Recent content by tom.watkins

Just read the website....it makes Yak look like a wasteland too! Good for you, man! You should send me a of your sprint vehicle.

If you want to go back through paramedic school, then Seattle is for you! Otherwise, go anywhere but King County; there has always been and EMS iron curtain there and only Medic One (Harborviews) medics are allowed to play. I work in Yakima county, and while we aren't as busy as Seattle, we get...

As a good rule of thumb you should try to start taking your first pressure manually, and then use your machine for trending. Also, HTN is something that typically kills you over 10 years, not 10 minutes. Still, a basic should never be afraid to tell a medic that they aren't comfortable with...

Had something similar happen the other day; had a pt with CBG of 399, and was having, and I quote, some "messed up breathing", (per RN). So here ya go: CBG-399 after 7 units of humalog; kussmaul respirations; and was going back and forth between tri and bigeminy. I thought this might be a good...

If the pt or doc are adamant that they go by ambulance, I'd say a KED just for CYA and pt "comfort". C-spine, pshhh.... We dont need no stinken' c-spine. A definite no-go on the trauma alert, though. Let's save it for when we need it. We have a hospital where I work that is now triaging our...

Lots of good dx's here! I'm gonna try and find out a little more about the case, and I'm definitely gonna check out that JEMS article on suspension injuries....side-note: i only need 2 tubes left to be done with medic school! Somebody do the EMS code dance for me and drum me up a couple of calls...

That's the road I was going down. It seemed sorta unlikely that the pt would succumb to it in only 30 mins, but then again this was a watered-down version of the story from an ICU nurse so who knows. Oh ya, and I forgot to say earlier that Yakima county doesn't go on mechanism alone....

Autopsy was conducted, however I have no idea the outcome. I asked about trauma and she said that there was absolutely none present anywhere.

I asked her if there was compression to an extremity and she said no, and as for the immediate asystole, I would assume that the pt was in either v-fib/tach prior to the patches being applied and that it might have been a "documentation error" but I would not begin to imply that the medic did...

So I was in the ICU today doing some rounds for class and an RN hit me up for my opinion on a call she heard about.... "A 50 y/o male patient was driving along the highway between Toppenish and Goldendale, (pretty desolate stretch of HWY 97 in Washington state) when he lost control of his...