EMS is currently at a major crossroads as an industry.  Across the country requirements to become a paramedic are becoming loftier, and rightfully so.  In order to properly care for each patient we encounter, we need to be at our best, and the route to that is through training and that bar is being raised.  More education eventually should mean more pay, and some in the private sector are starting to realize that. This is evident from the recent well publicized labor dispute in Buffalo, New York and their eventual 10 hour work stoppage followed by a contract settlement.  From the publicity I have seen regarding those negotiations and others I have more intimate knowledge of, it leaves little to the imagination as to what is most important to EMS professionals: pay and benefits.  I know, that seems like a slam dunk, no brainer, but it also seems clear that at least in the private sector, purse strings are becoming tighter, and benefit packages are less and less appealing.  It’s quite the conundrum, actually.  Increasing educational requirements are driving paramedicine towards being a career, yet employers are still far too often looking at employees with the expectation that they have a job, and there is a divide the size of the Grand Canyon between the two. Now, the jury is still out for me on work actions such as strikes.  I do not really know if they truly follow the “spirit” of our profession and seem to do more of a disservice to the community than they do benefit the worker, but that is a debate for another time.  The fact remains that they happen, and there is certainly reason behind them, as evident by the Buffalo, NY Rural Metro incident. While the private sector is just one of a number of EMS models, it is quite often the quickest path of entry into the industry and employs more EMTs and paramedics than any other model, so discussing the big kid on the block is extremely important.  With health care taking on a huge for profit presence in the economic world, everyone wants their piece and if some of the bigger players want to...

A little over a year ago, I tackled the concept of “skill dilution” and its validity as a statement, and reality in the field.  My perception at that time was that a more important component to focus on instead of skill dilution was education for our paramedics.  While I still stand by the concept that we need to better prepare our medics for what they will encounter when they hit the streets, my views of skill dilution have changed a bit. The EMS system in Massachusetts is quite different from the one that I currently working in.  I know, that is no shocking revelation since it has been said to exhaustion that “if you’ve seen one EMS system, you’ve seen one EMS system” but I find the uniqueness of my current situation interesting in comparison to where I was.  The easiest way to look at it is by evaluating both environments on a county-wide basis. On a common day, Hampden County, Massachusetts has approximately 25 paramedic level ambulances protecting its citizens.  They respond to emergencies for the most part regardless of the complaint.  Everyone gets the same opportunity to have the most advanced care available to a sick person regardless of what the caller told the dispatcher, or what the Emergency Medical Dispatch (EMD) code says is the appropriate response for that incident.  Do you have a splinter?  You’ll most likely get a paramedic.  Are you having chest pain?  You’ll most likely get a paramedic.  That paramedic’s partner, however, could be an EMT, an intermediate, or even a paramedic.  All that Massachusetts requires is one paramedic to make an ambulance an ALS level ambulance. In the county I work in now, there are nine paramedic units for the entire county.  None of us transport.  We respond to only ALS level calls as determined by EMD codes, and we are supplemented by approximately 30 BLS level ambulances.  I do not know the exact number, but to me, that “feels” about right.  Every paramedic unit is staffed with two paramedics, and the state requires that each ALS appropriate 9-1-1 call gets at least two paramedics. According to the 2010 census (and Wikipedia), there were about 463,000...

You are the medic on a busy urban unit dispatched to a serious call of your choice (cardiac arrest, shooting, STEMI, you pick it).  You arrive on scene, and get straight to work on your patient.  IV’s are started, maybe the patient is tubed, a 12 lead is done.  Holes that were not there before the incident that are not a direct result of actions of you and your partner are plugged.  You feel like time is dragging on, and you need to get going.  The patient is loaded, and your truck rumbles off lights and sirens blazing to the closest appropriate facility. Once you arrive at the ER, the patient is turned over to their staff, and you retreat back to your truck to write your run form.  All that is going through your head is “boy, we were on scene for a while, I need to justify this.”  You sit down in front of your onboard computer in your unit and wince as you bring up your times. Your eyes, however, get big as you do the quick math, and realize that you were actually only on scene for 8 minutes.  You share your surprise with your partner and move on to your run form. Anyone who has been in this field for any amount of time has experienced an incident similar to the one above.  When an emergency happens, time just seems to slow down.  Everything moves in slow motion.  If the experience of that sensation is true for someone who is a trained medical responder, imagine what it is like for someone who has no training.  Seconds feel like a minute.  A minute feels like five.  The perception of time is so incredibly subjective.  The reality of time, however, is not. This is why we have dispatchers who track times.  This is why most of the cardiac monitors out there today have event logs that allow you to track what you do and when you do it.  This why when you arrive at the ER with just about any critical patient, there is one nurse who is dedicated to charting.  Accuracy is so important, and one must overcome that perception...

Sometimes I wonder if the debate about whether or not paramedics can and should intubate will never end.  I am happy to say though that I have successfully intubated six out of seven people since I started at my new service back in December.  They were all cardiac arrests.  Not a single one of them had a pulse at the time that I tubed them. Coincidentally, with the tools I have at my disposal, I have yet to have a patient that I have said, “Boy I really think I should intubate this person right here and right now.”  I have, on the other hand said “this person might by a tube once we get to the hospital if what I am doing doesn’t start working soon.” Every one of us has worked with an airway “guru” at some point during our career.  You know who I am talking about: that person who can tube anywhere at any time by any means necessary.  Right side up, upside down, nasally, digitally.  You name it, they have done it.  I, sadly, am not that person.  In my twelve years at a paramedic, I would best describe my ability to intubate patients as “satisfactory.”  I can get the job done.  I know enough about anatomy that I can find my way around a patient’s airway and get that tube.  I could certainly be better though. Personally, in twelve years, I can say that I can count on one hand the number of living patients that I have myself intubated.  For me, it is a practice that I have always been more conservative with.  In my old system, we were 10 minutes or less from a hospital from just about every place in my coverage area, so it was always a risk vs. benefit of the time it took to get a successful tube on the patient.  The call had to be made for the meds.  The meds had to be drawn up and then administered, and then the tube had to be passed.  In the time that all of this was taking place, the patient was being ventilated, good or bad, and time was ticking away most...

In response to a number of major incidents over the last couple of years, active shooter, WMD, and terrorism classes are once again all the rage.  I wonder sometimes though if we are putting our eggs in the right basket.  These are not the incidents that are injuring and killing providers in the field as often as altercations with a single patient, lifting injuries, and motor vehicle accidents. Maybe we need to shift our focus back to scene awareness (not scene safety).  Some of the incidents, namely the hostage incident in Georgia, was a response to a routine call that went horribly wrong when the crew arrived.  I wonder if they looked back at it though if they would identify any warning signs that they missed.  I wonder if they walked into the scene with the level of complacency that many of us do when responding to a ‘routine” emergency.  It is something every one of us have done, myself included.  We get tunnel vision.  We forget to really get a look at the room we are walking into, or ask where that vicious lhasa apso is when we see the “BEWARE OF DOG” sign on the door.  Or even something as making sure the keys are out of the ignition on the call for the unresponsive or disoriented person behind the wheel. We rely far too often on the police and assume that their presence alone means that a scene is safe when that could not be farther from the case.  I have had plenty of “we need to get out of here right now” moments on scenes that were deemed “safe” prior to my arrival.  Now that statement does not exist to take anything away from the job that they do, because personally I rely on the police for a lot.  They often are able to offer a lot of information, and while maintaining a scene is their prime responsibility, our own safety needs to be our responsibility regardless of who else is there, or what the nature of the call is. Sometimes it just takes a few simple approaches to our day to make a big difference in its outcome, and...