I have heard of more ALS providers failing their hands on skills when being tested because they forgot their basic set of skills.
Basic set of skills?
BVM? BP? Backboarding? C-Spine immobilization? Bandaging?
To forget these skills is not the fault of an ALS system but the fault if the individual providers. These skills can and should be refreshed often. However, skills and knowledge that have not be learned are another thing all together. Basing one's "worth" purely on skills is a deadend street. Education is important also.
If you are involved in all the training, education and classes as you claim, you should be able to take the next step to Paramedic. It is too easy to be the backseat quarterback making judgements on a profession that you yourself have not yet accomplished.
If a patient is having chest pain in a hospital room and is sent a couple of CNAs to assess instead of an RN, I don't think that would go over very well. There is an expectation, or should be, from the public even in EMS.
Yes, there is a place for the EMT-B education/training in situations where a basic knowledge and skills are required like FFs, industrial workers and coal miners. BLS transport and transfer trucks are also not going away.
quote by
Hastings
I'm fine with having Basics to send out on the 90% of calls that are BS and don't require ALS.
The profession also needs to drop the term "BS" from its vocabulary. Many of those "BS" calls spend weeks in the hospital or die because the EMS (BLS or ALS) provider did not fully assess or have enough education to recognize something very seriously wrong. The term itself can cause one to skew their assessment before even seeing the patient. Does anyone realize how much respect is lost each time you give report in the ED with the term "BS" used? Sometimes that patient is intubated right after the ambulance leaves. There were recognizable signs had they actually went through the motions of assessment. There may even come a day when Paramedics can do more treatment in the communities but not with the "BS" mentality. Repeated use of the term "BS" shows you have no respect for the people of your community and especially not when it is used to describe the elderly in nursing homes. Its time to grow up and be medical professionals.
Yes, there are calls that probably should not require an ambulance. But, if the layperson was to stumble upon any EMS forum just doing their own research about what an EMT or Paramedic is, would they not be shocked to hear some of the views of the providers? Just the derogatory terms used when describing the elderly and nursing home patients are enough to make them see EMS providers in a different light. There have even been "Bash Patients" threads on a couple of forums.
It is rare that you would ever see these comments on the forums of other professionals even though they take care of those BS patients alot longer than the 15 - 30 minute ambulance ride. Nor, by being health care professionals do they cast off patients' complaints until proven otherwise. They may use the term "clinic patients" but would not call a pt "bulls*&#". Has EMS reduced human care to the same mentality as leaving our nearly dead patients lying alone along the roadside like road kill and then making excuses for it?
Bottomline, the people of the U.S. (and elsewhere) deserves to be provided with the best possible healthcare systems. We have become a country of distinct classes of the "haves" and the "have nots".
