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 […]

This is the second of three posts about common cardiac arrest drug mistakes some EMS personnel make on a routine basis. You have been working a cardiac arrest for a 54-year-old male with no prior medical history who collapsed after grabbing his chest.  You shocked him twice for fine vfib, but now he is in […]

You and another medic are on the scene of a cardiac arrest. You find the patient in ventricular fibrillation and immediately defibrillate him into a narrow complex rhythm. You have pulses back and while you take a blood pressure – 130/84, the other medic inserts an IV. The other medic then says to you, “Pass […]

A fellow paramedic here in Hartford, Greg Shovak runs a great educational program called EMS and PTSD – Learning from Combat Veterans to Understand PTSD.  I attended one of his sessions a few years ago and thought it was excellent.  I learned a lot of PTSD, and also had my first introduction to service dogs. […]

I attended a critical incident stress debriefing (CISD) a few years ago. I thought I had been invited to an informal get-together of folks from another service who I had been on a upsetting call with the day before. Had I known it was a formal CSID debrief, I wouldn’t have gone, as I had […]