Helicopter EMS

From Rogue Medic, in the comments to this post: We call them for the ridiculous calls, just as people call us because they want a free ride to the hospital for a prescription refill.  We are the system abusers of helicopter EMS. Word.  

A study recently published in JAMA has been making the rounds in the EMS forums and blogosphere, purporting to prove that a certain subset of trauma patients transported by helicopter has a higher survival rate than comparable patients transported by ground EMS. First I'd like to point out that, whenever you read a study, it's also wise to consider the ...

Now there's a movement I could get behind!           * Not an actual movement. Photo posed for humorous purposes only. Don't get excited, Dr. Bledsoe. 😉

It's really not that hard. You just use some common sense, which apparently isn't all that common among ground EMS providers. Scaredy Fish gives some eminently reasonable recommendations.

A Cleveland, TX man is airlifted to Memorial Hermann Medical Center in Houston after an encounter with a feral housecat: At some point during the attack, the man and the cat reportedly were injured by a knife the man was holding. The man was taken to Cleveland Regional Medical Center before being transported to Houston. Thus disproving the theory that ...

For the love of all that is holy, one of my Nashville readers please tell me that Tuesday night traffic around Bridgestone Arena is just one big parking lot, and that a ground ambulance would have taken, like, a half hour to make the trip.

Lest you get the impression from my last post (and many others), that I am against helicopter EMS, I assure you that is not the case. What I am against is the culture of “fly ’em all, let the trauma center sort ’em out,” that has made EMS helicopter flight crew the most dangerous profession in the United States. A ...

… and we spar regularly over politics and religion. But when my buddy Mule Breath weighs in with an opinion on EMS issues, I always listen carefully because he is one of the most sensible medics I know. Anyone else find it curious that three helicopters were dispatched to transport patients to a trauma center less than 8 miles away? ...

Godspeed to Gayla Gregory, Kenneth Robertson, and Kenneth Myer, Jr. Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds…and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of…wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there, I’ve chased the ...

U.S. Department of Transportation fines Mercy Flight of Oregon $30,000 for referring to a helicopter technically owned by another company as “our” helicopter. They can fine a company for using a pronoun inappropriately, yet they can’t mandate that the helicopter EMS industry impose stricter flight safety standards? How effed up is that? Because, you know, it’s not like the helicopter ...

My partner is a constant source of amusement, every shift. The kid is quite possibly the sparkiest EMT ever. And if I could teach him to engage his internal censor when the calls turn out to be less than the fun and excitement he envisioned, he’d be just about perfect. Tonight, Kelso got the sort of shift he has always ...

A great many ground EMS crews are infected with advanced rotoriasis, but the problem is not limited to the EMS profession. Quite a few rural ER docs are ate up with it, too.