Skip to content

Archives for line-of-duty

See all posts in the network tagged with line-of-duty

Thinking about the ones that got away… at Midnight on a Wednesday

2 comments

A conversation I had tonight with a very good friend of mine made me think of two older posts that you may not have read. They’re… well they’re very personal posts, but I still read them from time to time when I need to put stuff in my head other than the crap that usually floats around in there these days. Replacing over-thought-about current sadness with past sadness? Who knows if that’s healthy, but sometimes it just has to happen.

Anyway, these two posts are worth a read I think, if you don’t mind an old medic rambling about people he didn’t save in years past.

Thanks, friend. I needed to think about these things tonight.

My first… – My very first cardiac arrest patient

In an Instant – A perspective on a tragic death of a young person after years on the street

Maybe I’ll elaborate on these posts tomorrow… tonight’s not the night for it. I’m on duty and the bunk is calling. Who knew that I’d be shaped so much by my career? It is nights like these where I’m sure that I’m motivated to be a paramedic by things way more important than money… Not that I’ve ever been not sure of that fact… and not that there’s ever really been enough money to convince me otherwise.

Anyway, enjoy the above links. They’re in my brain tonight. I hope you like them.

Posted by on February 24, 2011 • Filed under: bad calls, cpr, cpr fail, Emergency Medical Services, emotions, EMS, EMS Health & Safety, EMS Topics, EMT, Fire Rescue Topics, Line of Duty, Paramedic, Uncategorized

Remebering My Father, Chief Richard A. Kaiser

5 comments

I was walking out of a nursing home last night after a simple transport when my brother sent me a text. We talk fairly often; my brother and I, so this wasn’t very significant… except for this text said “11 years today, RIP Richard Kaiser.”

And I hadn’t remembered.

Has it really been 11 years? Did my father, Chief Richard Kaiser really pass away 11 years ago? 11 years? Eleven? Years? Has it been that long?

My dad passed away in his sleep, the cause of death being listed as cardiac arrest of an unknown cause. He probably was a victim of Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA), possibly precipitated by a heart attack (MI) that he either wasn’t aware he was having, or didn’t report that he was having. My educated guess is that my father ignored chest pain. If I had to guess about my father, the proud, healthy and vigorous man that he was, I would say that he probably felt some chest pain and ignored the symptoms. I’d guess that he believed, as so many of my patients through the years have believed, that his body wasn’t telling him anything important when he chose to go to bed and see how he felt in the morning. I’d guess that he had been experiencing the pain in his chest all day and didn’t choose to do anything about it.

My father was a volunteer Fire Chief in the small town I grew up in for well over a decade. The department and the community there still benefit greatly from his legacy. He owned the hardware store in town, was the president of the town’s small water company, and was the general fix-it man for many of our community members when they needed something done. He was always willing to help out anyone in need and was a genuine example of a genuinely good man. I benefit greatly from having his example to lead me in my own life and I am blessed to have had him for the twenty years that I did. I will always be thankful for his legacy and the path he left me to follow.

I’m a career paramedic and firefighter and I would say that it is probably him that got me interested in the Fire Service, which blossomed into my love of the Emergency Medical Services. Without his lead, I don’t know if I would have gravitated to the ambulance game. Perhaps my bank account would have benefited more so if I had chosen to adopt his entrepreneurial spirit, or even maybe his MacGyver-Like ability to look at something and make it fixed… but I took on his love of helping people. In fact, as his legacy I’ve tried to impart in the kid that I consider to be my own son that “Our family helps people”… and a lot of that comes from my dad.

After he died, I lead an unsuccessful attempt to place AEDs throughout the part of the county where we lived. The area is very rural. In fact, the town I grew up in, Edgington, IL, is an unincorporated bump-on-the-map surrounded by vast amounts of corn and cows. There isn’t even a post-office. The ambulance that responded was actually the first ambulance I ever ran a call in, and it came from 13 miles away staffed with EMT-Basics. An EMT did respond direct to the scene from her house and began CPR, but she wasn’t equipped with a defibrillator… and ALS care was coming from the city 30 miles away. I was an EMT then but I wasn’t home.

Needless to say, when someone drops dead out in that area, they tend to stay that way.

Since my father passed away at age 53, most probably from ignoring pain in his chest, I have been hyper-vigilant on diagnosing and treating heart attacks and chest pain. As a paramedic, my number one pet-peeve is patients who ignore the symptoms of a heart attack and don’t call 911. Trying to “Tough it out” cost me my father. It cost my father his life, and I have got to tell you… there are times in my life since where I really have wished I had him around to talk to. I have tried to stop questioning how different my life would have turned out had my father simply chosen to call 911 and get his symptoms checked out. I have come to terms with the fact that it was his time and that we can’t second-guess or play “what-if”. I’ve even reconciled my feelings that I can’t always be there for everyone all the time, no matter how much I may have wanted to be.

But people who ignore chest pain and other serious medical symptoms simply because they believe they’re tough or that it can’t be happening to them still bug me. My ambulance partners will tell you, I give these people “the speech” where I expound upon the fact that they should always call 911 for chest pain. Sometimes I even get through to them.

