I was told recently that I have paid my dues in EMS and have the right to speak my mind.

Funny, my check never cleared.

I’ve been:

• puked on,
• peed on,
• gotten ROSC
• called a code on scene
• carried limbs
• carried dead limbs
• extricated patients
• extricated bodies
• carried those who can not walk
• carried those who could
• been hurt in a fire
• helped those hurt in a fire
• laughed at jokes that are not funny
• told those that are worse
• run 23 jobs in 24 hours
• been an entire paycheck without a call

And yet I don’t feel that I have paid my dues.

I talk a lot.

I write a bit.

Haven’t done much.  Really.

AD says some medics have 1 year of experience repeated 20 times, I wonder if I am falling into that category.

I’m going to be taking one of those famous blogger breaks, where I try to ignore the interwebs machine and get my own house in order.

See you on the other side, Ray.

I need 3 minutes of your time for a worthy cause.

Today about 300 of you will visit this little blog. I need each and every one of you to complete the following steps and we can have an enormous impact on the future of EMS.  This being EMS Week, I figured you’d be up to it.

STEP 1:

Support Setla Films by voting for them to be awarded a $250,000 grant from Chase and Living Social.

1. Go to www.missionsmallbusiness.com and on the bottom right side of the site you click on “Log In & Support“. You can use your facebook credentials to make it easy.

2. type “First Responders Network” as the business

3. click on “California” as the city

4. click on “Benicia” as the City

5. click on VOTE

Easy Peasy, you’re almost done.

Now all you need to do is come back here, click on the share buttons to the right and share the link to this post on facebook, twitter and all the other sites you can until the 3 minutes you promised are up.  Fair enough?

The networks don’t think EMS is ready to get back into prime time.  You want to let them win or prove we can’t be kept down? We WILL get a positive EMS message into the homes of every American if we take advantage of these kinds of opportunities!

All Setla Films needs is 250 votes to get nominated.  I say we give him more than he needs to show these folks his mission has a grassroots following!

Who’s with me?

Parking in San Francisco is not a nightmare, but more of a craps shoot.  When Mrs HM and I lived in the City we only had one car and it was a small car at that.  When trying to find parking there was a rule:

3 blocks 6 times or 6 blocks 3 times.

This meant that if you went around the 3 nearest blocks in all directions 6 times you were not going to find a spot and should just find a shady spot maybe no one would see you.  But you had to be careful.  Handicap spots and the little ramps in the sidewalks were big tickets and I would never block a plug (hydrant).  Parking in a driveway or blocking a garage not your own was a guaranteed tow, so sneaking into a half spot was generally attempted, sometimes with success, other times that little white envelope would be waiting for you in the morning.

Unless of course you forgot which day of the week street cleaning was.  Then you’ve got another ticket for that too.

The Department of Parking and Traffic wanders the City in little 3 wheeled bikes and are almost like locusts swarming through the neighborhoods looking for places to earn revenue.  It’s a thankless job and when I see their little trucks parked on a plug and they’re no where in sight I call them in as illegally parked.

But I’ve gotten a bit off topic.

Point is, when you would be sitting at a sidewalk cafe and see a DPT bike go by, you suddenly sprang up and sprinted to the clearly expired meter and gave it another 25 cents for another 4 minutes without a $65 ticket.

But since 2008 the DPT officers aren’t looking around as often.

Listen to KRON 4′s Gabe Slate and Stanley Roberts Team up to look at how transit buses are issuing parking tickets just by driving down the street.

Installed on select Municipal Transportation Buses (MUNI) are cameras that capture images of cars along the bus’s route.  Those videos are then screened by a DPT officer and offending vehicles are sent tickets in the mail.

Unlike static red light cameras, they are able to see if a vehicle is moving, blocking traffic, occupied etc.  However, Happy is not a fan.

Reason being that buses are buses and parking enforcement is parking enforcement.  In addition, I seriously doubt the MUNI drivers are being cited for all their traffic violations, including blocking multiple lanes, stopping blocking intersections, illegal turns etc.  Or perhaps the drivers are safer now that the cameras are installed?

Either way, the City sees some value to the service since over the next 15 months cameras will be installed on all 819 buses.  At a cost of $800,000 in a City facing cuts in Fire, Police, EMS, library, even MUNI is hard to justify.  But in 2010 they recovered almost 1/4 of that cost on only 30 buses.

You do the math.

Some will scream “Big Brother!” and I see that argument and raise you a “it’s breaking posted laws.”

I only hope that the trucks that double park 2 and 3 wide directly next to a clearly identified loading zone get fined as much as the drivers who don’t notice the 3 feet tall letters on the street “TAXI ONLY.”

Perhaps MC could speak to the validity of mounting a camera on the ambulances to capture traffic violations?  I think we could up that 2102 citations in a year in just a few months the way folks seem to go insane around an ambulance.

Do you think this program is a good idea?  Think it goes too far?

