EMS dogma

Inside EMS Podcast: Is There Such A Thing As Too Much ALS?

In this week’s episode of Inside EMS, co-host Chris Cebollero and I discuss his five-year plan to implement a mostly BLS system at his agency. While there is no “one size, fits all” solution to EMS system design and optimal staffing configurations, my opinion is that we do not have an EMS shortage in this country. We have too much. ...

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They’re Protocols, Not Suicide Pacts

Brandon Oto over at EMS Basics shares a story where monkey-see monkey-do medicine went wrong. Go read the whole thing, and then come back. If you learn nothing else in EMS, learn this: protocols are no substitute for common sense and clinical decision-making. In fact, they’re often the antithesis of critical thinking and clinical decision making. Protocols, with very few ...

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Is Experience Really Necessary for Paramedic School?

That’s this week’s clinical topic on the Inside EMS podcast. Co-host Chris Cebollero says street experience is the glue that binds all the disparate knowledge and skills together to make a competent paramedic. I’ve written about this before. Go read that, and come back. I say experience is one of the most overrated buzzwords in EMS. It’s arbitrary and random, ...

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For You EMS Types…

… there’s a new episode of Inside EMS. Chris Cebollero and I discuss what’s wrong with EMS continuing education, current EMS news, and paramedic and lawyer Wes Ogilvie dispels some of the legal dogma that persists in EMS education. Listen to the current episode here. 9 out of 10 people at the skateboard park rated our podcast as “totally bitchin’.” ...

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Two Physicians Speak Out on Diagnosis

Yesterday, during the final day of EMS Today 2014, I was on my way to the podcast lounge to find a comfortable seat while I edited some product videos I had taken on the exhibit hall floor.   Before I could sit down, Chris Montera dragooned me into being his third guest on EMS Garage. The other two guests were ...

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A Lawyer Speaks Out On Diagnosis

Earlier in the week, I bruised a few widdle feewings on Facebook when I replied in the affirmative to an EMS forum post asking if paramedics diagnose. Quite a few people agreed with me, and a number stubbornly disagreed, and called me everything from "paragod" to "full of myself" to "doctor wannabe" and assured me that I was putting myself ...

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Demystifying Diagnosis

Want to start a fight in an EMS social media forum? Just ask if EMTs diagnose. Invariably, you'll get hordes of people shitting their pants over a simple word, and twisting the English language into something unrecognizable in an effort to avoid calling something what it really is. General impression. Field diagnosis. Presumptive diagnosis. Field impression. We have an entire ...

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On Pissing Contests and Patient Advocacy

I follow a few EMS forums on various social media sites, but lately I've been commenting less frequently because the signal-to-noise ratio leaves me in despair of the future of our profession. I have to wade through far too many comments from adrenaline junkies, protocol monkeys, booger-eating cretins and fervent disciples of EMS mythology to find the comments of the ...

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