In remembrance of my father, Chief Richard A. Kaiser of the Andalusia/Edgington Volunteer Fire Protection District, I am asking each and every one of my readers to do me a favor. Please spend some time evangelizing to your friends, family, and other loved ones that they should never ignore chest pain or other symptoms of a heart attack. Tell them to learn the symptoms and make the call to 911 when they have them. You do the same for yourself. Don’t try to tough it out or do anything stupid like that…

Because I miss my dad.

Call 911 for chest pain. Just FREAKING do it.

If you’d like to share something on your Facebook pages, twitter accounts, or print something out and pass it to your friends, please click on this link: “Heart Attack? Call 911 – Don’t Just Burp” It’s a piece where I write about the same topic… just without this level of emotion behind it. I’d like that piece to go as far around as it can go. If my father’s legacy can save any more lives, this is one of those ways.

Rest in Piece Dad, I love you. Thanks to you all in advance for helping me spread the word.

Posted by on February 17, 2011 • Filed under: Administration & Leadership, American Heart Association, Command & Leadership, cpr, Emergency Medical Services, emotions, EMS, ems 2.0, EMS Topics, EMT, fire, Fire Rescue Topics, In the Line of Duty, Line of Duty, Paramedic, Patient Management, STEMI, volunteer fire department

What Difference Does EMS Make? Choose Your Own Ending

17 comments

John didn’t need his alarm clock this morning. In fact, he was wide awake just a few minutes before it went off. He turned it off so as to not wake up his wife and got up quietly to start the day. Today was going to be great. It was huge. Months of work at the office were finally going to be recognized today in the biggest project meeting he’d had in a year. Today’s meeting would launch his career faster than almost anything he’d done before. He was excited. He was ready.

John showered, shaved, and got dressed up in his new suit that he’d bought the day before. He wanted to look his best for this meeting. Everything was counting on it. His wife Joanne had coffee and a quick breakfast ready for him when he came down the stairs. He sipped on his coffee for a bit as he ate his breakfast. It was really sweet of her to do that, He thought and he told her so with an extra hug and kiss as he left for his commute. He wanted to be to work early today to make sure that he was there to answer any pre-meeting questions. This was the day.

Traffic was light on the interstate that morning and John was moving at a good clip. It was strange, he thought, for traffic to be this kind to him on a Monday morning but he figured it was a good omen. His phone buzzed with an e-mail and he glanced at it. It wasn’t anything that couldn’t wait until he was in the office, he thought. Then a great song came on the radio. John reached down to turn up the volume so he could get pumped up for the drive…

He never saw the cars stopped just in front of him.

Mary took care of herself pretty well for a type one diabetic. Her doctor had told her that. She stuck to her diet, maintained her sugar levels meticulously, and took her insulin on a sliding scale that seemed to be working perfectly. Her blood sugar readings were always right where her doctor said they should be. Mary was proud of that. She worked out and tried to get out walking or jogging the trail at the park at least 3 or 4 times a week. She felt good, looked good, and thought that she was doing all she could to take charge of her health.

It was a beautiful Saturday morning and Mary thought that she should take her dog Patches out for a walk around the pond. Patches was a 1 year old Golden Retriever and loved jumping in the lake to fetch sticks. Mary had taken her morning dose of insulin, popped a multivitamin tablet from her new bottle that she’d bought the day before, and ate a quick bit of breakfast before she put Patches on his leash and started walking to the park. It was about five blocks away and patches knew the route well. Everything was great, until the nausea hit… Mary tried to fight it but knew that she was going to throw up when she started salivating and breathing heavily. She ended up throwing up in some bushes next to the sidewalk. She thought that she was lucky. Nobody saw her hurl up her breakfast and she immediately felt better. It must have just been the new vitamins that made her stomach upset, she thought as she continued walking to the park. She figured that she just wouldn’t take them again.

Mary never felt sick. She just thought that she should take a nap. The rock over there looked like a good place. Why was she so sleepy? Never mind… Just lay down and nap. Nap good.

Luckily, another jogger happened by to find Mary unresponsive.

Work had been scarce lately and Steve was happy to get his truck back on the road. He drove a live-bottom trailer hauling asphalt for a big local paving company and they hadn’t had many big projects come their way lately. Driveway work was steady, but rarely did the company need Steve to drive a big truck out to a site for a driveway job. Steve made his best money and hours when the company had highway work and today was the first day of a big job they’d just gotten. He’d been in line with the other trucks waiting his turn to dump his load into the paver for hours and even though he was happy to be working, he had to pee. Minutes turned into hours and finally it was his turn to drop his blacktop and head back for a new load. He couldn’t wait to be done. He really had to pee by this time and he knew exactly where his next opportunity would be. He backed his trailer up to the paver and raised the bed. Then through his rear-view mirror he saw the people scramble and jump off of the paver. He felt his truck lurch forward as the paver machine was pushed into it from the impact of a car travelling too fast in the construction zone. When he jumped out of his truck after looking to make sure there was nobody coming at him, he saw his friend Luke laying on the ground. Luke was bleeding, bad. The car and the paver were a tangled mess of metal and there was someone screaming at an unmoving figure in the passenger seat of the car.

Steve no longer had to pee…

—————————————————————————

Note to blog readers:     I can’t quite decide on what I should do from this point on. I can take two paths, one is a rallying call to community members asking them to put themselves in the place of the people in the above cases and get out there and support their local EMS. The other, is a rallying call to us EMS people… I’ve written it both ways. You can see what you like best.

