Next, They’ll Teach The Nurses Our Secret Handshake!

Recently, The Borg discontinued the use of 10-codes for internal radio communications. We had already been using plain English in all inter-agency communications, a federal requirement implemented post 9/11.

Predictably, we’ve got a few folks bitching, voicing (erroneous and ill-informed) concerns about HIPAA, as if every denizen of Scanner Land hasn’t already memorized all our 10-codes anyway. In reality, they’re upset that we don’t have our own secret squirrel language any more, and what good is being an EMT if you can’t speak in incomprehensible radio jargon?

For my part, I get a healthy giggle at the fumbling attempts to get used to the new system. Every time I hear someone say, “Ten-four…um, uh… I mean affirmative,” I get the irresistible urge to say “Roger, Roger. What’s our vector, Victor?”

What really saddens me is that now I can no longer torture a rookie dispatcher with a rapid-fire barrage of “We’re 10-98, 10-8, 10-19, 10-18 to the 10-81, 10-4? If not 10-2, we’ll 10-9.”

It just loses something when instead you have to say, “Dispatch, we have completed our last assignment and are available for call. We’ll be returning to our station as soon as possible, if that’s all right with you. If our transmission wasn’t understood clearly, we’ll be happy to repeat it.”

On the bright side, the next time I ask the tinny, static-distorted voice at the drive-through speaker to repeat herself, I won’t find ten #9 meals waiting for me when I pull up to the window…