Check out this powerful You-tube video When I see another provider who is burned out, my reaction has always been: “Get another job.  You have no business doing this kind of work.” Until I saw this video, I never really considered the concept of moral injury. If a fellow paramedic hurts his back lifting or […]

I’m on scene of an overdose. A fifty year old man in an unkempt apartment went unresponsive after sniffing two bags of heroin. His neighbor found him, giving him 4 mgs of Naloxone IN, and then called us. The man is alert and oriented by our arrival and does not wish to go to the […]

Connecticut, following the leads of states such as New York, has just expanded the scope of practice for EMTs to include injecting medications. This means instead of carrying two $600 Epi-pens, EMTs can now draw up 0.3 mg of epi from a $5 vial and administer it to a patient suffering a severe allergic or […]

It has been busy at work lately and the crews have been getting pounded.  An EMT posted this video (found on the internet) on our employee Facebook page.  I laugh every time I think of it.  If you have never worked commercial EMS in a high volume system, you might not appreciate it.  I can […]

The official death numbers for 2018 are out from the Connecticut Medical Examiner’s office. Connecticut Accidental Drug Intoxication Deaths 1017 people died in Connecticut of accidental overdoses, down 21 from 2017.  This is the first decline (albeit minor) after six years of escalation. 746 people died in Connecticut due to the presence of Fentanyl, up […]

They have installed cameras in our ambulance just behind the rear view mirror. The camera records both the traffic in front of the ambulance and inside the front cab of the ambulance. It does not record the passenger compartment, and it (supposedly) is only a video recording.  Audio would be illegal in our state. The […]

EMS has focused on trauma, stroke and STEMI in recent years with resulting improvements in outcomes.  Many health care systems are now turning attention to sepsis care and the considerable role EMS can play in early recognition and treatment. Here in Connecticut we have Sepsis Alerts, which while rarely generating the full response of Trauma, […]

Saturday night saw one of the pinnacle achievements of my life.  Twelve months before, while attending a Harlem Globetrotters game with my daughter, I announced that I was going to learn how to expertly spin a basketball on my finger just like the Globetrotters do.   Ever since then, I have carried a basketball in the […]

This is the third in a series of posts on common drug mistakes some EMS responders make during cardiac arrests. You find the fifty year old man supine on the floor with the fire department doing CPR. Their AED announces, “No shock advised. Continue CPR.” You set your monitor by the man’s head and connect […]