—————————————————————————

Option #1

Every day, Paramedics and EMTs put on their uniforms, fire up their ambulances, and get ready to face the onslaught of whatever mayhem the streets produce for them during their shift. They do a job that is unpredictable, complicated, and vital to the community. These three stories could happen to you or someone you love tomorrow and each of them will require the response of a highly trained, expert Emergency Medical Services (EMS) provider. There are times when your local ambulance service makes the difference between life and death but there are far more times when they make a big difference in a person’s continuing quality of life. By interceding in the first few moments of a medical emergency with highly trained experts, EMS makes a difference for us all. Communities that support their local Emergency Medical Services have better services and community members that are more educated about what makes quality EMS are better suited to support their local services.

You may not think about the people who respond to your call when you dial 911, but all we do is think about you. Get informed, get involved, and support your local Emergency Medical Services.

We’re there for you. We need you to return the favor.

—————————————————————————

Option #2

As you come in to work today, lace up your boots, or turn on your pager, think about the patients in the above cases. They’re people just like anyone you see in your day to day life. They and others like them didn’t intend to be placed in the situations they’re facing and to them; theirs is one of the most intense situations of their life. Their very life and the continuing quality of their lives could rest in your hands today. They are depending on you. Their families are depending on you. Your knowledge, skill, and preparation to perform your best are paramount to these people. Their care rests on you. You owe them your best and there is no excuse they’ll accept for poor performance.

EMS providers transcend their self when they lace up their boots and sign on for duty. Society needs us. Our patients need us. We need us. We will never know the impact we’ll have on the lives of our patients, their families, and their communities… but it’s huge. We as EMS providers play a pivotal role in our communities. They’ll never acknowledge it en masse… but that doesn’t diminish its importance. Recognition for our skills isn’t necessary for our skills to be vital. EMS people do their jobs because they’re important. We do our jobs because our guts tell us that what we’re doing is right… and even when we stumble and find ways to improve ourselves and our care, it doesn’t diminish the importance of what we’ve done. We have acted, and we continue to act in the best interest of humanity.

Today you can make a choice. You can make the choice to seek out and become the best EMS provider you can be or you can choose not to. I suggest that you make the right choice but no one will ever be able to force you. Your care is an art and a science. Your performance is based upon hard science and soft intuition. There can never be a book that will tell you exactly what is right for every situation… you simply have to learn it and learn how to make the right decisions to fit the situations you find yourself in.

My advice to all EMS providers is to take the high road. Err on the side of what you truly feel is best for your patient. Do your best. Study hard and learn from those you consider the best among us. As an EMS provider, you bear the burden of an overloaded system that pays poorly and garners little respect. I feel it too. I say that it doesn’t diminish the importance of what we do and it isn’t the individual patient’s fault. They deserve our best no matter what the system is doing to us. It’s our responsibility and our calling. It has been said that the definition of a “Professional” is one who can perform their duty adequately in conditions that would cause the amateur to turn back. I’d say that we’re living in those conditions today, but we still have to perform. Do your best and know your stuff. Lives depend on your commitment.

It is our job to promote ourselves. It is our job to elevate EMS. It is our job to speak out and optimize the system. The fault for its failings lies within our profession and it is our job to change it. All of us, individually and collectively have the responsibility.

Will you answer?

—————————————————————————

So I got a little philosophical in this one. Which ending do you like better?

Posted by on September 7, 2010 • Filed under: 911, edemse, Emergency Medical Services, EMS, ems 2.0, ems education, EMS Motivation, EMS pep talk, ems scenario, ems scenario based education, EMS Topics, EMS training, Ethics, everyday ems ethics, Fire Rescue Topics, In the Line of Duty, inside the mind of a paramedic, letter to the editor, Line of Duty, Paramedic, paramedic education, Patient Management, pride, profession, professionalism, Public relations, scenario, scenario based training, stories, Training & Development, training-fire-rescue-topics

Shining through Suffering – Learning How to Cope with Sadness in EMS

7 comments

Medic Trommashear, who writes great stuff has offered to co-post with me on this. You can check it out at her blog: http://lookingthroughapairofpinkhandledtraumashears.com/

—————————————————————————————–

This morning the wife came home from her night shift on the ambulance and told me a sad story. During the wee hours of the morning she handled a rather nasty fatality accident. The victim, a 20-something male was walking home from a party on a dark country road and tragically, a passing motorist didn’t see him in time and the accident ensured that he’d never make it. Pedestrian vs. car accidents at high speeds have a way of doing that.

Sad stories like this are getting more common for her as she’s immersed herself fully into paramedic school and professional EMS in general. She’s been seeing sad stuff multiple times per week it seems. I can see that it’s wearing on her and I feel her pain. I have experienced it quite a bit myself in my own career and I continue to do so on a regular basis. Jumping into full-time EMS exposes a person to sadness on a level that can’t easily be prepared for. A person just has to jump in with both feet and not be afraid to feel the range of emotions that they’re going to be exposed to. It’s hard, it’s tough, and it’s one of those things a person just has to learn how to overcome if they want to make EMS a part of their life.

