"Ambulance Driver" Kelly Grayson proved his ignurences (aside from keeping us down by repeatedly refusing to stop calling himself an ambulance driver) in a recent column from EMS1.com where he "debunked" some EMS cliches.
This article proved to me that this Kelly person is not fit to write for any magazine or website. Anyone who's been in EMS as long as me and worked as many calls as me HAS to see just how wrong Kelly is. I've taken his 10 cliches and written my responses:
10. “Paramedics save lives, EMTs save paramedics.” This is the #1 truth in EMS. I can't tell you how many times I get on scene and start an ALS assessment on a patient and an EMT swoops in and places the patient on 15 liters of high flow. I forget all the time that O2 should be applied for anything. My EMTs also remind me to recheck blood pressures and check my splinting. EMTs DO save Paramedics Kelly, if you give them a chance!
9. “Here to save your ass, not kiss it.” We are being misused at an alarming rate. I had a call just yesterday where a woman wanted us to refill her prescription. "You call, we haul." I wish they'd stop calling us and wasting our time. What does she expect me to do? Explain the basics on healthcare? I don't have time for that, we're a 911 service.
8. “We cheat death.” We do, daily! I have a T-shirt with the Grim Reaper being slapped in the face by a bad ass medic with sunglasses and everything. You are so narrow minded you can't see how we bring the dead back everyday. Epi works Kelly!
7. “Seconds count.” Try holding your breath for 3 minutes and see what happens. I can't stand it when some washed up middle manager tries to tell me that we drove too fast or opposed traffic to the IFT. We are en emergency service and I took a 3 hour driving course.
6. “I don’t have X-ray eyes.” If they think it's broken, what do they want us to do Kelly? Huh? Guess what happened? If I did have an X-ray machine would that change my treatment? I didn't think so.
5. “They should have gone to medical school if they wanted to be a doctor.” I spent 6 months in EMT school and another 11 in Paramedic School. If there was something else I needed to know to treat from my Protocols, I'd know it. Protocols are laws written by Doctors. If I step outside those protocols, no matter the outcome, I will get stepped on and fired, no questions asked. If they wanted me to learn more, why are the renewal credits where they are? You can't answer that one can you? If 24 hours is enough to keep doing what I'm doing, I'll keep taking the same 5 classes and cheating death on a daily basis.
4. “Zero to hero.” Classroom and book learning is a start, but you need true street experience to be a real EMT or Paramedic. Only in the truck, getting puked on and standing in blood everyday can you truly realize and understand what it is we go through. When you see death first hand it changes you. It hardens you. That's why I can't stand all the BS PC talk on facebook. If you can't take a joke, get out of EMS! What we see every day would leave regular people in a puddle of piss, so yeah, the street is the only place to learn what it is we do. You could take a doctor and put them out here and they'd shit their britches.
3. “If it saves one life, it’s worth it.” What if it was your Mom? What then? The cost of 1 human life can't be calculated, I looked it up on wikidepia.
2. “I save lives for a living.” Damn right! I suit up against Death, kick the Grim Reaper in the ass and take names later. That's what we're there for Kelly, not all this BS moving people around because they are entitled whiny losers. I don't remember the whiny brat portion of Paramedic School.
1. “Treat the patient, not the monitor.” All your fancy ALS machines don't tell you squat if you're not looking at the patient! Get them on O2 and watch them change in front of your eyes. Sat monitors are useless. Just give them some O2 already! EKG? Not so fast! Basic before Advanced! Take a pulse, count respirations, give O2, check a blood sugar, get a BP. Then and ONLY then should you be applying the monitor.
Kelly, your cliche list proves to me one of 3 things: Either you are a Noob in EMS, have never done any time on the streets, or you're burnt out. Either way I'm not going to listen to you, whoever you are. I just saw an update on a facebook group I follow that belittles patients, makes off color comments about death and shares other updates that I agree with. Keep your fancy learning to yourself, NOOB!
</satire>
This article proved to me that this Kelly person is not fit to write for any magazine or website. Anyone who's been in EMS as long as me and worked as many calls as me HAS to see just how wrong Kelly is. I've taken his 10 cliches and written my responses:
10. “Paramedics save lives, EMTs save paramedics.” This is the #1 truth in EMS. I can't tell you how many times I get on scene and start an ALS assessment on a patient and an EMT swoops in and places the patient on 15 liters of high flow. I forget all the time that O2 should be applied for anything. My EMTs also remind me to recheck blood pressures and check my splinting. EMTs DO save Paramedics Kelly, if you give them a chance!
9. “Here to save your ass, not kiss it.” We are being misused at an alarming rate. I had a call just yesterday where a woman wanted us to refill her prescription. "You call, we haul." I wish they'd stop calling us and wasting our time. What does she expect me to do? Explain the basics on healthcare? I don't have time for that, we're a 911 service.
8. “We cheat death.” We do, daily! I have a T-shirt with the Grim Reaper being slapped in the face by a bad ass medic with sunglasses and everything. You are so narrow minded you can't see how we bring the dead back everyday. Epi works Kelly!
7. “Seconds count.” Try holding your breath for 3 minutes and see what happens. I can't stand it when some washed up middle manager tries to tell me that we drove too fast or opposed traffic to the IFT. We are en emergency service and I took a 3 hour driving course.
