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Permalink Reply by Deborah on January 17, 2008 at 10:18pm

lol....I love it Joe....thank you :)

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Permalink Reply by Mike on January 17, 2008 at 10:42pm

Deborah you should not let the ignorance of someone who probably means well but never spent a minute learning all the different faculties that go into a career in EMS. To understand that yes, you do drive the ambulance to the scene of the incident is one thing. To get out of the ambulance and put yourself at risk of some of the harshest communicable diseases available in the humble interest of saving the life of someone who most likely will be using another dirty needle to get high in a week is beyond the imagination of some of our media personnel. To voluntarily work yourself to exhaustion in the hope that your vigor will not be proven futile and that the very compressions you use to circulate blood to the brain to keep it alive will allow this torn body to live another day is incomprehensible to some outside the little circle that we keep. And yet the ambulance drivers... or medics, paramedics, EMTs... or however you choose to be called will get back in the ambulance to provide a service that at some point the ignorant may need. Keep smiling. My $.02... Mike

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Permalink Reply by Deborah on January 17, 2008 at 11:09pm

love it Mike....thanks :)

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Permalink Reply by Lane Doby on January 27, 2008 at 1:45am

I see your point here. However, the national news media has no excuse for "dumbing down" the facts so that everyone can understand. It's really a matter of asking those who work in emergency services, and that's not hard to do. And the error is not a small one. It's a large error that is getting larger because not enough of us are doing anything about it.

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Permalink Reply by Bill Anderson on January 27, 2008 at 4:56am

What's so bad is when it's other medical people calling us ambulance drivers. I had to bite my toungue in Mississippi. I had to wait for National Registry to come through and worked with a state certification as an Ambulance Driver. Boy was I glad to seee that big white envelope and the $4.00hr. pay raise......

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Permalink Reply by pfd334 on January 27, 2008 at 9:09am

Found this on a friends my space thought you mmight enjoy


Ambulance Drivers


Subject: Ambulance Drivers..someone did a realy good job on this one
>
> For those of you who work in EMS or have anything to do with
EMS , you are
going to appreciate this.
For those of you who call "EMT's and Paramedics"
"AMBULANCE DRIVERS" please read this carefully and completely. Now I was hoping
this was going to be short and sweet, then as I was driving, I kept thinking
more and more what to put. So if you have to read this in parts, but I want you
to, if you have made it this far, to completely read this post. Please do not
notice my grammar erros, as I can assure you, there will be many.
>
> The whole idea of this post was to make people think of what "AMBULANCE
DRIVERS" really are and do.
>
> 1). AMBULANCE DRIVER = usually an EMT or EMT-I and Paramedic. Right... What
the F is that? EMT is EMERGENCY MEDICAL TECHNICIAN. EMT-I is that same, but an
INTERMEDIATE Level, and Paramedic is the highest level of Emergency Medical
Service provider certifiable.
>
> 2).
EMS . EMS is not one word, it is E.M.S. Meaning Emergency Medical Services.
(Contrary to the common believe that it stands for Earn Money Sleeping or Extra
Marital Sex).
>
> 3). EMT's can perform BASIC LEVEL CARE, EMT-I's can perform a level above
that...start ivs, intubate people, give a few medications...and PARAMEDICS are
the ones that can do it all, ADVANCED LIFE SUPPORT. Terminology lesson:
Para> > * With that out of the way, the following is what the person you call AMBULANCE DRIVER does on a daily basis.> > 4). That "AMBULANCE DRIVER" is they guy, or girl that can give you drugs, through an IV started in your vein, that will stop your heart, yes thats right STOP YOUR HEART. Hopefully it will restart in a better condition than before we stopped it.> > 5). That "AMBULANCE DRIVER" is the person that will start that IV in your arm, or neck, or hand, or leg, or bone...BONE? Oh yeah, that guy you know as ambulance driver...they can take a device and put a needle in your bone to use as a last resort "IV."> > 6). That ambulance driver is the guy that if you get in a wreck and receive a pneumothorax (collapsed lung due to air build up)...that ambulance driver can put a needle through your chest in the intercostal space of your ribs to DECOMPRESS the pneumothorax allowing trapped air to escape.> > 7). That same person is the one, that if you or your child quits breathing...can (using a "blade")put a tube in their throat and with skill, pass it through their vocal cords and into their trachea creating a secure airway and allowing another ambulance driver to breath for you using a BVM connected to 100% o2.> > . Speaking of children, you know when your driving along and you see this square thing come up behind you, and its making noise and has flashing lights...and you don't want to pull over because you are running late for work, or because some other ambulance cut you off and your pissed at all ambulance drivers nation wide. WELL CONGRATULATIONS, that's the ambulance en route to your kids daycare because they got stung by a bee that they were allergic to, and now their throat is closing up and they are no longer able to breathe. That's the ambulance that has medication, equipment, and the trained people on board to stop and reverse the allergic reaction on scene or on the way to the hospital that is 45 minutes away.> > 9). HEART TROUBLES? How about, NO HEART BEAT, DEAD, DRT (DEAD RIGHT THERE)...that ambulance driver guy...that's the guy that can legally shock you with up to 360 joules of electricity in attempt to start you heart again. PS on this one...EVERYONE THAT GOES INTO CARDIAC ARREST DOES NOT GET SHOCKED! So if we don't shock, don't think we don't know what we are doing. Rescue 911 is over, that's the only place everyone gets shocked. We are PARAMEDICS, not God (we have to get th

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Permalink Reply by Joe Stoltz on January 27, 2008 at 10:44am

Hmmm I thought EMS stood for "Every Minute Sucks"...