That’s the part that most people don’t get, I think. The part where you have to “Learn How” to overcome the sadness and negative emotions we’re faced with as EMS people. A common statement that lay people make when they hear that I am a paramedic is “Oh, I could never do that job and see what you see. I just couldn’t handle it”. Perhaps they’re right, but I would guess that anyone can train themselves to handle almost anything. My pseudoscientific opinion is that we develop our tolerance and our healthy ways of dealing with being exposed to such negative emotions on a regular basis through experiencing it and learning ways to function and feel happy afterwards. It’s harder for some than others and I can’t imagine that there is a single roadmap for learning it. It’s individual. Friends help and so does an understanding family. Good coworkers are great to observe and learn from as long as they realize their own humanity and aren’t simply trying to fool themselves out of bravado. We’re all human and I can testify that we’re all affected, no matter how thick our skin may appear.

Back when I was a new medic I was working a ton of hours. I mean, I worked a lot. I worked TOO much. I worked for days on end without sleep for multiple jobs. At the time, I felt I had good reason. I was attempting college for the first time, taking care of my recently deceased father’s businesses, and trying to sock away money to help my mother. I worked a full-time EMS job, a full-time hospital job, ran the businesses, and volunteered for a separate fire department and EMS agency. It was nuts. I would literally go for days without sleep. During that time it seemed like I was getting slammed by horribly sad calls. I felt I was surrounded by suffering and death. I was working at least two codes a week on average. Mayhem and madness seemed to rule the day. I was getting deeper and deeper and…

I was going nuts.

I was horribly, deeply depressed.

I almost went insane.

I was at my darkest hour when I found myself angry at anything that was cute or fun. Literally things like jokes, teddy bears, and Hallmark cards made me angry. I just couldn’t see how people could stand to look at that kind of stuff when there was so much suffering in the world. How frivolous! What a waste of time! It made me angry to think of anything that didn’t acknowledge the pain I was bearing witness to on such a regular basis. I was depressed and angry. I just couldn’t understand anything other than feeling the pain that the people I was taking care of were feeling. It affected my life, my work, and my human interaction. It was horrible.

Then I had an epiphany that changed my personality and who I am to this day.

Those who meet me know that I like to joke around. A lot. There are things that I take seriously however I do not personally happen to be one of them. My epiphany was that the stuff that was cute, fun, loving, friendly, and/or happy was all that actually did matter in life. We combat the bad with the good, the yang with the yin. I chose to pay attention to the comedy of life and downplay the tragedy. After that revelation, my whole outlook on life and my personality changed for the better. I had found that comedy, friendship, and love were the ways to live my life. Come what may, I can make a joke about it and that makes it ok. I laugh at inappropriate times and seek out the good in life. My life and career ensure that I’ll still have an onslaught of human tragedy thrown at me whether I’m ready for it or not but If I can actively seek out the positive, I may just end up ahead of the game.

To my wife, I love you. Hopefully you don’t end up where I have been… but I’ll be here for you, come what may. I understand what you’re going through and I love you for this any many, many other reasons. Always.

————————————————-

You may want to read one of my most popular posts. It’s an older post of mine where I explore what I call “Splashed Sadness”. It’s along these lines. We EMS people have to deal with a lot. Never be afraid to share it. Don’t hold it in. Get it out and learn how you can cope with it because there’s not a one of us ain’t human.

“Splashed Sadness – A look at Negative Emotions in EMS”

Or “Reflections on an Easter Morning” – another post about a bad call.

Also, don’t forget to check out Medic Trommashear’s co-post on this. You can check it out at her blog: http://lookingthroughapairofpinkhandledtraumashears.com/

(Note: I’ll link to the post directly when it’s up)

Posted by on August 30, 2010 • Filed under: bad calls, Emergency Medical Services, emotions, EMS, EMS Health & Safety, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Safety & Health, inside the mind of a paramedic, Line of Duty, Paramedic, psychology, sadness, Training & Development, Uncategorized

Red Lights to the Left of them, Blue to the right! – Coloring Emergency Lighting

52 comments

So you’re driving down the road in an unfamiliar state, let’s say that it’s Iowa or Wisconsin, when in your rear-view mirror you see flashing red lights on a big utility truck coming your way. You can’t really make out what kind of truck it is, but you see red lights flashing so you pull over to let it go by. When it does, you realize that you’ve just pulled over for a tow-truck.

Or how’s this? The same thing happens, but it’s a flashing blue light in Colorado. When you pull over, you realize that you just got pulled over by a snow-plow.

I live in Illinois and work between IL and Wisconsin and there’s quite a bit of a difference between the different lighting colors and upon who can use what color light for what purpose. As a volunteer paramedic/Firefighter in Illinois I run a blue light with no siren in my personal vehicle. Even though I rarely turn it on, I have it in case I get stuck behind a 20mph Grandma on my way to the Big One. Interestingly, the blue light gives me no legal authority or any legal leeway on traffic laws and I must obey all traffic laws even while running the light. I Wisconsin, however, volunteer firefighters and EMS people may use red lights and sirens in their personal vehicles. They have the same legal status as governmental emergency vehicles when they’re driving with their lights activated.

In Iowa, volunteer firefighters may run blue lights in their personal vehicles with no legal authority granted them, and EMS volunteers may run clear (white) lights in their personal vehicles. Volunteers for fire and EMS combination agencies may run a mixture of both, however if a person volunteers for both a separate Fire department and a separate EMS agency, they must be careful to run the clear light for EMS responses and the Blue light for fire responses.

