paratrooper75

I share that as well. I'm not picking on volunteers but a lot of times lights are used when they shouldn't. The best is when they leave the lights on while they are transporting non-emergency to the hospital obeying all traffic rules. Like you said there is only a small percentage of jobs that require lights to the hospital. As far as the flycar with its lights on that is total BS.

I to beleive the helicopter is way over used. I've even heard of it being called to land on the sprain parkway. Even if the injuries are severe enough for a trauma center you still have that whole "30 minutes or less" window to think about. Extrication or wilderness rescue ok but as far as motorcycle accidents or incidents where you can be on the way to the trauma center in less than ten minutes transport by ground ALS, same thing. If you're outside that 30 minute ground time window than use discresion. My brother was transported by stat flight when he was involved in a motorcycle accident in somers. His only injury was a femur fracture which is severe but doesn't warrant a helicopter when he was twenty minutes away from the medical center and needed no extrication. People automaticly think trauma= helicopter. He didn't benefit at all from the helicopter and he got a $8000 bill for it. Dont get me wrong, you cant tell the extent of internal injuries on scene but my point here is the transport time. As far as the transport decision, that goes to the paramedic on scene unless its an obvious call. Thats all.

let me add that I like them a lot.

Empire state ambulance has three and their sister company on long island has a few.

My mom gave it to me when I was born.

I saw a NYC EMT with an expandable baton on his belt. Is that legal? Can a civilian legally use one for self defense? I though they required specific training to use.

An unnamed EMS Company that has had some problems lately pulls a huge %$@& you to its employees. This unnamed company decided to take advantage of its employees need to pay there bills by eliminating overtime pay. That might seem ok but this company needs to fill slots so they are paying a bunch of employees straight time for over time hours. Illegal yes (unless exempt), immoral yes, but this company doesn't care about their employees just on how their numbers look at the end of the week. Lets face it, in EMS we rely on overtime or working two jobs. These employees need to survive so they have no choice but to work on straight time. I cant beleive a company would take advantage of the people that work for them like this. I hope it comes back to bite them because this is a huge disgrace.

We carried them in the army. They are great and simple to use but they are messy to clean out once at the hospital. They solved that problem with the sponge that was mentioned in the other post. Other things we carried that worked well were Israeli dressings, asherman chest seals, and ratchet tourniquets. Israeli Dressing: http://www.ps-med.com/bandage/description_fcp01.html Asherman chest seal: http://www.firstrespondersupplies.com/acs.htm Ratchet tourniquet: http://www.chinookmed.com/index.cfm/fa/pro..._Tourniquet.cfm

Is EMS exempt? This is definitely not an misunderstanding.

Thanks!

I thought it was illegal too but I talked to someone that said as long as its not in a contract like a union they don't have to pay time and a half. If this is wrong someone please let me know.

Empires in bad shape right now, I wouldn't be surprised if they close there doors in the next 6 months.

My fire dept supplys chief cars to the three chiefs but all the past chiefs are allowed to have red lights/sirens on their personal cars.

NOOOOO!!!! Think about your practical test. What comes first? bsi and SCENE SAFETY. You'll never need it if you do your job right.

I only read the first page but I cant tell you one thing, EMS has always been the red headed step child of the emrgency services. Whether it be funding, pay, benifits, or recognition we always are in last place. To the public there are firemen, police officers, and "ambulance drivers". Nuff said.

The whole reason this system is so messed up is due to the fact that the county has to please the volunteer agencies. They don't want to step on their toes. If it was a sole 100% county run system I'm sure they would come up with something a lot better than whats going on now. As long as the volunteers refuse to let the county run ems the system isn't going to work right. It really is too bad that some agencies are doing a great job covering calls while others are slacking. In a perfect world the volunteers would get out for every call and all would be fine. I don't know what the answer is but this change has opened some doors and we'll see what happens when they look it over in the coming months. Personally I would like to see four flycars and a couple BLS rigs. I think that would work the best but we'll see what happens. As for response times, they've dropped about 6 min. since the change.

One way of looking at it to think of EMS as a medical service. Just like a doctors visit, ER visit, dentist, etc. All of which you pay by insurance. The taxes off set the money needed to keep things up and running; building costs, ambulances, maintnence, equiptment. The bill is for the service that was provided to the patient with a set cost depending on the treatment given. This helps keep the taxes low and it makes sense. You pay when you use the medical service, simple. thoughts?

So if a question is protested by someone and its changed does that changed answer effect just his test or everyones results?

What citys/towns have paid dept's?

Its printed on your results.

Thats crazy. I actually almost got run over by a firetruck today at the Westchester Medical Center. It blew through a stop sign at about 40 mph without slowing down. It was a little to close for me.

How can you guys share an opinion if you didn't even take the test. There was no way to study for the part everyone is upset about so you can't "shine" on test day.

yup

got it.

speechless.....