Hey guys, first time posting here and I’m not quite sure if this is the right place for such a discussion, I just remembered something from my EMT-B class and I haven’t found any answers.

So when we were going through the whole duty to act section about how/when we were obligated to provide care for someone based on the situation, the law compelled people with trained medical expertise to render aid in most cases, even off duty. This seems like a pretty common sense law, if you can help someone/save a life without risk to yourself, you should, right?

So then why does that not apply to companies like OnStar, who‘ve gone to the trouble of equipping a vast majority of modern vehicles with automatic crash detection/location tracking and then locking those capabilities behind a $30/month paywall? Are they not obligated to help when all they would really have to do is recognize a crash has been occurred and send a call to EMS?

How is this legal under the scope of current duty to act laws?

Thanks in advance!

Title basically. Let my national Lapse and now I’m moving states. Was crazy burnt out and thought I was done with this field but I found the love the love again and want to return to fire in my home state. Only now, I have put myself in an even shittier spot. Ahhhh…. Live and learn I guess

I’m wondering if anyone has any advice for me. I’m in riverside California and cannot find jobs as an Emt or an emergency room technician close by. AMR isn’t hiring and everywhere I look wants someone with experience. Im really eager to get some experience and was hoping I could call around to see if I could do some ride alongs but I don’t know who to contact. I was thinking of volunteering as an Emt as well but I’m a little confused on how it all works. I’ve just been applying online (to the very little openings there is) but would it be a good idea to go in person and give hospitals and stations my resume? I feel kind of stuck right now and I’m just hoping something will pop up but I want to take it into my own hands if I can.

I’m IO all the way on a arrest why waste time

I’m a new EMT and I’m looking for good books to read that will help me master my bls skills and emergency response. Any recommendations?

I finished my EMT B class at the end of last year with Grady. I wasn't able to apply right away because of Achilles tendonitis but with some PT I think I'm in a good place to start now. It looks like Grady isn't hiring atm so I'm looking for other good agencies in the area. I'm near the Peachtree City/ Newnan area but I'm willing to drive a bit if needed. Good leadership and good pay/benefits are the two big things I'm looking for. For people who don't know the area, do you have any recommendations for finding a good agency if you don't know anyone that's worked for them

Out of curiosity, how many times have you personally encountered a broken femur? Do you find them to be a common injury where you are or no?

Sooooo I may have gotten booked for a dui. Not charged yet can anyone give me advice ? Or if someone has been in this situation. Please no hate it was a horrible situation and I’ve spent 3 days in jail already lol

I have not worked as a consistent emt in 10 years..I just remember always feeling not confident and worried something bad will happen or I'll look dumb or do the wrong thing..

Even though when I reflect I knew all my drugs and protocols questions to ask I was just nervous to pull the trigger and be smooth and follow My gut.

Thinking of being on the radio makes me nervous or if I find a person who needs cpr I'm worried my heart will be pounding so hard I'll have a hard time feeling for a pulse

I'm just like wtf yo...I've intubated someone done cpr on a child and pushed drugs..I don't have a lot of call experience as well but

I can 100 percent say not being confident has hindered me more then anything....just really annoying I hope I can get past this and be a good worker

Got the lovely nickname of “brownie batter” a few months ago due to coming to work with food poisoning and then shitting myself while going for a tube during a mega code.

I am here to hug you, let you scream or cry, decompress, and speak freely. You guys had no clue you'd walk into an MCI when your shift started. EDIT: thankfully not a peds MCI as I saw earlier. The immediate word on the quality and care you performed is stellar and you MUST take that away from this call. Basic, Advanced, Paramagician, FR: it doesn't matter. You stepped in when it was necessary and worked so hard.

Take any time you need off, use your EAP's, go to the debriefs, and use this platform to vent. You're the best of us today. Thank you.

What do paramedics do?