Of course, that’s just for personal vehicles right? Allowing emergency lights in the personal vehicles of emergency volunteers is a debatable issue in some circles. I argue for responsible control of their use and think that they are needed in some communities and not needed in others. Out of the 400-500 volunteer runs I respond to annually, I probably turn on my blue light for less than ten percent of the runs. I use it judiciously, but I know others that I can say did not.

However, this isn’t a post about volunteer emergency lighting and the pros and cons of it. It’s about the messed up spectrum of colors that we use on emergency vehicles in this country. Sure, we have the same stock colors pretty much everywhere. Red, blue, amber (yellow), green, clear (white), and in some states purple (Yes! Purple!). In the southern states, blue lights are for law-enforcement only and red is for fire only. In Wisconsin, law enforcement runs red and blue lights and fire and EMS is red only. In Iowa, up until a few years ago everyone ran red lights except for volunteer firefighters. They changed the law and now allow blue on the Passenger side only. In the City of Chicago, the Chicago Police Department runs blue only and the Fire department runs Red and Green. Downstate Illinois (Read: Outside of the City of Chicago City Limts) runs red and blue for all “Authorized Emergency Vehicles” and blue lights for the volunteers. Green lights are only permitted on stationary vehicles for command lights but can also be used for private security officers. As I mentioned before, in Iowa and Wisconsin, tow trucks run red lights. In Colorado, snow plows run blue. In some states, funeral processions run purple.

Confused?  I sure as heck am.

Consider this: Different lighting colors exist because different members of the driving public see different wavelengths of light in the spectrum (i.e. “Colors”) better or worse in differing ambient light conditions. Also, different colors penetrate different atmospheric and/or ambient light conditions better than others. You can see blue forever at night or in the fog, but not so much in the bright light. Red washes out to amber in the day light but is still fairly visible. Clear lights penetrate for a very long way but can be confused with light reflecting off of a surface almost the same as amber lights. We need a diverse spectrum of colors emanating from our response vehicles in order to ensure that the highest amount of drivers out there are able to see the lights. If someone’s color blind to the particular light color that we choose, they’re not going to see us all that well, are they?

The arguments that I hear for the use of lighting colors don’t hold much weight with me. Who cares if the public is able to see that an approaching emergency vehicle is Fire, EMS, Law Enforcement, ASPCA, Haz-Mat, Tech-Rescue, Volunteer, or miscellaneous. They just need to pull over and get out of the way. One color lighting schemes may give the agency a sense of personality or whatnot, but they’re certainly not the safest way to be seen. An emergency vehicle needs to throw out a lot of light across the spectrum of visible colors in order to help ensure the safest response possible.

So why are we having this hodgepodge of warning light colors? Why do people think they’re a good idea? I can think of a few advantages of having “law enforcement only” colors, as in reducing false traffic stops from people impersonating police officers, but having one color and one color only simply makes it easier for a criminal to get a hold of that one color of light. Why fire would only need red lights is a question that I can’t come up with a good reason for.

So good luck driving out there! If you see me, I’ll be on the side of the road letting a tow-truck go by. Then I’ll run my blue light in Wisconsin because we got a house fire in my district that touches the WI state line and I’ll get arrested for impersonating a police officer. Then I’ll be at work getting into a crash because someone driving out there was color blind to the color red.

Anyone want to add to the confusion? What colors do your state or country use? Is anybody else in favor of a national standard?

Posted by on April 7, 2010 • Filed under: 911 fail, accident, Administration & Leadership, Ambulance, Ambulance Driver, Ambulance maintenance, ckemtp rants, code-3, Command & Leadership, drive fast, Emergency Medical Services, EMS, EMS Health & Safety, EMS Management, EMS rant, EMS safety, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, In the Line of Duty, Iowa, Iowa EMS, lights and sirens, Line of Duty, Management, politics, Technology & Communications, technology-communications-ems-topics, Vehicle Operation & Ambulances, Vehicle Operations & Apparatus, volunteer fire department, volunteer firefighter

Two Cases, One letter – From one Paramedic’s struggles, change can come

17 comments

A letter I received from a reader recently has gotten me just as mad as he is, even more so maybe. This letter came in from someone who identifies himself as a paramedic but asks that I protect his identity and location completely. I will do so, only identifying that the letter comes from someone who works out west, somewhere between the Mississippi and Montana but not east as Maine or as far south as Amarillo.

So He comes from somewhere in the US, not the east coast, and not Hawaii. He’s a paramedic and he’s male. That’s all I’ll say. I’m going to work the things he wrote me in his letter with my thoughts and feelings on what he wrote and the situation he wrote about. I’ll rewrite the letter keeping the point of it intact. I’m fairly sure that you’ll be just as angered as I. (Note – This is LONG but it’s good. It will probably tick you off too, enjoy)

(more…)

Posted by on February 25, 2010 • Filed under: Administration & Leadership, change, ckemtp rants, DNR, Do Not Resuscitate Order, edemse, Emergency Medical Services, EMS, ems 2.0, ems education, EMS ethics, EMS Health & Safety, EMS Management, EMS paramedics, EMS system, EMS Topics, Ethics, everyday ems ethics, Line of Duty, medical ethics, Paramedic, paramedic education, patient care, Patient Handovers, Patient Management, politics, potential, PR, pride, profession, professionalism, Public relations, rant, stories

Why I am Passionate about the Chronicles of EMS

15 comments

If you’re an EMS professional, you should be paying attention to the Chronicles of EMS.

