Emergency Medical Services (EMS) professionals are the unsung heroes of our communities, providing crucial lifesaving care during some of life's most critical moments. From paramedics to emergency medical technicians (EMTs), these dedicated individuals work tirelessly to ensure that patients receive the best care possible, often in high-stress and life-threatening situations. However, despite the vital role they [...]
The term “Special Healthcare Needs” means different things to different people. Collectively, patients with special healthcare needs encompasses the geriatric, bariatric, pediatric, sensory impaired, technologically dependent patients, behaviorally challenged patients and many others. Every group has special challenges, risk factors and needs as well as the fact that our approach to them as health care providers [...]
Morphine, Dilaudid, Fentanyl… these are medications that we have been giving our patients for years, to treat their pain. Chest pain, give an opioid. Broken bone, give an opioid. Abdominal pain, give an opioid. Back pain, give an opioid. For many years, these were our only pain medication options in an ambulance. That is finally starting [...]
In the medical profession, it is not unthinkable that we might have to triage people during a mass casualty incident, or MCI. From multi-vehicle car crashes, mass shootings, terroristic attacks, and even weather-related incidents, such as tornados, earthquakes, or hurricanes. Within just a matter of moments, we can easily become overwhelmed by patients, all begging for [...]
The body’s Nervous System is a very complex system that controls all functions of the body from purposeful movement to regulation of homeostasis and everything in between. We will be dividing it into the Central nervous System (CNS) and the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS) for the purposes of this discussion. These two subdivisions [...]
Updating the stroke assessment Direct percutaneous puncture of the cervical carotid artery remained the primary technique unto the 1960s to visualize intracranial blood vessels until Seldinger’s technique was introduced in 1953. This was a diagnostic procedure after the stroke or TIA (Varon, Varon, & Nyman, 2007) I was employed as a Radiologic Technologist (X-ray tech) in [...]
Are you pulling my leg? -femur fractures The Thomas splint was first introduced by Hugh Owen Thomas in 1875, in his book titled, Diseases of the hip, knee and ankle joints with their deformities, treated by a new and efficient method. Across the western front, the splint was adopted and by 1917, it had become standard issue [...]
The human renal system is responsible for not only filtering blood of impurities, it is also responsible for maintaining the acid base balance within very tight tolerances and discarding toxins and by products of cellular metabolism via urine. It consists not only of the kidneys but also the ureters, urinary bladder and the urethra. The nephron [...]
As temperatures rise, heat-related emergencies become a significant concern for emergency medical service (EMS) providers. While most people associate heat-related incidents with dehydration or heatstroke, respiratory emergencies induced by heat exposure are often overlooked. I would like to shed light on the topic of heat-related respiratory emergencies, providing EMS providers with essential knowledge and strategies to [...]
Veins, Drains, and Brains (nothing rhymes with automobiles except glockenspiels) We’re familiar with IVs and ETs but there are a variety of tubes going into or out of patients. Veins A central venous catheter, (Braner, Lai, Eman, & Tegtmeyer, 2007)is usually placed via the right subclavian vein by a physician is advanced into the superior vena [...]