In cases where EMS is obviously being abused what elements can I include in my chart to ensure my scummy company can’t commit Medicare/medicaid fraud? (i.e. “patient was ambulatory to the gurney without assistance” or “patient stated their only reason for requesting EMS was to avoid a wait in waiting waiting room”)

Im looking to move out to Miami county from out of state for family and I dont know much about the scope or companies in that area. I’ll go as far as Dayton but i’d like to stay in the Miami County area. Please let me know!

I explained to a patient (former ICU/CC Transport Nurse) that EMS is under the federal road people. It blew her mind, and asked why we weren't under any federal medicine governing authority. I chuckled my biggest chuckle. "Ma'am, we're the cash cow for Fire. No protections and kick us hard enough the FFs get a new engine"

If you do wear ear protection anytime you need it/sirens are going, can you do this career without losing your hearing?

Will higher ups/bosses ever tell you to take ear protection off? Because thats a hard no for me. Losing your hearing is not worth any amount of money.

So I may move onto another career choice. But I thought I'd ask first.

Worked with a basic yesterday that blew my mind.

So we're doing an IFT taking a gentleman on hospice back home from a respite stay. I'm a medic so we were an ALS truck and have a monitor. Pts vitals were great, especially for a hospice pt, and was not on any supplemental oxygen, satting 100%.

Its a 30min drive, and about 10 in, I see my partner moving around a bunch in the back. He's got gloves on. I see a pediatric nasal cannula in his hands. I holler back and ask if he's good. No reply for a minute or two, then he goes "yeah? You say something?" I'm like yeah just checking on you. He says the pts O2 sat dropped to the 70s. I think, oh boy, that's quite a drastic change.

So then I ask him, "is the pulse ox on and are you getting a good, steady wave on the monitor?" again, silence. He comes back and says "this O2 tank says it's at 1000psi, but I have it turned to 4lpm, and nothing is coming out." and now it all clicks for me.

So I tell him to turn the other knob on the bottle and sure enough, tsssssss, "oh okay got it." Then I ask again about the pulse ox and the waveform. He comes back after a minute and says that it wasn't on the pts finger. It's back on now and he's at 98%.

Then he just left the nasal cannula on the pts lap. Like we were pulling him out and it was there on the blanket and I'm like hey let's get rid of that so the family doesn't get worried...

Then later on he asked me to explain to him what hospice was. He was like "so what is a hospice is it like a rehab? It's where they stabilize you?" like.. Brother what in the fuck are you talking about?

As shocked as I was by his ignorance on so many things, it was a reminder of how disappointing education, orientation, and training all are.

I try to do what I can to be a better example, so I'm always bummed when I work with someone who makes me think "yeah, I can see why IFT is looked down on"

And to be clear, I never belittled or talked down to him. I simply explained in a normal tone everything he asked about. Because, in his defense, he does not use a monitor most of the time working on the BLS trucks. They get a manual cuff and a simple finger clip pulse ox.

I love questions. Even if I don't know the answer, we'll do some research together and figure that shit out. So I never mind explaining and teaching. But the level of stuff I had to explain to him was shocking.

Kept misplacing my Zyns in the cab of the truck so my partner gifted me a Kydex Zyn holster.

cup holders in many forms are one of mine. many organizational tools. why have they still not came up with something to keep the seatbelts from dragging.

but there's quite a few things i've thought of and thought like wow i can't believe they haven't came up w something for this yet?

another example is our narcs are in a pelican case w loose foam pieces in between. you'd think there would be a better solution

the iv bag holders with the rubber piece that comes down and the velcro comes out and gets lost the first week, why don't they make a piece that clamps so it doesn't disappear

designated place for paperwork on the stretcher like a chip clip

there's also other things for example idk if anyone has an eko core 500 but a case for it does not seem to exist

what about you guys or what are some frustrating things that you experience day to day that make no sense

We all know that when it gets busy on the ambulance, trying to eat can be a challenge, unless you brought your own lunch from home. When it's a busy day and you have that short, open window to grab some food, what do you usually do? Do you just go to the corner store and grab your favorite food from there? Or do you try to make it to a fast food place and get a meal there? Or do you just get something in the EMS room or cafeteria in the hospital? Honestly, myself, I tend to either stop at the corner store and grab the burritos or the hot dogs with chips and Gatorade. Or I'll grab a sandwich and some snacks in the EMS room. In my area at several hospitals, there are food trucks outside that provide food for free for all EMS personnel after 7 p.m. What do you normally do?