I think every person involved in EMS on any level needs to pay attention to the work of three of the profession’s upcoming giants, Mark Glencourse, Justin Schorr, and Thaddeus Setla. Their collective project is a warp-leap forward for how our profession is presented to, judged by, and thought about by our internal and external observers, customers, and colleagues. With their efforts come Hope… Hope that one day soon EMS will take its rightful place as a true profession; Hope that our profession will get the paid the attention that it deserves; Hope that our educational standards, resource needs, and compensation will finally be improved; and Hope that we will be able to improve our total service to our patients and our community through shedding a new light on our profession.

If this works… everything could change. Everything could change quickly, incredibly, and wonderfully. Imagine if EMS became “cool” and the public finally thought about who we are, what we are, and what it is that we do for them. Imagine if people demanded that their community leaders pay as much attention to EMS as we need them too… Just Imagine.

EMS needs a strong, unified message. The Chronicles of EMS can be that message. It is a professional, smart, and uber-cool message aimed straight at where we want to be going. It is not lip service, it is not Hollywood glamour, and it is certainly not dramatized for profit. It is being prepared by industry-experts who are still working the same streets that we are everyday. Everyone involved is one of us. Everyone involved is passionate. Everyone involved wants this, and they want it as bad as you do.

The reason I write about EMS is because I want to improve our profession and our service to others. I want to make this better so bad that I can taste it and I’m willing to work as hard as I have to. Our patients and our communities deserve the best we can give them and I believe that key to fixing EMS is communication and the spreading of our message. This blog exists for that reason and so do the other blogs in this genre. The other bloggers, authors, speakers, and writers I’ve met have all spoken to me of the same goals. Our profession exists to save lives and alleviate suffering and improving our profession help us save more lives and alleviate more suffering in our communities. EMS does indeed make a difference out there in the world and we’re the ones doing it. The Chronicles of EMS is a great beacon of hope in our collective quest.

EMS Deserves More. Our Patients deserve more; Our Families deserve more; and yes… We deserve more. Mark, Justin, Ted, and everyone involved in the Chronicles of EMS are working hard to give us just that. They deserve our support and our attention.

I’ll be in San Francisco on March 11th for the premier of their pilot episode. I wouldn’t miss it for anything. Look out world, EMS is moving forward.

Posted by on February 8, 2010 • Filed under: Administration & Leadership, change, Command & Leadership, Emergency Medical Services, EMS, ems 2.0, EMS Blog, EMS blogosphere, ems education, EMS Health & Safety, EMS Management, EMS Topics, EMS training, EMT, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Safety & Health, Happy Medic, humor, Line of Duty, medicblog999, News, Paramedic, paramedic education, Patient Management, pride, profession, professionalism, Public relations

Life Under the Lights – From behind the Windshield

6 comments

This post goes out to my blogger buddy @medicthree - (http://www.medicthree.com) whose been having a few rough shifts lately. If you’ve been having a few rough ones lately, this one’s for you too. It’s kind of a rambling, disjointed post about emotions in EMS. It made me feel better to write it. Here’s hoping that it makes you feel better to read it.

————————————-

Cruising down the interstate has always been a Zen-like experience for me. I do it a lot due to living here in the rural Midwest. I like it. It’s a quiet time for me to be alone with my thoughts… which can be both good and bad I guess. It’s not uncommon for me to point my car in the direction of some commonly travelled to destination and be exploring the depths of my subconscious mind the whole way. It’s my meditation time, my time to reconcile the goings on in the world with my opinions on them. I’ve had some of my biggest epiphanies with my foot on the gas pedal. Give me the radio, the open road, and a not-so-specific time to be somewhere and I can solve almost any problem I’ve got.

This morning’s cruise home from my Northern job was no different. Today the world was subtly shining with a brilliant white coat of ice. The icy fog that had lingered all night had coated each individual twig, blade of grass, and exposed surface with tiny fernlike diamonds giving the quarter-mile or so of visibility around me an eerie, ghost like quality. It was beautiful. I wonder if anyone else calls this stuff “Ice fog”?  I do. At least today I do. My father taught me that pilots call the small ice that builds up on the leading edges of airfoils and antennas “Rime Ice” and it was forming on my antenna as I cruised down the highway. It made me remember my dearly departed dad and smile to myself as I did it. Remembering things he taught me tends to do that. I’ve found that as I progress deeper into my own path of fatherhood I remember the things he taught me more and more. I try to pass that on to my own son but I suppose that I’ll always worry about not being able to live up to the task.

See what I mean? Just thinking about the drive time tends to make my thoughts ramble. Perhaps everyone does this, perhaps not… but I would think that everyone has their time alone with their thoughts. My time is my drive time. Perhaps it is yours as well.

Being a paramedic who thinks while driving affects my rides home from work the most, I believe. If you’re in the business, you know about the peaks and valleys of emotion and the human condition that we witness on our shifts. My drive home is my place to sort them out and reconcile the lowest valleys with the highest peaks so I can be more balanced. There’s been times where I’ve gone through a toll booth with tears streaming down my face, trying to regain my composure to give the toll-booth guy my patented “You ‘ave a good day, my friend” as I hand him my eighty cents. Other days I’m laughing like a fool while blaring European techno, country western, or whatever tripe the pop station’s playing repetitively these days. Sometimes I’m sullen, thinking about some stranger’s death that shouldn’t have happened. Sometimes I’m elated, thinking about something that’s just full of EMS win. Whatever the case, my thoughts tend to run down the calls I had over the previous day’s shift and I dissect my decisions and the circumstances that lead me to make those decisions while I’m sitting there alone in the car. I think that it makes me a better paramedic to do this, I also think that it keeps me only borderline insane. Someone once sent me an e-mail with tips on how to keep oneself with “A Healthy Level of Insanity” and I love that term.

