Published in EMR. Tags: injury prevention, workforce health and wellness.
Being healthy to begin with makes injury prevention a little easier. EMS providers who get enough sleep, eat nutritious food, keep their immunizations up to date and engage in some fitness regimen have an advantage over those that do not. Maintaining one’s health is universally recommended. The EMS provider often works multiple jobs, has sleep […]
Published in AEMT, EMR, EMT. Tags: death and dying, workforce health and wellness.
EMS personnel are routinely confronted with no win situations. Despite the expectation that EMS can bring anybody back from the dead or at least prevent the inevitable in the nearly dead, medics eventually understand that not everyone will make it. Feelings of invincibility and invulnerability will likely fade away after an EMS crew member has […]
Published in EMR. Tags: stress, workforce health and wellness.
EMS personnel sometimes find themselves in dangerous situations. Sometimes the EMS provider sees things that may have a emotional or psychological effect at a later time. EMS personnel are often confronted with critically ill or injured patients as well as the dead and dying. Sometimes the EMS crew opens the door of a house and […]
Published in EMR. Tags: bleeding, ems operations, infection control, infectious disease, patient assessment, workforce health and wellness.
As the EMS crew nears the patient, the likelihood of contracting a contagious disease increases with each step. Proximity(ft) Observation Appropriate PPE 10 Cough Wear mask, goggles, gloves 5 Liquids Wear gloves 5 Odor Wear gloves 1 Story Suspicious story? Wear everything 1 Elevated Temp Wear everything The key to minimizing infection is to maintain […]
Published in AEMT, EMR, EMT. Tags: infection control, personal protective equipment, workforce health and wellness.
Micro-organisms and their activities are vitally important to virtually all processes on Earth. Micro-organisms matter because they affect every aspect of our lives – they are in us, on us and around us. Microbiology is the study of all living organisms that are too small to be visible with the naked eye. This includes bacteria, […]
Published in AEMT, EMR, EMT. Tags: personal protective equipment, ppe, workforce health and wellness.
Standard precautions work under the assumption of that all patients have a contagious disease. There is no way to know if a patient has a contagious disease, therefore using standard precautions for all patients is a key skill to possess in the prehospital environment. Understanding the threat and possessing situational awareness will ensure the EMS […]
Published in AEMT, EMR, EMT. Tags: standard safety precautions, workforce health and wellness.
Prior to working in healthcare, or even training to work in healthcare, a physical examination is usually performed to determine a baseline health status. Immunizations are assessed to be current. The following are examples of healthcare immunizations that are screened in pre-training and pre-employment screening: Tetanus Hepatitis B (MMR)Measles/mumps/rubella (German Measles) Chicken pox (varicella) Influenza […]
Published in AEMT, EMT. Tags: RESEARCH.
Traditional medical practice is based on medical knowledge, intuition (the ability to understand something completely without the need to think about it), and judgment (the ability to make considered decisions or come to sensible conclusions). High quality patient care should focus on procedures that have been proven useful in improving patient outcomes. Emergency Medical Services […]
Published in AEMT, EMR, EMT. Tags: RESEARCH.
Before 1800, medicine was completely different than it is today. In those days, it wasn’t uncommon to treat a patient with cancer or an infection by cutting the patient and allowing the patient to ‘bleed out the infection’. The barbaric act was a practice that was thousands of years old and finally died out by […]
Published in AEMT. Tags: EMS SYSTEMS, patient safety, preventing errors.
The best way to prevent errors is to understand that errors often result in a poor outcome or even death of the patient. Humans make mistakes by nature, however with the right amount of emphasis on the problem, errors can be reduced drastically. Often times errors are made simply because the EMS crew are working […]