I understand the goal of increased venous return and decreased ICP, but doesn’t elevating the head also require higher cerebral perfusion pressures to perfuse the brain, as you are now fighting gravity significantly more to move blood towards the brain? It feels like a “robbing Peter to pay Paul” situation.
Former Paramedic. Your comment about being a woman and sometimes it's tough in your profession. I worked with many femakes and never once had an issue. My saying was, I don;t care if your male, female, white, black, chinese etc., if you can drag me out of a burning house, we are good.
Interesting to watch. This is wildly different from what we do here in Germany. Your average HLF engine arrives with an 8+1 crew config: Truckie (operates all the machinery on the engine and secures the site) Group lead Runner 2 man attack team, ready to go with SCBA on 2 hose team 2 water supply team. The hose team can later don SCBAs they pull from a compartment on the side of the truck. Pull out the tray, unlock and fold down the carriers, remove tiedowns and you can slip right in and go. They can either join the attack or stay behind as a safety standby in case the other team runs into trouble and needs rescuing. Depending on the fire you can choose between the quick attack line on a reel which is attached to the water tank and ready to be charged or set up a regular line, feed it from the tank and meanwhile establish a water supply from a hydrant. Due to shortages, though, regular engines also might get pulled into a first responder role for a medical case. Which always is cause for great surprise (and sometimes embarrassment) if someone has called an ambulance and suddenly there us a huge truck out there with a bunch of firefighters on board. But one single FF being first due and starting to work…almost unthinkable here. Hell, if a call is projected to last longer than 30 minutes, the VFD is put on standby and starts manning their fire stations to ensure coverage.
Not the hard work... As Captain of a team that runs incident command, two in the whole State of Illinois, we only take a back seat FEMA, I beg to differ... Check yourself before you wreck yourself. As a young guy my hazmat training began at 17yo in the military and continued on to now being over 40, stacks of certifications, countless hours of study and the responsibility for the safety of everyone on scene along with the general public, yeah, it's the "easy job"... Kick rocks with that noise, I was going to school when y'all had the Wiawega derailment and hazmat situation, that's what first sparked my interest, but you're probably too young to remember that, our team is deployable nation-wide and we also do go hands on for SAR, aided by K9's, technical rope rescues, evidence recovery, etc... but it's the easy job, ok.
You can get hot inside these sealed suits in a hurry. How do these people avoid being sous vide alive when the weather is a heatwave with temperatures over 110 f? Edmonton Fire Rescue actually hooks up medical telemetry sensors to anyone who wears these suits to monitor for sudden onset hypothermia.
This was actually funny. I saw many similarities to what I experienced in my department. Great to see the funny sense of humor of the Chief and Deputy Chief. Good job!
So what will this change include for the mental health of your staff? I really hope it’s not “swept under the rug”. Keep these men and women safe…. #unbuttonthestigma
I've never been in a career where our mental health is included more. Free counseling 24/7, on-duty chaplain at all times, events revolving around mental health accountability, and the day to day check-ins we give each other on-shift.
Hair on the squirrel meat. I feel your pain. I received a Xmas present of steaks with cow hair sprinkled all over -vacuum sealed inside. I didn’t want to hurt the person’s feelings and everyone was watching. It was the most difficult attempt at a genuine smile and, “Thank you so much! I can’t to eat them!“
Firefighters tied up on EMS runs? Sound like any small dept including mine. We operate on shitluck that everything will just “workout”. I love this video because it highlights the type of department most of us work out and why the training needs to cater towards that. I mean I just got off shift driving a ladder with my captain because we don’t have enough guys to have someone backseat, but we had three on our ambulance.
Is your Fire Department adopting new strategies like ACR to tackle Cardiac Arrest? Let us know what you think about it! It's been a great learning opportunity for us and we're happy to provide an even greater level of service to the Wausau community!
Staffing is going to become harder and harder and damn near impossible before we know it. We have an entitled generation coming up that doesn't want to do anything unless it's amusing to them and an older generation that's rapidly depleting EMS resources constantly. Basically the workload is increasing while the desire to do the job has plunged. The biggest movement in our society today is towards socialism, which is the economic version of "someone else will do it" and that mindset is present in all other aspects of life too.
