Case of the Month
- Thread starter Stevo
- Start date
i_drive_code3
Forum Crew Member
- 33
- 0
- 0
from the bsi point of view: i used to work for an agency that shall remain nameless and i was given grief for wearing bsi! the population we served was primarily lower income, drug & alcohol usage pretty rampant, and lots on non-english speaking field workers and yet on 95% of the calls my fto and his medic never wore gloves!
my feeling is that you never know what "cooties" are out there and i don't want what my pt has nor do i want to pass anything i have onto them - now that being said i must admit that we rarely wear eye protection or masks and that may be our downfall someday.
i agree that complacency can keep us from being excellent - i had a medic tell me once that when you get to the point where you "know what you're doing that's when you screw up"
kate
my feeling is that you never know what "cooties" are out there and i don't want what my pt has nor do i want to pass anything i have onto them - now that being said i must admit that we rarely wear eye protection or masks and that may be our downfall someday.
i agree that complacency can keep us from being excellent - i had a medic tell me once that when you get to the point where you "know what you're doing that's when you screw up"
kate
mofiremedic
Forum Probie
- 16
- 0
- 0
i have to admit that i am yet to use a mask when i intubate a pt. The sad part is that when i was an emt i got exposed on an assault (the pt passed @ the hospital later that week) when i rolled the pt to insert an oral airway. now for the bad part, Most hospitals dont know of and dont recognize the Brian White Act. it took three days to get permission to test the pt from the family. oh yeah and the hospital didnt start tx in time so i would have been screwed if he had anything. guess i should start 
It seems like no one uses masks when intubating.... not that I'm recommending that, just noticing. It doesn't happen much in my neck of the woods that we need to intubate at all, but I'm thinking even in training it's usually given the brush off. Something like, "Well, officially you should be using a mask now... what? Oh no, we don't have those for you to practice in.... no, we don't carry them in an easy-to-find place on the rig either."
I'm thinking it would be easy to miss, but a patient with all kinds of weird health problems such as randomly losing weight with no cause given would holler AIDS to me. Especially with pneumonia. Especially if it's an uncommon sort of pneumonia. But I just sort of assume everyone is HIV+ because I'ma cynical type.
So... on my one exposure, the person never got tested. I was a bystander who provided the initial care, and the EMTs who transported him would not even look at me, much less listen to my report, much less give a darn that there were two exposures that needed handling....even though they knew who we were. It's a small town. Ooh, actually, don't get me started about that event or their damn attitudes
I'm thinking it would be easy to miss, but a patient with all kinds of weird health problems such as randomly losing weight with no cause given would holler AIDS to me. Especially with pneumonia. Especially if it's an uncommon sort of pneumonia. But I just sort of assume everyone is HIV+ because I'ma cynical type.
So... on my one exposure, the person never got tested. I was a bystander who provided the initial care, and the EMTs who transported him would not even look at me, much less listen to my report, much less give a darn that there were two exposures that needed handling....even though they knew who we were. It's a small town. Ooh, actually, don't get me started about that event or their damn attitudes