Saturation

So haven't written in a while again. I really have to get on the ball around here. Any way I am going to try to do better. Here it is. The situation in the ER's is rediculous! I work for the City and we only answer 911 E M E R G E N C Y calls and when we go to the E M E R G E N C Y rooms...... (well one in particular) we have to wait with our patient on the stretcher and when I say wait...I mean wait! And wait and wait and wait! For hours sometimes. I have waited with a patient on my stretcher for up to 4 hours before they were placed in an emergency room bed. Any how they have this term called "ER saturation" and when the ER is on saturation that means they are full with no beds which means we are going to have a very long wait. So anyway we were pulling into the ER with a patient yesterday.......this is the first time I have seen her but obviously she has gone by ambulance many times and I'll tell you what tipped me off. When we were pulling into the ER she said "I hope they're not on saturation." All I could do was shake my head. No one other than Emergency workers should know that term for the emergency room and if you do know it THEN YOU ARE USING THE FREAKING AMBULANCE TOO MUCH!!!!!

So we took a patient to the ER last night. She was having an asthma attack and we are rolling her in on the stretcher with an IV and on oxygen and a breathing treatment going. She was in obvious respiratory distress and the clerk asks me what the problem is and  I couldn't help it.....really. I said "difficlty breathing........hence the oxygen. Lol.

Today I woke up at the station with a massive headache!! WTH (heck)? Any way didn't get much sleep last night due to a couple of calls with identical problems...except I suspect one of them smoked pot prior to his breathing problem (the whites of his eyes were blood red and well....he was in an area that is known for pot heads). I guess you could call that guilt by proximity. Contrary to popular belief around here Marijuana does not help with respiratory distress. On the plus side (I'm sort of changing the subject here) I found out why I got knocked back when I opened up the nozzle at the fire we had last shift......The dummy pumping the firetruck had the pressure set at 200psi not 110psi. I got chewed out by the Lt. at the time because I was having such a hard time holding the hose. You know....I didn't sign up for that job umpteen years ago anyway. So :p! All right, enough yammering for now.

.......So this is my first post for this blog. I have blogged before but it became too time consuming so I deleted the whole thing. I didn't blog about work though but this time I will blog about work and other things but probably mostly about work. My chosen profession is Paramedic but the fire and EMS departments had to merge in my city so they wouldn't have to pay EMS workers overtime. Any how all of the EMT's and Paramedics in my department had to cross train to become firefighters and here's the kicker.....all firefighters did not even have to be EMT's. They grandfathered all of the firefighters in and gave them the option to go to EMT school. Ain't that some CRAP??? More later.