60/80. I just remember once or twice reading the numbers off the machine only to...

Yeah, it only took a couple of times reporting crazy BP readings such as 60/80 in my radio patch before I began to think more critically about what the machine was telling me.

I may have read too much into your earlier post then. I'm sorry for that. Again, I'm not trying to be argumentative. I'm interested in best-practices. I'd like to develop a sound foundation for discussing the issue of manual versus machine-taken vital signs with coworkers. It might be...

No need to insult me. And there is no medic versus Basic issue here at all. The truth is that I am often in the field with more senior people, some of them medics, and some Basics, who prefer using the machines. I have just about the least seniority in my service. I can hardly hold up a call and...

LOL! That's funny. But you know what? I sure wouldn't mind having an ambulance that's a big inside as a UPS truck. Our van-ambulances get a bit crammed at times.

I was about to chime in with my belief that taking a manual set of vital signs is a best-practice, when the thought occurred to me: "I can't back that belief with a factual argument." So if you don't mind too much, let me play a bit of devil's-advocate here: 1) My local hospital e/r always...

For an emergency run, we have a run-sheet to fill out afterwards, an insurance form to have the patient sign, and we collect a face-sheet from the hospital. The only part that I find mildly onerous is having to ask the patient to sign the insurance form. It's a heck of a thing when someone is...

I looked up some definitions of the word "protocol". My sense from reading those definitions is that the word is not intended to describe a set of rigid rules. Here's an interesting link to a Wikipedia entry on the term "Medical Guideline": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_guideline...

There's a transition that you have to make from class to working for real. It really helps to have a good partner to back you up, to ease you into things, one who knows when to step back and let you run and when to intervene. If you've just been thrown into the fire, then that's a tough...

I want to take the same sort of course myself. The two schools I've been looking at are the National Outdoor Leadership School (nols.edu) and SOLO Wilderness Medicine (soloschools.com). Which I go to will probably come down to schedule. The upgrade course doesn't seem to be offered all that...

Another helpful-looking link The following link looks well worth reading: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dhqp/gl_isolation_ptI.html It gives a bit of history behind the "universal precautions" and "body substance isolation".

Fascinating question, actually Interesting question, actually. I took a quick look in my EMT-Basic textbook, the Brady book, and neither the glossary nor index list the term "universal precautions". The index does list the term "body substance isolation". A bit of googling turns up the...