I’m sorry that this post is just a bit of rambling on about emotional stuff, but I hadn’t posted in a while and this Sunday just felt like a good day to let my fingers put something out there. I’ve always believed that EMS people experience the world differently as they live their “Life, under the lights”. Our experiences and the viewpoint they give us make us just a bit different than our neighbors. We laugh at inappropriate times, our thoughts sometimes wander, and we take some things more seriously, and some things less seriously than others. While collectively we EMS people are a diverse lot, we share a common bond that could make me comfortable sitting down to throw back a cold one with almost any of my colleagues. That is, until we get onto a debate about some minor topic and both of us are right beyond the shadow of a doubt. I’ve told students that in the decade or so I’ve been doing this, working in a high-stress environment, surrounded by type-A, ADHD personalities who make their living on making the “right” decisions every time, I’ve ticked some people off along the line. If I hadn’t, I’d have been doing it wrong. I tell the students that they’ll tick some people off too and that they should have fun with it while trying to be as nice as they can and realizing that they can disagree with someone without having to dislike them… and vice versa.

Sometimes, this job sucks. Sometimes our best isn’t good enough… and sometimes we think that we weren’t able to our best for whatever reason. Those times are low times that can consume you in total darkness. Sometimes it’s just the opposite and your shift full of EMS Win leaves you full of inflated confidence. The lows are days when I drive the speed limit, the highs push me over a bit. My advice is to just remember what’s important to you and what your end goal in life is. You’ll get there if you keep travelling in that direction, no matter the speed you’re going at the time. Remember that this profession is like a sine-wave with peaks that can thrill you and valleys that can um, kill you if you let them get to you too much. Just remember, my friends. Someone up there has a purpose for all of this that we’re not meant to understand. Just keep doing your best, honestly putting forth the effort that leaves you honestly convinced that you’ve done your absolute best for everyone you’ve been charged to take care of and you’ll survive this stuff out there.

And keep driving.

Posted by on January 17, 2010 • Filed under: CISD, ckemtp, EMS Health & Safety, EMS Topics, Line of Duty, mental imagery, new perspective, profession, psychology, sadness, stories

Firefighter Killed, 8 injured in Wisconsin

No comments

Http://www.Firefighterclosecalls.com has this sad news this morning regarding an explosion in Wisconsin that has claimed the life of one firefighter and left 8 others injured.

http://firefighterclosecalls.com/fullstory.php?98993

Our Thoughts and Prayers are with their families and our brothers in the St. Anna Fire Department 

Posted by on December 30, 2009 • Filed under: Fire Rescue Topics, In the Line of Duty, Line of Duty

Thanking Those who REALLY Deserve it – Merry Christmas

4 comments

I originally meant to post this during Thanksgiving, but this season seems appropriate enough. I love Christmas. It’s my most favorite time of year. I love family, friends, cooking, and giving gifts. I love Christmas parties, I love the fellowship, and I love being kind to everyone and having them not look at me strangely… ok *as* strangely as they do other times of the year.

And also, I tell people “Merry Christmas”. I don’t say “Happy Holidays”, “Happy Winder Holiday”, or “My lawyer sez to tell you ‘good luck”. If someone responds with “Happy Chanukah”, or “Happy Kwanza”, or “Happy MishMash Shaloob” I’m not offended by it and I’m happy that they wished me the sentiment so there ya go.

Oh, and to my UK friends, Merry Frumpydumples to ye’

So what’s my Christmas post going to be? Well, it’s about thanking who’s really important to thank. As you all know, I’m a volunteer paramedic and firefighter as well as being a career paramedic and firefighter. This time of year in the small towns, it’s pretty common to have people stop by and offer up sweet treats and tell us “Thank you” for what we do for them. Let me make the blanket statement that I really appreciate it folks, even if my waist line and my pending diabetes doesn’t. However, I don’t think that I deserve your thanks.

I have always gotten more from my service to others than I could ever hope to give back to it. I love EMS and I love the Fire Department and I love helping people. I identify with it and I couldn’t imagine my life without it. Even after a solid decade of running my “Life Under the Lights” I can’t imagine doing anything else. I am rewarded a thousand times over by every smile I get, every person I comfort, and every person that I am privileged enough to come into contact with as a caregiver.

So who should the people that wish to thank us actually be thanking?

Well , first thank my wife for every time that I’ve had to get up and leave for a volunteer call in the middle of a family dinner. Thank my kid for every time that I’ve missed out on play time, or story time, or nap time because the pager called me away. Thank my family for all of the times that they’ve had to do without me because I was working mandatory overtime. Thank my wife too for all the nights she sleeps alone because I’m on a 24 and am sleeping at the station. Thank my friends for all the times that I’ve stood them up on plans because I’ve gotten stuck running calls. Thank everyone who cares that I spend time with them, because a lot of the time I could be doing that I’m off caring for everybody else.

