New App – Parkland

Available on the link to the left, or in the Google Play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dtsemt.parkland

As usual, completely free, and ad-free.  Calculates fluid resuscitation requirements based on the Parkland formula.

 

New App

… in the Google Play store.  DTsEMT Menu allows you to remove any shortcuts you might have to other DTs (Medics of Anarchy) titles and replace them with a single shortcut to the Menu app, freeing up screen space.

The app scans your device on launch and creates a menu of all DTsEMT titles – building, well, a menu.

It does NOT check the Play store for new DTsEMT titles.

Absolutely free, like all MoA apps.

who is… The Most Interesting Medic In The World…?

To him, anything less than a 14 gauge in the Circle of Willis is a peripheral line;

 

When he marks “transporting”,  the hospital pages a “Code Awesome, ETA 5 minutes”;

 

When he brings in a patient, the ED docs gather around – to learn;

 

When he was dispatched to the wrong address, the occupant faked illness to become his patient;

 

Just sitting at his table at lunch is worth one hour CE credit

 

 He needs no siren; he just smiles at the rear view mirrors of the cars in front of him

 

Any more?

Apropos Veterans Day

In the past month – a normal month for DTs, by the way – I have met:

a Cold War submarine commander;

an original  Tuskegee airman;

a soldier/POW from the Battle of the Bulge;

a tanker from Patton’s Third Army;

at least three infantrymen who saw France – beginning D-Day;  a couple more who toured Europe via the scenic Italian route;

an Air Force officer who served in Vietnam;

a young man on leave who is still serving our country…

Folks are right, there are heroes to be found when one is in the Fire/EMS gig, and it’s our privilege to serve them.

In Which We Contemplate Speech Patterns

I’ve been observing “us” for a while now – we EMS folk – and to non-ems folk it may seem, based on our speech patterns,  that we don’t transport patients at all.

I do not mean that we disavow the people we’ve cared for; that is, we don’t deny picking people up from Bad Situation, and taking them to hospital.  Nor do we in Transport Gig deny that we also take them from standalone EDs to definitive care, or from definitive care to rehab, or from rehab to home… or wherever.

Instead, what I find in our speech patterns is that we seem to transport chief complaints.

“I had this chest pain,” one might begin.  “We ran this auto accident.”  “They toned us out for an arm pain, but it was really a hip fracture.”

It isn’t usual for us to begin “I had a guy with chest pain,” or “I had a lady with leg pain.”  Indeed, unless there is a need for this kind of knowledge, differential diagnosis information inherent in the patient themselves, we don’t mention it.  For instance, “I had a lady with abdominal pain” WILL be stated.  Women have much more that can be going on, abdominally.

And that in itself I find interesting.  We will, in telling our stories to each other, include any and all information which will allow our audience, other Bambulance Folk, to follow along at home down the diagnostic path.  “So, at 02:30 we found a 69-year old male prone, unresponsive, in the kitchen wearing slippers” – this we toss in because stocking feet tend to slip and slide – “with a bottle of orange juice on the floor near his hand” – this we include because OJ is, (as ever), a clue.

“Aha!” our audience exclaims.  “What was his glucose?”  And yes, they got it.  The stories, you see, are never really about People.  Rather, they seem like stories about Problems, And How We Solved Them.

I’ve been thinking about this, and I believe it’s because we’re all about The Data.  Give me What I Need To Take Care of My Patient.

You will not, at the station, hear this:

“I transported a young new mother, flaxen haired.  Her blue eyes: now distant with worries of tomorrow, now sparkling with merriment at the thought of today. Her smile flashed brightly, in joyous competition with those eyes, and…”

Nah.  Our stories to each other don’t work that way.  They follow the cut-and-dried approach of a patient care report. Although I have been tempted to begin a PCR with the immortal, “It was a dark and stormy night,” or, “Lounging at the station, my Medic Sense began tingling moments before the tones dropped.  We leapt into action.”

BUT – and this is the whole point of this – we seem only to tell our stories to each other to Find Things Out.  “This is what I saw, this is what I found,” and the unspoken, Did I miss something?  Or, What could I have done better?  Or, what else should I have checked?  We constantly seek feedback.

Not for every call.  Just once in a while, there IS a call where one’s Medic Sense tingled, and we want to know, Why?

Listening to us talk, I find we never bring up the calls where our Medic Sense didn’t tingle – we don’t tend to brag about the calls where we did everything right, and know it.  We constantly seek peer review and aren’t afraid to draw it out.

Which I find to be uber-cool.  Regardless of how well the patient contact turned out, and even if everything went fine, the fact is that we through these stories turn to each other and, in essence, say, “Help me to be better for next time.”