The first post of EMS in the New Decade went up on February 26th of this year. Now, 49 posts later, I’m finishing out 2010. I thought though, that I’d finish up the year with a story from the earlier part of my career. December 18th, 1998 started out not unlike many of my EMS shifts. I was home from college and working a volunteer day shift at Toms River EMS. This was my winter break before I started medic school, so this break would be my last opportunity to have any sort of “freedom” before I spent the next year learning how to be a Paramedic. We were dispatched across town for the female, possible CVA. I didn’t recognize the house when I pulled up and walked in, with the district’s police officer, the son of a family friend, right behind me. The woman sitting on the couch looked up at me, “Scott? Jeff?” I realized at that moment that this was a close friend both my parent’s and the parents of the officer. She had some increased generalized weakness and speech problems before calling 911. The symptoms had since resolved, much to her relief. Her BP was a little bit high, but everything out seemed to check out. My partner and I packaged her up and we were off to the hospital. I rode in back with her having a generally pleasant conversation, spending time catching up since I hadn’t seen her since my high school graduation party almost a year and a half prior. Once we turned over care, she thanked me for everything and gave me a big hug. I made sure to check back on her as much as I could during the rest of my shift just to make sure she was alright. Fast forward now, to two and a half years later. I had just graduated from College was having a graduation party down at my parent’s place in New Jersey. My parent’s friend, the TIA patient from a few years prior, came with a wrapped present for me. I opened it up, and found a framed copy of the following: “FIRST RESPONDER” A blood soaked hand...

Our jobs don’t stop for Holidays. The 911 phones keep ringing and facilities keep calling. For a number of years, I always worked the holidays. I come from a family of EMS professionals who were always very understanding, and willing to float a holiday to a day or two after Christmas or Thanksgiving, admittedly also for my own personal gain (holiday pay) but the knowledge that I let someone have some time with their kids was always equally rewarding. This month, I felt the need to throw my hat into the Ring for my friend Leanne’s topic for The Handover, an EMS Blog Carnival. Leanne writes a terrific blog over at Just My Blog, and was the 2010 recipient of the Bob Nixon Scholarship for EMS Expo. This month, she’s asking for everyone’s funniest EMS Holiday moment. While my story might not be that funny knee slapper, it was a moment that really put a smile on my face. My partner and I were finishing up our overnight shift from December 23rd into Christmas Eve. We were going to be off for eight hours and then start another sixteen hour shift into Christmas Day. Early in the morning, shortly before we were supposed to go home, we were dispatched to the “Unresponsive Male.” When we arrived, we found a girl who had brought her new boyfriend home with her from college for Christmas with the family. He was in bed, and she couldn’t wake him up. We could tell what was wrong with this kid simply by looking at him. He was diaphoretic, and would not wake up no matter what we did. The Sugar check confirmed our suspicions: He was Hypoglycemic. I went to work on the line, and my partner loaded up the D50. Within ten minutes of our arrival, our patient was up and talking to us. They had gotten in late the night before, and he had taken his insulin before dozing off, and didn’t have dinner. We asked his girlfriend’s mother to make some breakfast for him, and I gave him a stern lecture while my partner got on the horn to Medical Control to get permission to release...

There are a lot of good clinically focused blogs out there on the Internet, and mine certainly isn’t one of them. That’s not to say that I don’t feel I’m a sound, clinical paramedic, because really I do, I just don’t write about the medical topics. “Being a provider” and the challenges that we face as an industry interest me more. I do, however, feel the need to talk a bit about Quality Assurance and Quality Improvement and what they mean to me. I came from very humble, small EMS Beginnings. Growing up in Suburban New Jersey, most of the BLS 911 work was done solely by Volunteers. While my clinical experience was great, my knowledge that went into documentation and the feedback that I saw from it was almost non-existent. Although we would provide what I felt was excellent care, when we got to the Emergency Room, it seemed to me that the care started over. Run forms that were written were poorly written at best, some as short as one or two sentences that attempted to sum up the events that led to the patient landing in the ER. Fast forward now a few years to my freshman year of college. I didn’t know any better from what I learned in New Jersey. I thought that was “the way” to write a run form. I participated for four years in our Campus EMS Department, and in my freshman year, our advisor brought in a Lawyer to review our run forms and let us know how we were doing. I’ll never forget it; mine was one of the ones that ended up on the overhead projector: “Patient fell during a flag football game and injured his ankle. Patient refused treatment.” That was it. Two sentences and I was done. There I sat, a young 19 year old EMT, raked across the coals by a lawyer pointing out all of the problems with documenting like this. I quickly learned my lesson, and put 100% into my documentation, both at college and at home in New Jersey. Now, here I am, 13 years later, working in a busy urban system as a Supervisor and ten...

Back in the 1970’s, my dad decided to take his shot at getting involved in the town’s First Aid Squad. When I was born in 1978, he stepped away from hit to be a father. In early 1992, he began working on getting his EMT Certification Recertified and rejoined the Island Heights First Aid Squad. Island Heights is a very small town at the Jersey shore. Approximately a mile by a mile, it has a year round population of 1,500 people, and gets a little higher in the Summer Time. Throughout the late 80’s and most of the 90’s, the majority of the EMS Runs the Island Heights First Aid Squad had were during the day, Monday thru Friday in neighboring Dover Township, now known officially as Toms River. Annually, they would run around 500-600 calls a year, about 150 of those in town. My dad was involved in EMS for about 6 months when my mom got tired of just sitting around listening to the pager go off all day. She decided that she would give this whole “EMS thing” a try. Her first year was very tough. She lost 15 lbs, and on some early mornings would cry when the pager would go off, although she probably wouldn’t admit to that today. She scaled things back a bit, and started running more abbreviated hours, and then decided that EMS really was for her. Through out the 90’s, my parents became more and more involved in EMS in the town. They both served as Captain, my dad spent time as Squad President, and they’ve both been the most active members of the squad for the last 18 years, and most importantly, they’ve been an inspiration to me. I got involved in EMS at the age of 15 as a Cadet with the Island Heights First Aid Squad, following in the footsteps of my parents. Say what you want about young people in EMS, but I think I handled myself the right way and learned how to be the right kind of EMT because of my parents, their involvement in the squad and their involvement in my early years in this field. They supported...