Five years. . . Its been five years. I never thought that I would have kept this blog going for as long as I have.  There have been many highs and lows in the 357 posts that preceded this one.  I’ve been accosted by the main stream media, shared my struggles with starting over, interviewed the stars of the show Sirens, and even posted an obituary with the most notorious of EMS “super users.” When I started writing back in 2010, I viewed it as cheap therapy.  I always enjoyed writing, and saw the opportunity to blog as a great outlet for a lot of my frustrations while working in Springfield.  Five years later, while sharing my thoughts is still extremely cathartic, I have seen the external benefits of the blog as well.  Two weeks ago I saw my first article posted at EMS 1.  I’m hoping that it is the first of many to come. Once again, thanks to everyone who has stuck with me through the highs and the lows.  This little experiment that started as a free Blogspot has grown to be what medicsbk.com is today.  I’m looking forward to the years and opportunities to...

Feb 25, 2015

Friday afternoon I got a text from a friend of mine pointing me towards a debate that had broken out on an EMS related Facebook page about the perception of tattoos and their impact on professionalism.  A lot of this has been spurred along by the beautiful artwork that Holly Monteleone displays on her arm in A&E’s new show Nightwatch.  Tattoos say nothing about a paramedic’s ability to care for a patient.  Thinking otherwise is a debate that I will not even entertain.  The perception that some int he general public might have when they see your tats though is another thing all together.   While I do not have any tattoos nor do I plan on even getting one, a number of my friends have them.  The vast majority of them are pretty cool to look at.  There is a story behind each and every one of them and to that specific person, their selected piece of body art means a lot to them and I respect that.  On the flip side of that coin though, we are often asked to define what professionalism is, and really for the most part it varies greatly depending on the community one serves.  What might be accepted by some might be shunned by others.  This rings true for body art. One of my favorite tattoos stories involves a good friend and coworker of mine who I was on a run with for an elderly female with COPD.  Sitting by her door, and throughout her apartment she had a number of Buddha statues.  We started our patient on her nebulizer treatment and my partner said “Nice statues!  I have a Buddha tattoo on my belly!”  My sly, slick COPD patient looked at him and said “I don’t believe you.”  Not one for backing down from a challenge, my partner pulled his shirt up displaying his full belly tattoo with his belly button matching up with Buddha’s and said “Look!”  The three of us shared a good laugh, and it was a constant topic of conversation for the remainder of the call. I understand tattoos as a form of expression.  As a former supervisor I can also see...

Feb 18, 2015

With the five year anniversary of the blog next week I wanted to share a couple of posts about me outside of EMS. I started reading through some older posts and my bio and realized that while I have spoken a lot about my career I have not talked much about how I got here. As I have mentioned I grew up in Island Heights, New Jersey.  While MTV might have given the Jersey Shore a bad rap it is in fact a great place to be a kid. Island Heights was not the busy tourist attraction that Seaside, located just a few miles away, is but it is a small sleepy shore town.  If I walked out our front door all that I had to do was look to the left and right to see everything that I needed growing up. To the left was a small park complete with a field, basketball court and woods suitable for hours of manhunt. To the right was the Toms River and the 18 foot Boston Whaler that I spent day after day on during the summer. If you’ve met me in person you know I’m a tall guy.  Six foot five to be exact but I’ve taken to telling people that I am five nine and a half just to see their reaction.  Although I was a three sport athlete until I reached high school (basketball baseball and soccer) because of my height I was under the most pressure to play basketball which coincidentally was my least favorite out of the three.  I first set foot on an ambulance as a cadet in my freshman year of high school and fell in love with it instantly. While I played sports and spent time at practice and games I looked more forward to going home turning the pager on and waiting for the next call to come in. We were not a busy department but we did okay considering our size. EMS was what I loved more than anything so much so that I took my EMT class at night while I was a sophomore in high school. By my junior year I had decided that...

Feb 13, 2015

For the last forty years Hollywood and EMS dramas have not mixed.  When it comes to creating a drama that relatively, not even accurately, portrays the daily lives of EMTs and paramedics, many of us in the field have viewed attempt after attempt with high hopes only to walk away disappointed.  Trauma.  Rescue 77.  Even Third Watch.  None of these shows have even remotely captured what my life is like on the truck or off. Reality TV has not done much better.  Paramedics on TLC back in the 2000’s came close however the show was so poorly edited that I don’t think that they had anybody with an EMT card in their back pocket in the cutting room with the power to say “this doesn’t look right.” While I was excited for its premier, I am sure you can understand my reservations when A&E announced their new series Nightwatch which was set to follow the EMS, police, and fire personnel working the 8pm-4am shift in New Orleans, Louisiana.  My interest was piqued after seeing the trailers though.  I was excited to see that Dick Wolf, creator of  Law & Order had a hand in it, and I was even more excited that it was following one of my favorite reality TV shows ever to be on television: The First 48. The EMS/fire ratio One of the first things that struck me about the show was how the cast was introduced in the premier’s first fifteen or twenty minutes.  Two medic units care for a shooting victim as he circles the drain.  The police officers portrayed in the show search for a shooting suspect.  Then we cut to the fire house where the guys of Squirt 27 are debating what they are going to have for dinner.  I chuckled because that’s how it usually goes in urban EMS.  EMS spends their time in mobile offices with fire department units landing back in a station. Please do not take that as a dig at the fire service.  I have a ton of respect for the men and women who do a job that I have zero desire to do, however, as the show progresses through the...

Feb 3, 2015

Throughout the years, I have received a lot of advice from a lot of people.  I thought now would be a good time to share some of those quotes with you so that you might have the chance to learn from them as well. “If they’re bloody, clean them up.” – John Glowacki I’ve written about Big John before.  He was one of my first EMT instructors and had a major influence on my career, and how I practice medicine even today.  I was on a crash with him that was relatively minor, but the patient that were caring for was fixated on all of the blood covering her hands.  His point was a simple one.  Cleaning her up a bit not only would give you a better idea of where the blood is coming from, but it would also make the patient feel a little better not having to stare at what belonged on the inside that was now on the outside. Put the clipboard down.  Don’t worry about your tablet.  Leave the laptop closed.  Don’t touch any of that stuff until your patient is completely taken care of, and trying to clean them up a bit is part of that. “Rule number 1: People die. Rule number 2: Paramedics can’t do anything to change rule number 1.” – Bob Moore This is something else that I have talked about in the past.  As you may remember, Bob was one of my paramedic instructors and this was part of the speech that he gave us on the first night of class.  A few years ago, I wrote about accepting mortality and quoted Bob.  He commented on the post and shared the origin of it: In the fall of 1983, I was a NU medic student and not to brag but I did very well in class. Near the end of class we had an instructor named Joe Duecy run one of our last mega codes before exams. He put me through each and every rhythm known to man and I hung in there with the correct treatment and got the patient back with a pulse. After 30 minutes of playing with me Joe...