Why yes, all of our antique street boxes do still work…

…and here’s why.

No, seriously.

Click that big image. LIKE Magnum Boots on Facebook (why haven’t you already?), then LIKE their status update about the 12th Day of Christmas. Total time: less than 30 seconds. Impact: $1 to a worthy charity.

After you LIKE it I expect you to share it on facebook and twitter. They should reach this goal by lunch.

Merry Christmas from HMHQ!

Every single time I have been sent on a wild goose chase by radio based on a cell phone caller’s brief description of something fanciful has been erased from my memory ( OK, most of them. Well, some. Alright, the last 2 dozen)because of something they did recently.

Something that got them a phone call from me to say thanks.

I’m in the Captain’s buggy for the night and having a decent string of interesting calls when my screen comes alive steering my towards a reported suicide.

The text of this run reads like a teenager’s text message both in content and presentation.

In part shorthand is a scenario describing a person who’s son was online with another person who told another person they were going to kill themself and that a fourth party had supplied certain pharmaceuticals to make that request a reality.  Did you follow that?  Imagine your kid comes in and tells you Bobby saw on facebook that Jimmy said Ed was going to kill himself.  Now imagine you’re telling 911 that.

On scene with half the police watch (with beanbag gun!), an engine and one of my favorite ambulance crews, we’re wandering the laberynthine apartment complex looking for the unit in question.  Radio shoots back with a corrected unit number which sends us in the other direction.  For those of you not in the business, this is one of the first giveaways of a BS call.  Radio advises us they’re on the line with the cell phone prodiver who is actively pinging the phone and is giving a 91% probability the phone is currently inside the billing address.  They can do that?  Yup, they can do that.  Whether or not the owner of said phone is there they’re still in Beta testing on I’m told.

We finally find the unit in question and wake the occupants only to find they did not request us.  As PD turns to go the medic asks an important question:

“Are your children at home?”

They look at each other and then back into the unit. After a brief pause they answer with a question, “yes? why?”

PD’s ears are up and they’re in the unit faster than you can say exigent circumstances.  They search the unit and find our patient semi-conscious, deep under the influence of medications supplied by a friend.

He had snuck out, ingested the medications, then snuck back in to drift into the ether, but not before sending out a cryptic message on social media that was seen by someone who cared.

That person told their friend who told their parents who took it serious enough to call 911.

And my dispatchers took it serious enough to dig around and find out where the patient was and get us there as fast as they could.  And it made all the difference in the world for this family.

I tip my helmet to the voices…

Way to go, Radio!

I have been told by many a patient and parent that our mere arrival at a scene calms folk.  As if we were the reinforcements sent for by the last surviving members of a forward squadron, pinned down by enemy fire.  They hear our horns and calls and smile, because we’ve arrived to make everything better.

But what do we do when our reinforcements fail to turn the tide of the battle?

I’ve written before about dealing with parents when their children are under your care and we’ve also discussed the proper way to deal with death notifications, but what do we do when the two situations are the same incident?

A widow is someone who loses a husband, an orphan has lost their parents but there is no term for a parent that loses a child.  And for good reason.  It is one of the things we don’t talk about at dinner parties or at the water cooler.  Losing a child is unimaginable.  There are no words that a Paramedic could tell me that would make me come to terms if my own children had died, so finding the words to tell a perfect stranger may leave us stuttering and stammering.

Falling back into the old comfort zone of “They’ve passed” or “They’re gone” will only get us into more trouble, as we all know, so be ready for the moment when all your efforts have failed.  It’s nice in PALS when every kid’s rhythm changes, you got IV access on the first try and other difficult situations are handled on a prop or verbally, but we end it there.  When was the last time your instructor played the part of the distraught parent?

During an emotionally charged call as the paramedic supervisor I contacted the mother of our patient in the next room to ask about past medical history and a lot of other things she didn’t want to talk about.  As she just began to calm I told her our standard “We’re doing everything we can right now…” when she hit me with a whopper I wasn’t ready for:

“Everything is going to be OK because you’re here now right?” the pure desperation in her voice was outdone only in her cold grip on my arms as she turned me square to her and looked into my face.

It is very important to be completely honest and leave no room for parents to begin to interpret your statement to mean something it does not.  If they ask you what you’re doing, don’t answer with the gauge of needle, but instead simple terms they can understand like, “we’re giving (the child) medicine and fluids and carefully monitoring their reaction to it.”

This mother asked me 2 questions I had received in various forms, but never this clearly.  Just as she asked “Is her heart beating?” my mind began to say “no” just as my mouth uttered “We’re beating it for her.”  “Is she breathing?” was met quickly with “we’re breathing for her.” and the rest of the conversation revolved around everything we were doing FOR her…not TO her.

Focus on what you’re doing to help, not procedures you have done to them.  Take the clinical edge off of your interventions and make it easy for a frightened mind to begin to understand and a breaking heart to come to terms with.

