After spending the last week working at the fire department, I spent the last two days at home with my family doing some yard work and landscaping. The weather was great and could not have asked for better days. My son, who is 18 months, is so much fun, he loves being outside and has started looking for birds!
Over the past few years the second leading cause of firefighter deaths continues to be apparatus crashes. I receive texts on a daily basis of firefighter news stories and the last couple days there were more apparatus crashes. One of them was in Illinois. As I look back over my fire and EMS career, both volunteer and paid, I remember myself being careless while responding to emergencies. I have never been involved in an apparatus crash while driving but have been as a passenger. Emergency responders tend to get excited and want to get to the scene as fast as they can. They want to be the first one there, got to be on the attack line making entry into the house that is on fire. All of these reasons are ones that I personally experienced. Responders tend to have tunnel vision and only think about getting there. We all need to be more cautious, we need to slow down, follow traffic laws and arrive safely. If you look online at any of the stories on apparatus crashes you will find that the main cause is speed. If you take into play the way the newer houses are built, we should not be making entry by the time we get on scene. The construction just does not hold up like it used to in the old days. So there is no need to drive crazy, slow down, the fire will still be there when you get there. How much time do we honestly save by driving fast and carelessly? If we drive careless while responding to emergencies we are not able to provide our services to those in need. I strongly encourage each and every one of you to slow down, make it to the scene safe and help those who call us.

It is Sunday and is the start of a busy week for me. Overtime and overtime!! That is the word of the week!!! I am now on twitter, follow me in my daily adventures!!! www.twitter.com/darinkeith

Keep posted for updates on here, I am working on a great post and hope that it will get some comments from all of you!

Take care and stay safe this week!!

Darin

Yes another post! (2 in one week!)

Well, I have a few minutes so i decided to post on here.

The last post I talked about all the new "toys" in EMS. Well, I was working my part time job the other day and responded to a person having trouble breathing. As most of you know, this sounds like a routing diff. breathing call. So my partner and I make our way to the apartment that called 911. When we entered the room there was this person laying there working so hard to breath! This person was in pretty bad shape as he was BLUE!!! I kid you not, really blue! We looked at each other and in my head I said some choice words! We quickly moved him to the cot and out to the rig. The whole time all I could think was this is not good! So I pulled out the handy dandy C-PAP. I have only used this a couple times since it was placed in the rigs and have not had the best results. Others talk about how well it works and usually turns the patients right around. So I placed this on the patient and by the time we got to the hospital he was not quite so blue. Guess it worked.

Had we not had this new tool we probably would have had to assist this patient with the bvm and probably would of had to intubate the patient.

Today I received my confirmation that I am registered to take my National Paramedic Practical test on May 30th. I am not really looking forward to this but dont have much of a choice as my employer is making us become National Certified. Wish me luck!

Ok, so it has been a few months since I last posted on here. I promise you that I will start posting more often..... My goal is going to be weekly to start and then maybe even more than that.

Since the last time I posted on here a lot has happened in this world. Santa Clause visited our houses, we all celebrated the new year, some more than others, We voted a new President in. The funny thing with elections is that no matter who is elected no one is happy! I will admit that I did not utlize my right to vote. Had I voted I would have voted for Obama. Enough about that subject.
I traveled to Apache Junction AZ the first week in January. I was there to assess their fire department to see if we felt they met the requirments for Accredited status. This was a great visit as we did recommend them for Re-accreditation. I was very impressed with the dept and even stated that if I was looking for a job I would go there! Then in March I traveled to Orlando FL for an Accreditation Conference. Had a great time, learned a lot. As you can tell I am really enjoying the whole accrediation stuff, not only for our dept but also as a PEER Assessor and member of a technical working group for the Commision on Fire Accreditation International.

Well, enough about what I have been doing over the past months, time to get down to it.....

Each year someone comes up with a new piece of equipment that is better than the last. I have been in EMS for over 15 years now and still see something that I think, "we have to have that!" The bad part is that we have all these great "tools" but where do we put them? I do agree some of these newer tools are better than previous ones and replacing them is great but someone thinks that we have to have a back up incase the new one fails. Here is where I start to have a problem.... For example... the King LT airways, great airways that work. Most are replacing the Combi tube with these. But some think that you need to continue caring the combi tube as a back up! My question for them then is what is the back up for the combi tube? Tell me what you think? Soon we will have to carry in more bags than we do now to get the tools we may need by the patient.