In the beginning, our ancestors were ambulance drivers. They would load and go with no skills, except maybe for one: drive fast to deliver the precious cargo at the hospital as quickly as you can. Later the job started to be regulated, the schools accredited, and more skilled providers were on the streets. For reasons that I do not know, different levels were created, from EMT-B to Paramedic, and many more came later. I imagine that more are yet come. … Read More
We live in a world where we are bound by social rules. These rules evolved through years and now, we may find some obsolete, absurd or even inhumane. Rules like women being unable to vote, slavery, child exploitation, etc., are examples of the rules we left behind; some of these rules were in writing while some were unwritten rules; and these are the most difficult to erase from society. There is a generation that was educated with the premise that … Read More
Someone said: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance”. I belong to an E.M.S. generation that lived in a time of evolution and change, and if you started your career about 20 years ago or so, you do too. We moved from disc phones to mobile phones, polaroids and film cameras to digital, paper pictures to jpg. We also saw changes in E.M.S., devices came, and devices went; protocols changed, and new ones were created while others were buried … Read More
Saskatchewan has 651,900 square kilometres with a population, in 2017, of 1,174,000 people; Half of the population is almost evenly distributed between Regina and Saskatoon, the rest of it is spread in roughly 435,000 square kilometres (1); this area is covered by 105 ground ambulance services, air ambulance and STARS. According to Statistics Canada, The term “urban” was used intuitively for a concentration of population at high density or a population of at least 1,000 and a density of 400 … Read More
In my 20+ years in EMS, I’ve had the fortune of working on all types of settings, urban, rural, remote, sports, industrial and even on a motorcycle, days, nights or mixed shifts; this allowed me to experience the different challenges in every one of them. Even though Mexico City is 100% an urban setting, the traffic during rush hours, anytime between 0600 and 2100 hours, will make your response times as long as any rural settings; in the same way, … Read More
We have all been taught one way of doing things, and a few years later, we are told there is an update in the protocol and that things are now done differently. It is part of being a paramedic, and it is part of our responsibility to continue learning.Paramedicine is a science that has been evolving over the last decades to help guarantee that our patients have the best care and the best possibilities of surviving with a good quality … Read More
