Sunday, November 15, 2009

I bet you a dollar...

Here goes folks. I've been having trouble finding the time, motivation, and to be perfectly honest, stories or topics that people want to read. This came to me last night while laying in bed, trying to get to sleep.

Last night, we witnessed the #CoEMS (www.chroniclesofems.com) Tweetup at Gordon Biersch in San Fran. We witnessed an EPIC arm-wrestle between Chris Kaiser (@ckemtp) and Mark Glencorse (@ukmedic999). I bet 25$ on Mark, to go to #CoEMS, to go on top of the 25$ I donated last week.

Suddenly (jokingly?), there was bets everywhere, for everything. I think at one point somebody put up 10$ to see Mark's bicep again, 10$ for @setla to undo one of somebody's shirt-buttons, and somebody offered another 50$ to see someone's shirt come off.

Regardless of the shenannigans and horsing around... Here's my challenge.

Are you a betting person? Challenge the other person you're betting with to put the money laid down towards supporting #CoEMS. They have a great agenda, and not much time and money to achieve it in. We're less than a week away from Justin (www.happymedic.com)'s trip overseas to join Mark Glencorse (www.999medic.com) for a week-long rideout with the NHS like Mark has been doing here with SFFD for the past week.

So off I go to paypal to honour last night's bet. I was willing to lose that 25$ regardless if Mark won the arm-wrestle or not... I might as well lose it to a good cause!

The paypal link on www.chroniclesofems.com is broken at the moment, but I think if you log in, and send the money via tsetla@mac.com, it should get to the right place.

EDIT: Just called Ted Setla, and he says until he fixes the button, which should be in the next hour or so, this will work just fine.

Don't forget to follow them on twitter: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23CoEMS
Don't forget to "fanpage" them on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/COEMS
Don't forget to keep supporting initiatives like this that are shaping up to be a HUGE positive for our industry.

It's time to re-shape minds, do what's best for our patients their families; A new generation of medics and new ideas are coming to EMS, and rather than ignore them until they're forgotten or lost in the chaos, we should pay attention to them and see if there's good to come of it at all. We can learn from those before us, and learn from those to come after us.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

It's hard to be the guy who wants to help everyone learn in class.

Let me try that again...

It's hard to be the guy who wants to help everyone learn in and out of class, especially when the teacher cracks jokes about you, and people don't show an extended interest in learning beyond class.

If you're in this for a career, you should be like a sponge. You should want to know EVERYTHING about everything you come across. Knowing "the minimum" isn't enough to get by. That's like taking the FR or EMR class, and not doing any A&P & Patho studying outside of class.

With resources like http://www.theeemtspot.com , http://paramedicine101.blogspot.com , and the various podcasts; MedicCast , EMS Garage , EMSLive , you should spend a certain time per week brushing up on your knowledge, or learning something new.

Medicine is always changing & expanding. Stay ahead of the game.

You should be eating/sleeping/breathing this stuff, so you can be the best possible advocate for your patient.

Monday, October 5, 2009

... our second week of mis-representation in the media.

In light of watching NBC's "Trauma" for the second week (thanks to http://channelsurfing.net/watch-nbc.html), we've decided to officially start listing the rules for the drinking game.

(disclaimer: I do not encourage or condone drinking to excess, yada yada yada. Know your limits and be smart about it, but this show doesn't do anything to help...)

Drinking Rules for NBC's "Trauma"
  • one-handed CPR
  • breaking protocol (medical)
  • breaking standard operating guidelines
  • any ethically questionable choice
  • unsafely driving ambulance or flying helicopter
  • sex anywhere where a dead person has been (ambulance, hospital bed, chopper, etc...)
  • entering when scene isn't safe (or failing to retreat when it becomes unsafe)
  • stethoscope backwards in the ears ("Nurse Jackie" is guilty of this too)
  • washing gloves... ???!!! (S01E02, just before Kid + Rabbit cutesy scene)
  • touching your face with gloves on (Rabbit, I'm looking at you! You put your finger in your mouth in S01E01)
  • stupid EMS games (darts with syringes?)
  • unprofessional talking down to a medic in the middle of an active scene
  • loss of control of C-spine (throwing the stretcher into the heli and watching the pt jump 6")
  • use the word "ambulance driver"
Who's with us next time? We may need an ambulance sooner rather than later, if NBC doesn't start listening to their consultants...

Friday, October 2, 2009

The past few days have been testing.

Let's start with a quick tip I just made up to help remember GCS (Motor). Eyes are easy. Spontaneous, Verbal, Pain, None. Motor seems to always stump me. Here's the tip:
"Spontaneous", "Pain In" (Localizes), "Pain out" (Withdraws), "Core in" (Decorticate), "Core out" (Decerebrate), "None" (None)

More tips to come later as I figgure them out!

It's been a rough week. I'm guilty of not updating, and writing down some of the things I wanted to blog about.

Good things? I got 97% on a test, was able to fire off some information that the teacher wasn't expecting to know. Bad things? Messed up a scenario pretty hardcore, Internet's cut off for a week, and didn't get the chance to run a scenario in yesterday's class.

Also, our "classroom ambulance" platform got approved. I will post photos as that project evolves.

Wednesday we got the opportunity to listen to 4 case studies presented by the graduating class. If you ever get the chance to sit in on case presentations, DO IT. If you're a class and the teacher is willing to let you do a project like this, do it. Learning about all of the lab values, etc... is a great way of stretching your Pathophysiology knowledge.

Short post for now, more will come later as I work out some topics to write about. Anything you'd like to see me write about? Feel free to comment below.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

... the temptation to write "FIRST!!!11!``1!" is overwhelming.

Hey all. A little history about me first;

I took 4 years of Theatre Production studies, and managed a theatre's (think; shakespeare, not hollywood) technical operations for 2 years. During these 6 years, I helped start a Campus EMS Squad at one of the few Canadian Universities left to have one. I moved my way up from not even having my CPR/First-Aid to being a First Responder (EFR/EMFR) through to being an Emergency Medical Responder (EMR) and even added a Symptom Relief Drug (SR-P) Certification to my knowledge. I've been doing standby medical coverage at events for most of this time, and a few on-call shifts here and there. Lots of fun, and always interesting, clues to understand & interpret to do my job (albeit volunteer) well.

Fast forward to the spring of 2009; I realised it was time for me to start laying down the bricks for a successful career, and I realised I needed to make a tough decision. Stick with theatre, or take my volunteer EMS experience to the next level. I decided to take a gamble, drop my entire life in Toronto, and make the move up north to a remote mining community where they have a small college with a good teacher to student ratio (8:1), and a reputation of good instructors.

This blog will try to share some of what I learn every day, and tell some of the entertaining stories along the way to me getting to my Career goals, as they come!

Excuse my writing at first... this is my first step back into having a blog in a long time. Ages ago, it was "livejournal", wordpress during my thesis and in a certain way, twitter and facebook have been used to document my life for a while.

I'd like to take a step back into that, and more than share my life, share the things that I've learned each day, so that maybe if you haven't come across something new in your day yet, you can learn something new here.

Sound good? Alright, let's go!