“Jesus was here today. Glory Be. Brothers and sisters! Good God, we have witnessed thy presence. Let us all say Hallelujah, Hallelujah!” A woman called 911 and said she hadn’t seen her neighbor all day, and no one would answer her neighbor’s apartment door. The fire department broke the door open with an axe handle […]

When couples get old, they communicate with fewer words or sometimes just a look. I am feeling that way about my EMS reports at the ED. Where I used to rattle off every detail I could think of (from brand of cereal they had for breakfast to the number and locations of the moles they […]

I once did 10 cardiac arrests in one day. They were all v-fib arrests. I managed each code from the moment I arrived to find CPR in progress to the moment the patients were whisked off to the cardiac cath lab. I got 10 successful ET tubes, and despite the studies that show ET intubation […]

On Sports Radio this morning they were talking about the decline of three sports legends – Tiger Woods, Peyton Manning and Kobe Bryant. The radio host, a retired athlete himself, was saying how no one who hadn’t played professional sports could possibly understand what these three were going through. He said they dedicated their lives […]

You should attend an EMS conference at least once in your career. My first exposure to an EMS conference was Connecticut’s state conference. I had only been an EMT a few years – my influences were limited to my excellent EMT instructor, and the great people I worked with at Eastern Ambulance, a small five […]

Many years ago here in Connecticut each of the hospitals in the state had their own set of treatment guidelines for the paramedics they sponsored. In our company some of our medics were sponsored by Hartford Hospital, others by Saint Francis Hospital.* Each hospital had a different set of guidelines, even though their medics worked […]

The main question left in the wake of the study,Trial of Continuous or Interrupted Chest Compressions during CPR, that dominated the news coming out of the American Heart Association’s 2015 Scientific Sessions Conference in Orlando, Florida this past week, is “How does passive ventilation compare with positive pressure ventilation in the early stages of cardiac […]

I hardly ever go lights and sirens to the hospital. I feel so strongly about not going lights and sirens unless absolutely necessary, I wrote what became our statewide policy on lights and sirens. Although it was toned down through the various committees it went though, the gist of it remained the same. You should […]