75 Real Medic Stuff Now

by Ron on Tuesday, January 17, 2012

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(45:44) We’re back from a long break and the Newbie has been busy. Ron started his clinical internship and have now done 4 24 hour shifts with one crew at the Harris County Emergency Corps.

He’s learning a lot, here’s some of the thing Ron and Kelly talk about:
How to use the IV cath right
How to do CHART. I now understand it and even take notes in it.
Running calls. Lasted about 30 seconds in my first call.
Turns out it was likely a AAA( Or was it? Listen to Kelly’s comment), but it was seizures with a fall to start and I just didn’t know what to do.
Vs ran my first MVC yesterday and did pretty good. A little too much scene time. Not enough delegation.
My preceptor is really good. She reviews calls after I run them, gives good feedback. Let’s me beat myself up only so much.
Also gives me homework. Quizzing me on my ALS.

Calls:
1/6 = 6
1/12= 3
12/29 = 6
1/4 = 6

Started my new job.
Service is really different.
Big difference between a 2 paramedic truck and a Paramedic/Basic truck.
Kelly do you do truck chores? Or is that all on the other guy?
New experiences there:
System status management.
Working 12 instead of 24.
Going to prison.
Not having 2 level 1 trauma hospitals at your beck and call.

Sorry for not keeping up with the show, but as you see Ron and been doing something every day. Now we’re both on weird EMS schedules, so expect Newbie will be on a weird schedule too. Not more releasing on a particular day, because we may not be able to record on a regular one.

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74 The Final Final

by marcm on Monday, December 19, 2011

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(21:58) Ron goes through his final final and some skills testing. No more lectures, no more teacher’s dirty looks.

What I Did This Week

Clinicals

Paper work. What a pain.

Mentions:

Bob Page on Stethoscopes

Listener Questions

I had originally planned to contact Kelly directly, but then realized his answer would probably be useful for EMS Newbie fans as well.

Hey Kelly, I know that you’ve blogged on this topic many times and I’ve got a quick question for you. Since you’re apt to transport some rather sick (yet not entirely time sensitive) patients without lights, sirens, and guns a blazin’, do you sometimes still describe your transport as “emergent” when giving radio report to ensure the receiving staff understands that the patient is sick? It would sure be nice to trust that painting a clinical picture would be enough to alert the nurses that they should plan on placing the patient a corner or hallway, but having spent a lot of time working in the department, I fear the staff would sometimes be too busy and distracted to pick up on less overt signals. Even with a fairly obvious description, our nurses are often multi-tasking while taking radio report, and it would be very easy to assume: “The patient can’t be that sick, I didn’t hear any sirens and they’re non-emergent.” As always, thanks for the podcast,
– Vince

Hi Ron, hope you are well. I was just wondering if either you or kelly had heard of the ‘lethal triad’ with regards to trauma and whether this was something that you guys were being taught about on your course or whether you thought it should be?

Warm regards from a cold england
Jamie

On the GI symptoms relating to anaphalaxis, I had heard that people with a new food allergy will often go through a progression of allergy symptoms to a certain stimulus before reaching full-blown anaphalaxis, often starting with GI symptoms. My understanding was that they would consume the food and have nausea, vomiting and/or diarrhea but not necessarily an airway issue, so it might be written off as “bad food” or stomach bug or something similar. Next time they ate that food, maybe they had worse GI symptoms but still did not connect the issue. Eventually it progresses up to true anaphalaxis with airway issues. Have y’all heard anything similar?
Andaew – Hey, In regards to stethoscope is there really a difference from a low end stethoscope and a high end stethoscope? If there is a difference how much of a difference is it and would it be worthwhile purchasing a higher quality stethoscope?

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73 Environmental Emergencies

December 12, 2011

(29:40) Ron has his last lecture of paramedic school and it is about Environmental Emergencies. What I Did This Week Medical Emergencies Environmental Emergencies Heat Cold Do you have a low temperature thermometer? We’ll see hypothermia in Houston because there are lots of ways to have it happen, but she said not going to see [...]

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72 Hematology and Burn Out

December 5, 2011

(33:54) Blooooodddd, maybe this should have been the halloween episode. Ron learns about blood diseases. Its also scary how burned out everyone in class is getting at this point. Only 3 weeks to go. Ron gets his textbook changed. He also gets an EMS job, find out what’s scary about that on this week’s episode. [...]

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71 2011 Texas EMS Conference

November 28, 2011

(27:30) This week Ron and Kelly podcast live from the 2011 Texas EMS Conference. They discuss the different lectures and sessions they attended, which were good, which were packed so full of information it was tough to keep up and which left the brain as soon as the feet left the room. There’s talk of [...]

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Texas EMS Conference Meetup

November 21, 2011

Will be tonight at 7:00PM (1900 for you EMS Types) at Bill McCabe’s Irish Pub on Red River, near 7th. 714 Red River St Austin, TX 78701 Kelly and I will be there and we want to hear your favorite moments from the podcast.

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