People are always asking me what changes I have seen over the years.  Here are four changes I have been thinking about lately. More paramedics.  When I started we had anywhere from two to six paramedics on to cover the entire city of Hartford and backup the other three large towns we covered.  On many […]

I work in a high volume system.  It is not unusual to do 10 transports in a 12-hour shift.  I’m lucky if one of the calls is a good call.  By “good” I mean a call where I get to be a paramedic in a way more than routine.  Routine paramedic is asthma (duoneb), abd […]

Many years ago, I worked on assembly lines in factories.  I put together and or packaged everything from Christmas Tree stands and door knobs to fast food store deli sandwiches and grocery store beef ribs. The key to the assembly line was to go a little bit faster than you were comfortable going.  You had […]

One of the greatest shames in EMS is that we so often never find out what the real deal was with our patients. 17 year old boy whose parents swear he never does drugs (but did go to a concert last night) is found in his room the next day talking gibberish, reaching for objects […]

I remember when I was an EMT student doing my hospital observation time and watching the paramedics come into the hospital with their patients.  How confident they seemed.  I marveled at the ease with which they moved through this strange new world.  I held them in awe as I did the paramedics I later rode […]

  Kevin Grange’s new memoir is now out. Lights and Sirens is an authentic, compelling narrative of Grange’s journey through UCLA paramedic school and field internship on Los Angeles’s dangerous streets as he trains to save the lives of victims of heart attack, stroke and trauma. Grange is an excellent writer who does a great service […]

In the late 1970s and 1980s, the G——Motor Lodge out on the Turnpike was the place to take your girl for a swinging good time.  Mirrored ceilings and heart shaped Love-Tubs.    The brochure featured a hairy-chested mustachioed man in a velvet bathroom holding a bottle of champagne in one hand and a filled glass of […]

I was on Park Street last week headed into El Mercado to get some pernil (roast pork), yucca and tostones for lunch when a gentleman came up to me and showed me his overdose kit.  He said he’d gotten it at the local needle exchange program.  He said he had already used it once when one […]