I always knew San Francisco was filled with the rich and famous, but I never thought I’d meet them in the course of my duties as often as I do.  Worst part is I can’t tell you which comedian’s neighbor I’ve been to and looked into his living room or which movie actor almost choked on a fish bone.  Oh well, until I can figure out how to clearly hide the events in details and time passed, I wait.  However, one night on the ambulance I had a run in with a very rich old woman who…well…let’s just say we had a good laugh.

THE EMERGENCY

Code three for the fall.

THE ACTION

Again we’re upgraded to meet a stopwatch, and arrive on scene of the swanky apartment building to the usual cadre of managers waving for us to quiet down.  Odd how they want us there immediately, but demand we keep the noise down because “this is a quiet neighborhood.”  Whatever dude…

After explaining very clearly that we will not be parking around the back, then walking back around the front to the elevators, we are led to the top floor.  You know the one, where the elevator requires a key and opens directly into the apartment.  No, that’s not the right word. Palace.  The top three floors of this building belong to one person and it looks like it was redesigned sometime in the early 70′s then left for us to find.  Almost like a time capsule except for the giant flat screen TV and staff scurrying around on cell phones advising someone of the impending transport of their elderly boss.

In the staff kitchen on the interior of the space (yes, there is a staff kitchen separate from the main kitchen) sits a woman in her late 80′s dressed for a party sitting in a chair at a small table.  Half a dozen folks in black shirts and ties are explaining what happened, not one of them starting at the same point in the events so I distract them by telling my partner was in charge and they shifted their attention to him.

Crouching down to say hello I’m met with an embarrassed smile and an introduction.  Her name is Mable and she stumbled over a rug in the hallway helping the staff clean up from this evening’s fund raiser.  At her age she shouldn’t be getting her own coffee, let alone clearing dishes especially with a hired staff on hand but “…it’s my house and I can do what I want…” she reminds me as if we’ve had this discussion before.

There is no injury, she has no complaint, she simply stumbled coming down the hallway and dropped a tray of glasses.  Everyone panicked and we got involved.  They carried her to the staff kitchen and told her to sit tight until we arrived.

She asked to stand and go have a martini and I was obliged to allow it, but only after I finished my chart.  As I confirmed her name my pen stopped and I said “How do you spell your last name?”

“L-E-V-I.”

“Oh, Levi*, like the jeans.”

“Yes, like the jeans.”

Holy crap.  I looked around.  Not like the jeans.  The jeans.  She laughed and so did I.  Unfortunately I had to decline the offer of the martini.  No gifts you know…

*not her real name, but the real one was just as bitchin’, I assure you!

I’m on my way to the airport for a nice long trip away from everything with the Mrs to celebrate our anniversary.  I may or may not have internet access, so I’m pulling HM out of the sidebar until I get back.

There are a few posts pre-done and scheduled to go up, but I’ll let you know when I get back.

Happy Travels,

Justin

In all the discussion, bickering and complaining about what EMS providers should be called (EMT, Paramedic, Ambulance Attendant, Steward etc etc) I got to thinking about the first part of my current title:

Firefighter.

Walk into a room in most places on the planet, say you are a firefighter and I think it safe to say everyone knows what you do.  It has something to do with a big red truck and water and red stuff.  The specifics aren’t important and where you work isn’t important.  Or is it?

If I walk into that room as my 18 year old self I am a Firefighter following a 40 hour volunteer firefighter academy.  40 measly hours, yet I carry the same title as my counterparts in San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Los Angeles, Boston who have spent upwards of 18 weeks on the material.  They have more hands on training, more book time and a greater ability to do the job, but our titles are the same.  2 completely different skill sets and levels of education, same title.  No one who calls the Fire Department wonders how many IFSTA Certified, NFA FireFighter Level II’s are coming.  They care about how many firefighters are coming because what they need are people who can do the job.

At a car accident, no one has ever turned to a friend and said “Quick, call the EMT-99s this person is injured!”  No one holding a cyanotic child screams “Help! I need 2 Nationally Registered EMT-Basics trained to the new curriculum!”

They shout one of 2 things:

“Call the ambulance”

“Call the Paramedics”

The Paramedics

I say we run with it.

I am in favor of calling pre-hospital care providers Paramedics even though there is a large gap in the training, experience and capabilities of the many levels from sea to shining sea.  They don’t see the shiny patch on your shoulder is different than your EMT partner, nor do they notice you only inserted an OPA as an EMT instead of an ET.

They need help. We are it.  They call us what we are.

The  Paramedics.

Heck even most of us in the job are unsure exactly what a Paramedic should be, so what a great time to come together as one for once.

To those who will immediately back off and claim, falsely, that they earned a different title than the EMT when they completed their 2 year Paramedic program, come back when you’ve completed your Bachelor’s in EMS and tell me if you feel the same way.

My name is Justin Schorr and I am a Paramedic.  I have been a Paramedic in my patients’ eyes for almost 20 years, even though my little slip of paper says only 10.