6. “I don’t have X-ray eyes.” If they think it's broken, what do they want us to do Kelly? Huh? Guess what happened? If I did have an X-ray machine would that change my treatment? I didn't think so.
5. “They should have gone to medical school if they wanted to be a doctor.” I spent 6 months in EMT school and another 11 in Paramedic School. If there was something else I needed to know to treat from my Protocols, I'd know it. Protocols are laws written by Doctors. If I step outside those protocols, no matter the outcome, I will get stepped on and fired, no questions asked. If they wanted me to learn more, why are the renewal credits where they are? You can't answer that one can you? If 24 hours is enough to keep doing what I'm doing, I'll keep taking the same 5 classes and cheating death on a daily basis.
4. “Zero to hero.” Classroom and book learning is a start, but you need true street experience to be a real EMT or Paramedic. Only in the truck, getting puked on and standing in blood everyday can you truly realize and understand what it is we go through. When you see death first hand it changes you. It hardens you. That's why I can't stand all the BS PC talk on facebook. If you can't take a joke, get out of EMS! What we see every day would leave regular people in a puddle of piss, so yeah, the street is the only place to learn what it is we do. You could take a doctor and put them out here and they'd shit their britches.
3. “If it saves one life, it’s worth it.” What if it was your Mom? What then? The cost of 1 human life can't be calculated, I looked it up on wikidepia.
2. “I save lives for a living.” Damn right! I suit up against Death, kick the Grim Reaper in the ass and take names later. That's what we're there for Kelly, not all this BS moving people around because they are entitled whiny losers. I don't remember the whiny brat portion of Paramedic School.
1. “Treat the patient, not the monitor.” All your fancy ALS machines don't tell you squat if you're not looking at the patient! Get them on O2 and watch them change in front of your eyes. Sat monitors are useless. Just give them some O2 already! EKG? Not so fast! Basic before Advanced! Take a pulse, count respirations, give O2, check a blood sugar, get a BP. Then and ONLY then should you be applying the monitor.
Kelly, your cliche list proves to me one of 3 things: Either you are a Noob in EMS, have never done any time on the streets, or you're burnt out. Either way I'm not going to listen to you, whoever you are. I just saw an update on a facebook group I follow that belittles patients, makes off color comments about death and shares other updates that I agree with. Keep your fancy learning to yourself, NOOB!
</satire>
Comments
Paramedic school was long and hard. I had to pass a really hard test that I have heard only 50% of people can pass the first time, for some people it takes 3 times!! to get my patch ( back in the day on paper) and if my knowledge was good enough to have the NREMT say I was cleared then I am good to go. I guess I didnt know I needed the blessings of a group of condescending D#@!^ like who ever wrote this to be a paramedic. I'll let the state office and the NREMT know you approve of me as a paramedic next time.
And I take offense at all of this EMS 2.zero crap. People like me who have been doing it for a long time know what works because we have seen it work. So please go on to tell me how I should do my job and how things that are proven to work ( just ask anyone who has been in the biz for a long time they have seen it) like spinal immobilizations, ET tubes, fluids, oxygen are bad for my patients.
So maybe it is the beef jerky and Mountain dews that have me fired up today, but...
Yes, I do save lives but it is so easy to get caught up in the BS 12 lead interpretation that you do forget to put oxygen on your patients with chest pain and that is why you ahve a partner to rmind you BLS before ALS. Not all patients need High flow O2, some of them do just fine on a cannula, but never with hold it. plus it helps to calm them down and can treat there pain. I teach that to every one of the as you call them Noobs when I am being an FTO.
I also teach them to think and look for clues on scene, like just last week I got to see the lights come on in this "newb" Paramedic when he wasn't going to spinal a patient in a MVC until I had him walk down the bank and look at the car, after seeing the mechanism he came back up, told the patient that he was lucky he wasnt paralyzed for walking up the bank. We did a standing take-down right then and there. By the time we got to the hospital the pt had pretty bad back pain, can you imagine if we hadn't put him on the backboard? lawsuit. So go ahead and make fun of the noobs, I'll take them and teach them.
Besides- the monitor tells you the answer to the 12 lead...unless u think u are smarter than a computer?
Are you even a paramedic? if you were you would know that every two years I have to do 72 hours of continuing education. 72 Hours!!! Most of that is in the form of a refresher so I know that the knowledge I gained in school is still fresh in my head. Do you have any idea how hard 72 hours over two years is? not the 24 hours you said in the satire.
Maybe you don't cheat death but I have and for you to mock me about it is BS. There is nothing like arriving at a cardiac arrest, getting that tube in and giving epi and getting a pulse back after the 3rd or 4th round of epi and running hot to the ER. Knowing you made a difference.
I don't even think you are a Paramedic, or at least one that works on the streets because you don't get it. What you call gallows humor or black humir is the only thing keeping many of us from having a nervous breakdown with the terrible things we see out there. The public aint never gonna understand it and apparently neither do you. If it werent for the camaraderie that we have on private places like Facebook where we can blow off steam and make jokes about our patients then many of us would have to be alcoholics to get buy.
Either way, congratulations on achieving such distinction!
Look at that mechanism!!!
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YzYxz_uvtSI
http://seinfeld.wikia.com/wiki/Tor_Eckman
Tor, that made for epic reading! (and epic snorts of disgust on the part of the readers I'd wager...)