I’m a 22 year old female he’s a 47 year old male. I’m a basic and he’s a paramedic. We’ve both been in the game for about 3 years. He’s a horrific driver (tried to fucking kill us), likes to diagnose patients with zero imagining, has no capacity recognize that he might be wrong, and is disrespectful as hell as to anyone and everyone.

When we met, he explained to me that he was working on being less of a perfectionist and less nitpicky to his partners. He told me that he had a lot of issues with partners at a nearby company and eventually left for whatever reason. I took into account that he is a perfectionist, but I didn’t fully grasp the extent of his “perfectionism.” I’m a super open and accepting person. I can work with just about anyone. This guy is insane.

He’s PHYSICALLY abusive. I asked him (kindly) to stop pushing the gurney into me. He kept running into me with it and it was impacting our ability to cohesively operate the gurney. I was more than willing to work on resolving the issue, but I was met with hostility and aggression. He then intentionally pushed it into me MORE and pushed me into the pole to type the code in outside of the hospital (with both of the patient’s bare feet pressed against my arms and my butt pressed against the gurney). I had already requested if we could switch sides and he states “I guess you’re not even capable of holding a gurney” in a condescending tone. He did not let me switch sides. Another time, instead of asking me to move over or saying “excuse me” while I was in his way, he threw an elbow into me. This was the point where I began to see that he was frustrated with me. The reason he was frustrated is because he asked me to put the patient on the monitor and fire told me to wait until we got her downstairs (she was on fire’s monitor at the time). I listened to fire’s direction since he had exited the room to retrieve something from the truck. I thought that he would understand. He was unable to see that I took direction from the other paramedics on scene and he viewed this as disobedience/disrespect.

His “perfectionism” seems to be rooted within the inability to recognize an alternative perspective. For example, he tells me that he places IVs into the external jugular vein “all the time.” An RN at the hospital tries to call his bluff and he DOUBLES DOWN on his claim. The RN explains how this is incredibly risky and should only be done in dire situations. He argues that it’s not risky and that people even request them. The RN explains to me that he was a paramedic for several years before becoming a nurse, and that my partner should NOT be doing EJs as often as he says he is. He continues to argue and the nurse challenges him on his IV skills. The nurse brings out an ultrasound and asks him to use it to get an IV on a tough stick. He agrees and tries to use the ultrasound machine to get an IV on a random person after we had already been status checked (when we’ve been at the hospital for 30+ minutes and dispatch wants us to go available). He was ultimately unsuccessful.

He thinks that I cannot help lift patients. We had a call where a 255lb woman fell and couldn’t get up. I got into the typical front lifting position, he got behind her, and then he told me to step aside because he’ll be the only one lifting anyway. Another time we were at the hospital doing a sheet transfer with an average weighted male. He got on one side, I got on the other, and he said “I can’t do this by myself, I’m gonna need some actual help.” He did this another time on a call when we were going to move a patient to the gurney. He asked a fireman to grab the left leg, the fireman was on the other side of the room and I was right there, so I took the initiative to grab the leg. He was really irritated about it. Nobody else was. It was an easy lift.