Thank the same people for every volunteer or public safety person you know… because without the caring and understanding of the people that truly matter in life for us, we couldn’t be out there doing it for you. They’re the heroes here.

That, and one more thing. I was never in the Military and I probably should have been. This may not be much, but Thank You to all of our Military Men and Women out there serving for me and my family. I can’t write enough to say how much I deeply, and truly appreciate your sacrifice… but from the most humble part of my heart, Thank You for everything you do. The same thanks goes to your families and loved ones as well.

Merry Christmas, Every one.

Posted by on December 24, 2009 • Filed under: 2009, Ambulance, appreciation, Emergency Medical Services, EMS, EMS ethics, EMS Health & Safety, EMS Motivation, EMS pep talk, EMS Topics, fire, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter, Firefighter Safety & Health, In the Line of Duty, Line of Duty, News, Paramedic, pride, profession, professionalism

Swinging a Sledgehammer and Thinking about the UK… Strange times

10 comments

So here’s the good news. The ambulance service I work for up North, “Ambo’s R’ us” has finally taken the leap and is getting us a new station. Yep, that’s right folks. I will no longer be living in squalor whilst working up here in the vast frozen wastelands.

Except for one little hitch in the gittyup.

In big ambulance services, when one gets a new station, usually the service employs people to work on the station, build and/or remodel the station, and move the stuff from the old location to the new one. Not so in a small, rural ambulance service. Nooooo…. Here, a paramedic is expected not only to work on the ambulance during their shift, they’re also expected to put on their tradesman hat and get their hands dirty.

So, yep… today Ckemtp was not *just* a paramedic. Today yours truly was a demolition man, a moving man, a wall-paper remover, and a carpenter’s apprentice. All of my crew mates were today too, as were the crews yesterday, and so will be the crews who are unlucky enough to come work ambulance shift any time in the next couple of weeks.

But here’s my mea culpa confession folks: I’m not handy.

There, I said it. I am so not handy that hardware stores actually have my picture up on their walls stating that I must ask for staff permission to enter their premises. Apparently they want someone to follow me around with a fire extinguisher because there’s a concern that I might come into contact with a carriage bolt or something and the resulting sparks will start a fire. I, like most of my colleagues, became paramedics because we’re generally not handy enough to get a good paying job in the construction and/or “real job” industry.

What’s that you say? You’re a full-time paramedic/EMT and you own/work/watch a construction business on the side? Well good for you. I don’t. I write stuff about stuff and ride ambos.

The dreaded “other duties as assigned” clause in my job description is being stretched so thin here that you can hear it singin’ in the wind. I didn’t sign up for this. It’s actually very hazardous to my health and well being for me to be doing anything remotely construction or “handyman” related.

There’s a lot of reasons why, the risk of fire, explosion, and/or structural collapse being amongst them… but they’re not the real reasons that I’m so worried about this. You see, I have a lovely wife named Gkemtp(it) who is the absolute light of my life. However, together we own a home which happens to be the scourge of my existence. Like EVERY guy who owns a home, my home is full of things that are disintegrating at an alarming rate. There’s ALWAYS something that needs fixing and they rarely respond to an IV, o2, and monitor. Heck, even my clock radio didn’t do well with defibrillation. I can’t give my clothes dryer Epinephrine to get it started again, my clogged drain didn’t respond to a heparin bolus, and my leaky faucet leaked right through an occlusive dressing. I just don’t understand my home and its malfunctions the way I understand humans and their maladies. It’s awful.

So my wife knows that I am the opposite of the handyman… and she’s pretty ok with it, lest she nag and have me end up breaking something much, much worse than it was before I tried to fix it. I *like* that she’s ok with it… And I don’t need her to think that I came to work, built us a shiny new ambo station, and learned how to be Bob Vila with an NREMT-P patch. It’s bad enough that I clean toilets, vacuum, and do dishes here at work. If she found that out, she might make me do more of that at home.

So I’m stuck here. I’m destined to make anything I fix much worse than it was before, I’m destined to demolish something I’m not supposed to demolish, and I’m destined to make an egregious wiring error that’s going to burn the place down while I’m sleeping inside of it and I won’t even get to go to the fire because I’m on ambulance detail!

Maybe I should move to the UK and work with my good buddy Mark Glencourse, of Medic999 fame. One of the biggest things I took from the Chronicles of EMS, his and Justin Schorr’s (The Happy Medic) foray into cross-national EMS exchange (Soon to be an AWESOME TV show!!) is that UK firefighters DON’T CLEAN THEIR OWN STATION! Yes. They FREAKING HAVE CLEANING CREWS THAT COME IN AND CLEAN UP ALL BUT THE MOST SUPERFICIAL MESSES! Hell, they even have a bona-fide chef to cook for them.

And here I am, scrubbing toilets and swingin’ a sledge hammer here in the ‘States.

So, I’ll keep toiling until I break something so bad that they make me go post somewhere where I can’t hurt myself, and Mark will keep living in the lap of luxury.

Maybe being a Limey isn’t so bad.

Posted by on December 20, 2009 • Filed under: 911 fail, appreciation, ckemtp, ckemtp rants, EMS Health & Safety, EMS Humor, EMS pep talk, EMS rant, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, grumblemedics, humor, Line of Duty, medicblog999, UK paramedics, united kingdom, Your Happy Medic
Random Plugin By Best Account Services