I received the following very enlightening comment from “pozzo” – Shannon Burke, the author of Black Flies. I’ve seen the comments about the novel Black Flies and was holding my tongue, but…I wanted to say that the book was not meant to demean paramedics or the job they do. Just the opposite. I meant to […]

I wanted to thank everyone who has posted comments. I always read them and have learned a lot from many of them. I want to use this post to followup on comments and some recent entries. *** I particularly want to thank the commentator who brought up the tidbit that Nitro spray (NitroLingual) doesn’t have […]

It doesn’t happen often, but every once and while, there we go again. *** Where I work in the contract town, we have three ambulances that all look pretty much the same. Box Type. Red stripe along the side. AMBULANCE written on it. We have four medics (but only one on at a time). Every […]

The husband awakes to an empty bedroom. He reads the note his wife has left him on the kitchen table and then goes out into the backyard and finds her in the backyard at the edge of the woods, hanging from the big tree. When we arrive, an officer in the driveway tells us they […]

I just finished reading a new EMS novel called Black Fliesby Shannon Burke, who also wrote Safelight. The novel is about a young paramedic in Harlem who, trying to fit in, falls under the influence of some seriously burned out medics. Black Fliesis a much better read than Burke’s first book, which while well-written, seemed […]

Earlier this week I did a cardiac arrest at a nursing home. I arrived to find an elderly patient apniec and pulseless. The patient was quite large and had a lifeless face with a small amount of facial hair that made it difficult to ascertain gender. The nursing home staff had last seen her (she […]

There is another new study out (published in the March 12 Journal of the American Medical Association that may change the way we do CPR, continuing the emphasis on “Minimally Interrupted CPR.” Minimally Interrupted Cardiac Resuscitation for Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Here the jist of the protocol: This novel approach, aimed at maximizing cerebral perfusion, involves: […]

I’ve been precepting a new part-time intermediate. He needs 15 IV starts in the field. He may have five or so. (We only work together once a week.) He doesn’t quite have the hang of it yet. I tell him not to worry about missing because when you miss you learn what not to do […]

The call is for a nosebleed. Person unconscious in a car. We get updated that the patient is now conscious, but still some bleeding from the nose. The first responder tells us the man has had a nose bleed all day and finally called a neighbor to drive him to the hospital. On the way, […]

A couple years ago I decided I wanted to become a triathlete. Call it a middle aged crisis, but I started training regularly and last year completed six triathlons. These triathlons were not the same distance as the famous Ironman triathlons, which include a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike and a full 26.2-mile marathon at […]