Horrific and dangerous driving: He opposed traffic at a high speed on a one lane airport ramp and narrowly avoided being hit. He told me to go to airport arrivals (after I objected!!). I let him know that the clearance was too low and I no longer feel comfortable navigating the situation. He proceeded to oppose traffic at 30-40mph down the worst possible path. It was a one-way ramp with a very narrow lane along a curve with zero visibility and zero space to pull over. Another vehicle began driving in reverse and the car behind that one had to swerve to avoid rear ending them. I yelled at him to turn around. He yelled back and said “there’s no room.” I told him to “make a 12 point turn if you need to.” He insisted on NOT using sirens to do this and I turned them on anyway. Not a single car on that ramp would be able to see that we were traveling head-on towards them at a high rate of speed due to the curve, but they’d be able to hear us with sirens. He complied and made a multiple-point turn (he fully backed into the curb while doing so), then drove into oversized parking. He proceeded to tell me (at the top of his lungs) to “shut the fuck up,” and yelled “I’m so done with you.” I explained to him that it was reasonable for me to be scared when he put us in a very dangerous situation. He screamed at me some more, we went into the call, got cancelled, then he called the supervisor. I went into the back of the ambulance for a minute to process what just happened, my partner was nowhere to be found, so I got in the driver’s seat and relayed cancel 851 by fire over the radio. He ripped open my door and said “get out. I’m driving.”

He told me I’m “disgusting” when I asked what I did wrong. He told me I was disgusting the day prior as well. I actually recorded the second one (I was recording because I was TERRIFIED and he was angry)

Became wildly offended when I let him know that he left a IM syringe+needle on the back of the gurney and that it fell out on the floor at the hospital. The nurse noticed it and became concerned. I didn’t say this with any sort of intention of offending him, but it did indeed offend him. Not only did he recap the used needle, he threw it on the back of the gurney and forgot about it.

He likes to sit in the EMS room and write his report while getting status checked multiple times as well. A supervisor even called him while we were in the EMS room and he lied to them by saying “we’re just now getting the patient off the gurney, we’ll go available soon.” We had unloaded the patient long before that and were completely ready to go available several minutes prior. This was the first time we worked together. On the 3rd shift we had together, I went into the EMS room and asked him if he knows that we have 30 minutes to go available (we had gotten status checked). I figured that he might just not be aware of the rule since he is still new to the company, but he took great offense to my question and stormed off. I thought that he was storming off to go available, but no, he was storming off to sit in the back of the ambulance and attempting to transmit his vitals. The service is poor at this particular, so vital transmission is slow IF it actually goes through. He somehow blames this on me, even though I’ve explained to him that they’ll transmit in an area with better reception. Obviously I still hit the ‘retry’ button several times to make him happy.

He became frustrated on our first shift when I preferred that we post within 1 mile of our post. He wanted to get food and I explained to him that we have to post within 1 mile of our assigned post. He called me a goody-two-shoes and I explained to him that I don’t want to get in trouble for posting more than a mile away.

He told me that he has been “warned” that I’ve been written up multiple times for behavioral issues as a means to justify him telling me to “shut the fuck up” about him opposing traffic in a very dangerous situation. I have never ONCE been written up for a behavioral issue. I asked if he was mistaking me for someone else or if he had received misinformation, but he continued to stonewall me. All forms of communication where he was not screaming at me, he was stonewalling me.

He never had my back. He waited in the truck while I was in a woman’s second floor apartment ama’ing her by myself. I was up there for a while because she was very talkative, and he never once came back up to check on me. On a different call, an ETOH male patient would not stop hitting on me. He saw that I was very uncomfortable and I motioned to him for help. He walked away without saying a word. This was a very unique experience, as just about every other provider that I’ve worked with had my back (male or female) when situations like this arose.

He accused me of flirting with the fire department instead of paying attention on calls. I don’t even know how to flirt. I just thought it was common courtesy to be friendly & helpful with the people you run calls with. I read the patient’s medications to fire when they asked if I had them which upset my partner as well.

Each time I tried to speak he intentionally raised his voice to talk over me and cut me off. I was not allowed to speak to patients whatsoever. I was to be seen not heard.

