We get dispatched for a report of a man unresponsive in a locked car, covered with blood. Priority One. My partner and I speculate as we head out lights and sirens toward the address in the neighboring town, a street lined with cheap hotels, where many marginal people rent by the week. We both think […]

A week or so ago I wrote an entry called “A Remarkably Heroic Feat.” It was about a police officer credited for saving a baby’s life by performing mouth to mouth on what appeared to be a child who had suffered a fairly typical febrile seizure, which may briefly convince a layperson that the patient […]

The following was adopted from a post I read on a poker bulletin board. Thanks to Edward Hutchinson of Mississippi for his post. I have adopted it to relate to EMS powers of observation. *** Try this psychology experiment. Go to this site: http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/grafs/demos/15.html Run the tape excerpt and try to count the number of […]

I drove up to Boston, left my car at my friend’s house, then took the train in to North Station, then took the T to Kenmore. Met my buddy at Boston Beerworks, and we drank several pitchers of beer while we got caught up. We do this two or three times a year. We tell […]

It was on TV, on the radio and the following article in the paper: Officer Praised In Saving Baby City police officials are praising one of their North End beat officers, saying his quick actions saved a baby’s life over the weekend. Officer X, a year veteran of the Police Department, was on foot patrol […]

15 month old not breathing. You rush out to the ambulance, buckle yourself in, and as you flip through your field guide to read the recommended ET tube size for the age and the epi dose, you wait for them to update you. Child is breathing. Child choked on some milk, but is alert and […]

Most ER’s require you to punch in a code to get in the ambulance entrance. The near universal code is 911*. Sometimes it’s a little bit of a pain if you have a serious patient, and have to stop and fiddle with the keypad or if it is raining and the hospital doesn’t have an […]

Lady had a syncopal episode on the toilet, hit her head and sustained a lac above her eye. She crawled to the phone and called her neighbor, who came over and helped her call her doctor, who said she should go to the hospital. She checks out okay. Vitals are good, skin warm and dry, […]

Looking over my last two posts, it occured to me that they share a similar bent. They are both in the paramedic as sly hero genre, where the villians are an uppity flight medic and a nasty triage nurse. Now for a disclaimer I think flight medics are great and I respect their training and […]

We are sent on a priority one for severe pain at a nursing home. The home is in the southern end of one of our satellite towns — not a facility where we routinely respond. It is pouring rain and we race up the driveway and park under the awning. As we are pulling our […]