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Permalink Reply by Bill Anderson on February 23, 2008 at 12:14am

Earn Money Sleeping

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Permalink Reply by ILDisasterEMT on February 23, 2008 at 12:37am

For the record, a paramedic IS an emergency medical technician. See also EMT-P or NREMT-P. Also, an I/O line or so called "bone line" is rapidly becoming accepted as an intervention that is not the last resort. In disaster and austere medicine, the I/O line is often preferred as the first line (as it were) for establishing fluid and drug introduction when you have more than one patient and many services have in their protocols that it is the first choice (and in some, the only one in the protocol) for establishing a line on an infant. I know this if off topic, but there is a great deal of misunderstanding about an I/O line. They are actually not at all difficult to start, in fact quite a bit easier than an IV line. I can start 3 I/O lines in the time it would take someone to establish a single IV line in an A/C space. See...some of the misinformation even comes from within the profession, so lets not be to hard on old Charlie.

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Permalink Reply by Amanda W. on February 23, 2008 at 12:52am

Maybe they should all go listen to the song Angel wrote and performed by Sequoyah Rain.It explains it all quite well.

I am Just an ambulance driver, you say as I am on the scene of a vehicle accident that has a popular high school student that is trapped in the submedged S.U.V. in the creek as I'm standing in chest deep water,freezing rain falling and stinging as it hits the exposed parts of my body. Holding her head above water to keep her from drowning until rescue could get there to cut her free---
BUT I'M JUST AN AMBULANCE DRIVER

I comfort a 89 year old woman who just watch me and my partner cover the face of her husband of 64 years as he lay dead in their bathroom floor---
BUT I'M JUST AN AMBULANCE DRIVER

I am on scene at another mva with mom trapped upside down in her car and her dead sons body laying on top of her without a second thought for my own safety i crawl into the wreckage to take C-spine control and calm the frantic lady---
BUT I'M JUST AN AMBULANCE DRIVER

I get called away from my just prepared meal to respond to the middle of B.F.E to a house with no numbers,no porch light on,nobody waiting to signal us in and they bitch because we took too long only to find out the patient left in there own vehicle ten minutes ago...so we smile and walk away from the verbal lashing only because we are
JUST AMBULANCE DRIVERS

I stand in the middle of the street at midnight on the wrong side of town trying to patch the holes and stop the bleeding of a 19 year old shooting victim with the occasional bullet wizzing past our heads we never break stride because this kids life is in our hands---
BUT I'M JUST AN AMBULNCE DRIVER

Or how bout doing chest compressions on a 16 year old girl who decided this life was more than she could take.Her family screaming at us to help as though we are the ones who did this to her.Her lifeless body flailing about as the tube goes in and IV's being started, my arms and back burning from the pain of 30 minutes of CPR never once giving up, hoping she would make it through and over come whatever lead her to this bad decision----
BUT I'M JUST AN AMBULANCE DRIVER

Death is all around me and still i go home to live my life
i get kicked,hit,spit on, bled on, puked on,cussed at and disrespected...
i look into the eyes of a lifeless child at 7am and by 8 am i'm holding my child a little tighter and they know nothing about what happened. i have hundreds of hours of classroom time
years of in the field experience i have challenged death and won.

i've helped the helpless
i've neglected my family for yours
i find comfort in complete chaos
i eat cold meals if i eat at all
i work with no sleep for days at a time
i miss birthdays,holidays and school functions
i put myself in harms way for a total stranger on a daily basis

ALL BECAUSE I AM JUST AN AMBULANCE DRIVER

I AM AN AMBULANCE DRIVER!!! I DRIVE 90 MPH THROUGH CONJESTED TRAFFIC FULL OF PEOPLE WHO REFUSE TO YEILD RIGHT OF WAY WHILE MY PARTNER STANDS UNRESTRAINED IN THE BACK OF THIS SCREAMING LAND MISSLE SAVING YOUR LOVED ONES LIFE!! NEVER ONCE DOES HE QUESTION MY DRIVING HE KNOWS THAT AT THE END OF THIS SHIFT HE WILL GO HOME TO HIS FAMILY SAFELY BECAUSE I AM AN AMBULANCE DRIVER....

Author Unknown

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Permalink Reply by Lane Doby on June 3, 2008 at 2:26pm

EMT-Parmedics (EMT always comes before Paramedic, because you have to perform good BLS before you perform good ALS) are not the only Advanced Life Support providers out there. Any level that is higher than an EMT is an ALS level. I'm an EMT-Paramedic, myself. I hate it when other EMT-P's think they're the only level of ALS providers out there. It's degrading and inconsiderate to ALL the other levels.

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