A fire crew complained to me about him on a call saying that he wouldn’t even let them finish the assessment they started. I do agree with them fully. Every time they tried to speak he just kept talking very loudly over the top of them.

Issues with a respiratory distress call for a 30/40 year old female: He got upset when he asked me to grab him an end tidal and I handed him a booger. Apparently he wanted the end tidal that connects to CPAP but did not verbalize this. On that same call, he asked fire to give the pt albuterol through the CPAP. The fireman asked for clarification on where the albuterol is supposed to go and he ignored it. The fireman dumped it into straight into the mask instead of the nebulizer and the patient started screaming that they swallowed all of it. He then stated that her lungs were completely full of fluid (to me, fire, and the hospital staff) and had me drive code 3 to the hospital. We got to the hospital and he starts shouting “where’s the bed, where are we taking her?!?” in a frantic tone. He does not wait for a response before we take her into a random room (that they did not agree to) and get her on the bed. Rapid imaging was done on the pt and the doctor said (in front of everyone at the nurses station) that the pt didn’t have any fluid in her lungs & it was an anxiety attack.

He accused me of playing “games” and pulling shenanigans throughout the entirety of our shift. Stonewalled me when I asked him to explain what/why/how I was pulling shenanigans because I was truly unaware of what I was doing that caused him to treat me so horribly. Communication was non-existent

EMS providers are at risk for back problems just from lifting people and sliding people. What’s y’all’s opinions of chiropractic interventions? My understanding is that chiropractic medicine is kind of big placebo, and I’ve heard that a lot of the things chiropractors do are not backed up by research. But a lot of EMS swear up and down that chiropractors are the shit, and I’m not sure what to think.

hospital workers all tend to wear a badge but what about your ems agency? and do you get to get away without it if your have your name embroidered on your uniform? or is your badge an access key to hospitals?

I wanted to vent my opinion here because idk where else to put it, but I hate how disorganized EMT education feels. I just finished up my semester in EMT school, about to take my NREMT, and I remember multiple instances where answers to questions varied not just from different instructors, but from different tests. The biggest one I remember is stopping the ambo if a pt is in cardiac arrest. I had one instructor (paramedic/firefighter) say that you keep going, with that even being the answer on some tests, with other tests saying to pull over the ambo and stop. Obviously this is just one example, but I really feel like there needs to be a more standardized approach to EMS education, because I feel thats what messes up alot of students during the NREMT exam.

We all have some good reasons to complain about our jobs, but who here has it worst or anecdotally has heard stories about agencies with batshit rules, 1960s protocols or the most outright inept providers?

After seeing how little is reimbursed, and hearing about how often it's complained about - how hard is it for your agencies to collect money from CMS? Do they pay monthly through a portal like Direct Deposit, or a check every 90 days, etc?

So it's a simple bls discharge. PT has dementia, sweet, smiley, and pleasantly confused. Walking into the room, I hear her tell the nurse "my sister is my mother"

Being the smart-ass I am, I said something along the lines of, "well is your husband your uncle?"

She goes, "no. My husband's dead."

Oof...

When did you goof up a conversation?

I just got a new EMS job and I’m supposed to be doing fitness testing on Friday but I currently have stitches on the bottom of my foot from an injury last week. While it is mostly healed (literally two drops of my blood on the gauze from today), I have yet to put pressure on my foot since the injury to avoid further issues. As a part of fitness testing, I’m supposed to run which normally would not be a problem as I am a healthy 21 yr old guy. I'll be getting the stitches out on Thursday which they are requiring me to do in order to participate; it will be 9 days of stitches at that point so its certainly within the time frame. When asking about moving the test back a week, they made it seem that it wasn't an option. I've been in EMS for a couple years and have never had any issues with my physical ability and am feeling sorta frustrated with the situation. Additionally, they want a note from the urgent care doc stating I am capable of returning to work without limitations. I'm really not sure what to do.