May 18, 2012

You are here: Home / Archives for News

This week in EMS news

October 16, 2010 By 1 Comment

Here are some hand picked, EMS news stories for the week of 10/10/2010.


Filed Under: News Tagged With:

Calling all Droid heads

October 9, 2010 By Leave a Comment

There’s a new website in town and it’s right up your alley.

DroidMedic.com is a site dedicated to providing EMS professionals a quality resource for utilizing their Android phones in the pre-hospital setting. The site is up and running, but still in it’s infancy. I have tons of ideas and all kinds of material that I’m writing for your benefit. It will feature tips, tricks, fixes, tech news, app reviews and tutorials. It will be updated regularly with quality material.

I have spending most of my free time getting this site up and running so unfortunately my posts on here have been minimal. I am pleased to say that I can now post regularly on both sites and I plan on providing frequently.

I am open to any and all comments, criticism, questions and certainly suggestions. Hop on over to DroidMedic.com and take a look. Be sure to follow the site on Facebook and Twitter as well. While you are there, you can also sign up for the Droid Medic newsletter. Subscribers get a free copy of my e-book and can stay up-to-date with the happenings around the site.

All of my posts from this blog regarding Android-related stuff have been moved over. I will only be posting those articles on the new site now. I really hope you all enjoy it. Please feel free to contact me with any questions.


Filed Under: News Tagged With: , ,

Change Councilman NOT EMS Policy

September 24, 2010 By 1 Comment

Councilman Kenneth Stokes of Jackson Mississippi has shown the EMS community that he truly couldn’t give a rats ass about our safety. Not only has he recently criticized a company’s staging policy for violent scenes, but has moved forward on plans to try and cancel the contract of the local ambulance service. To make things worse, he wants a “no staging” clause to anyone that is awarded the contract.

I can only assume that since he wants to implement such a policy, that he will be willing to spend the money to arm all of the EMS personnel, provide them with armor and send them through defense and lethal force training. Hmm this sounds like a department that already exists in his area. Oh yea, THE COPS.

To expect EMS professionals to intentionally place themselves at risk with NO means to defend themselves is criminal. I really hope that the EMS community sends Mr. Stokes the big F.U. and gets him removed from office. He is obviously too uneducated, naive and flat out stupid to be overseeing anything.

I encourage everyone to write him and let me know just how ridiculous his actions are. His e-mail is kstokes@city.jackson.ms.us

Here is a link to the article:

http://www.jems.com/article/news/miss-councilman-suggests-ambul


Filed Under: News, Opinion Tagged With: , ,

Privatization of Fire?

September 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment

It looks like Omaha Nebraska is considering taking steps towards switching to a private-based fire service. It’s been a while since I have heard this topic. It’s not uncommon to hear of communities switching to private ambulance service, but privatizing the fire service is something that I rarely hear about.

I’m usually all for private ambulance service as it saves tax dollars and is staffed with paramedics who don’t have their duties divided between fire fighting and medicine. I’m not really sure how a private fire service would work. I’m assuming they would rely on billing insurance companies for structure fires but what about everything else? Would they receive subsidies? If so would that defeat the purpose of switching to a private-based system?

This truly is a topic that I know nothing about. I’m really interested to learn more. If anyone has any experience working with private-based fire, please let me know. I would love to hear all about it.

http://www.omaha.com/article/20100908/NEWS01/709089874/1003154


Filed Under: News, Opinion Tagged With: ,

Big Bummer for Stockton Fire

September 6, 2010 By 11 Comments

Long story short……

Stockton City Fire recently lost their paramedic privileges due to circumstances that I still don’t fully understand. So naturally the fire officials are on TV talking about how people are going to start dying left and right because now the only paramedics responding to their calls are on ambulances.

Hmm, paramedics working on ambulances and firemen working on fire trucks. Who would have thought?

The firefighters are going to arrive on scene first, like they do 73% of the time.
-Fire Chief Ron Hittle

There are cities all over the nation that work at this same level. It’s called a tiered response and it works well. The majority of ALS care should be done while en route to the hospital. Sitting around on scene starting IV’s and pushing medications accomplishes nothing.

Don’t get me wrong, I get that there could be SOME occasions where the ambulance service is delayed arriving on scene within their required response times. But how many times is this actually going to negatively affect the patient? Cities and counties spend millions of dollars on services that can be provided at NO COST to the tax payers if it were to be contracted out to private enterprise.

I’m sure that AMR will handle this situation just fine.

http://www.ems1.com/fire-ems/articles/874010-Calif-firefighters-barred-from-ALS-responses/


Filed Under: News, Opinion, Politics Tagged With: , ,

There's a new kid on the EMS1 Block

September 4, 2010 By Leave a Comment

And thats……me!

I’m happy to announce that my Celebrity Medic series is now being featured in a column on ems1.com. I’m posting a new “Celebrity Medic” once a month on that column. I will still continue to post the series on the blog as well. It’s just too awesome to be contained to just one site!

Here is a link to the new column: http://www.ems1.com/Columnists/sean-eddy

Enjoy!


Filed Under: News
Newer Posts »