Recent content by OIFXGunner

yes, you can be in a different state's national guard. We have guys do it all the time when they go to college in a different state from their residency. I would press the recruiter about the slots that you want- his job is to make you sign up for something he gets credit for, not necessarily...

We have the EZ IO drill at my volly station. Where I work currently doesn't have IO access as a protocol -_-

One of our crews worked one not terribly long ago where the patient coded, his wife was there and called 911, and the medic unit made it there within five minutes of his collapse. CPR was started w/ an initial rhythm of VF. The first shock was successful and the rhythm converted to Sinus. He...

There's a big difference between a DNR with an error and a patient who doesn't have a DNR. You're talking about two entirely different situations. It's a lot easier to defend your position in court for attempting to resuscitate a patient than for withholding resuscitation efforts.

Absolutely I'm going to disregard the family. It might be entirely true that the person did not want to be resuscitated, but from a legal standpoint, if they were truly serious about not being resuscitated, they would have a DNR in place. Anything short of a valid DNR,a valid medical power of...

If the patient presents in a manner consistent with cease resuscitation. However, beyond medical reasons, it is not our place to decide that someone should not be resuscitated.

Which is what a dnr is for. Without a dnr, we have to assume that they would like to become the Frankenstein monster, so death is still the enemy.

Another thing- if we hadn't been providing CPR all of these years, improvements to resuscitative medicine would never have been made. I like to think that if we keep practicing the medicine now, who's to say that 20, 30 years down the road we might be seeing resuscitation statistics of 50-70%...

Around here it's just beginning to make its way into the field, so it's relatively new and shiny for us. Most of our local hospitals are using it (at the minimum initiating it on good candidates prior to transferring them to a cardiac center) but only two EMS agencies are using it to my...

You might not have the bad weather that the rest of us do, but at least the rest of us don't have to worry about waking up one day to our state sliding off into the ocean. :ph34r:

I wish I had a link to post, but in Richmond they've been running trials with therapeutic hypothermia in the field and they've been having some amazing results with survival-to-discharge statistics. Of course that's post-resuscitation care, but the biggest thing that they have going is their...

I believe his point was more along the lines of finding a happy medium between bradycardic hypoperfusion and exacerbating an MI in progress. Pacing just gives you more control.

I can't say that I see where it matters whether medics work in a fire based system or in an EMS only system. Some of the best medics I've worked with are in fire departments and some of the worst have been from EMS only squads. Don't discriminate. I did, and wasn't able to find anything to...

That seems like a waste of supplies to me... so you're telling me that the CHF patient with his lungs full of fluid is going to have a bag of the very thing that is causing his problem hung anyways? :confused: :eek:

Hahaha the picture made me literally burst out laughing. On a serious note, however, I think we should all be able to agree that there is such a thing as unnecessary ALS. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. The whole aseptic environment thing... yes we should use aseptic technique...