comical115

I'm sorry, but I have to ask... Are EMS jobs that hard to come by nowadays? I only ask because you are always starting topics asking about companies/agencies for employment.

I've been in the game long enough to look at a duck and know that it'll quack. Tanker 6 has a 2000gpm pump and I'd put money on it that it's got 1000+ feet of supply line. They've got 3 other class A pumpers as well. Add a quint to the mix and you're talking about 5 class A apparatus along with a heavy squad and a mini pumper....
THIS IS NOT A KFD rant, it just happens to be where I hopped on my soap box today... Look at the incident alerts on this website for northern Westchester... You see departments sending 1 and 1 mutual aid to another department and then requesting standby coverage in their own quarters while 4 or more front line apparatus sit idle... You can insert any number of northern Westchester departments into my rant including my own former department, Millwood. Chappaqua, Briarcliff, Armonk, Pleasantville, the Tri-Village gang, the list goes on and on where departments have 6 or more pieces of apparatus, often times redundant in their own department or certainly with their neighbors and they can never get more than a handful of it out the door at any given time. This is a waste of taxpayer money.

FDNY EMS, not be out done has their own subway communication system. Send the rookie back to the surface, find a pay phone, or ask transit to relay a message. Its a lovely system.

Watching Fox News and subscribing to the Tea Party Newsletter do not constitute legitimate "research."

My definition of a "problem" employee is a employee who is constantly late, calls in sick constantly with out documentation, constantly goes home sick or family emergency so they can go to parties, does not restock the ambulance, and is disrespectful to fellow employees, patients and family / bystanders.

Remember there are many activities that can be cited as adding wear and tear to apparatus and that are not actual fire responses. There are ems calls, public assistance calls, parades, school visits, going to the store, and training, only to mention a few.
The traditional reason we take our fire engines wherever we go is because we don't know when a run will come in.
I think a great part of the problem is not the fact that we are doing EMS runs, but that the EMS service is abused by the public. Somebody falls off a bike and what used to be "wash it out and put a band-aid on it" is now very possibly a run that involves a cervical collar, backboard and transport. This appears to me to be part the public's fault, part ours. Yes there are true ems runs that we should be going on, but we have to get a grip.
First thing might be to get the law changed so we can refuse to treat stupid miniscule things and not worry about the lawyers. OOPS! If we do that, then we won't be able to charge for ambulance calls because we didn't transport the patient. If we don't charge for enough ambulance calls, we won't have enough money to buy new fire engines and hire firemen. Why? Because unlike the fire engine who makes no money by going to fires, the EMS part of our business is often a money maker depending on what state you are in and what kind of ambulance service your city is running.
All I can say is

AFD does not stay in their own neighborhood, I have seen them all over the East Bronx, from top to bottom, in the South Bronx, and I have seen them up on the Hutch by the Westchester line, they just hop in their rig and ride around the Bronx, buffing jobs.
I heard from several people, that when AFD shut down after 9/11, it seems a couple of them banded together and formed the "Volunteer Bronx Fire Patrol". They would ride around and buff jobs in an privately registered SUV (not any volley rig, but a personal car)) that had flashing lights and cheap stickers marking it as the "Bronx Volunteer Fire Patrol". I encountered two of them at a vehicle accident, maybe five years ago or so- ( I am NYPD and was operating at the accident) and, never having heard of the "Bronx Fire Patrol" ( I am also a former member of the New York Fire Patrol,) so l wondered who they were. They got out of the rig, and without asking the NYPD or FDNY what was happening, they just started directing traffic. The did this without asking NYPD or FDNY, or even telling us so that we might coordinate efforts. I asked them a couple of simple questions, like "who are you guys-who sent you here? and I received no satifactory answer, other than ...."Uhh"..."who" "what"...."daba daba"... and related comments. I went over to a Battalion aide and asked if he knew who they were, he said he had seen them at jobs before, but did not know who they were. With that, it seemed that as soon as I turned my back, they hopped into their SUV and left the scene before I could ask any more questions.. I said to myself that the next time I saw them, I would make it so that they would receive many summones (or arrest) and impound the car. I was transferred shortly after that to another assignment that took me out of the area, I regret not taking the time out that day to go track down the SUV and put it on paper.

And the Director of Homeland Security does not oversee EMS. The county ran at least 12 mass decon classes for the volunteer Fire & EMS agencies. Very good turnout from volunteer fire. Actually everyone was shocked at how good the turnout was. The VAC's were a no-show. They were called....no response. They were offered training at their buildings for there schedule (day, evening, weekend)...no response, so they were never trained in mass decon.
Good thing we are "key" in a terror attack.
Anyone know how many taxpayers commute to NYS each day, that in an attack might be coming back contaminated?
How many are volunteers in Westchester, is another interesting question.

At least EMD gives the responding EMS units a semblance of an idea of what they are responding to. While it, like everything else in life, is not 100% i like knowing I'm going to a seizure/cardiac/chest pain/etc as oppose to a PD dispatched "transport" or "aided case." Additionally, it can help keep often scarce resources - i.e. the medics - off some of the nonsense....if the system allows for that.
Thats why i always liked the FDNY EMS MDT system...seemed to give the units a nice chunk of info regarding call nature, act as a reference so no one needs to 10-5 the address or apartment #, and keeps radio traffic to a minimum. Oh well!

Sorry, M, they are NYPD. Civilian employees of NYPD.
FDNY Dispatching is a little different now, but that is because of UCT. That's the program where NYPD Calltakers are handling Fire Calls. They take the call, get the information, and enter it into the CAD. The CAD link sends it to us, and we act on it with the mostly half cocked information we get. The NYPD UCT then conference calls the caller into us, and the FDNY Alarm Receipt Dispatcher then re-interrogates the caller. This is where we find out where most of the errors are. The NYPD calltakers are not trained in EMD. When an EMS run comes in, they conference to EMS and the EMS folks triage the call, etc.
Please understand, that even though we are all on the same floor at 11MT, the command structure is separate. PD has their own chain of command, from the Platoon commander, to Principal Police Communications Technicians, to the Supervisors, to the Dispatcher/Operators. In my Chain, we have one Chief Dispatcher(Civilian) on duty 24/7, then 3-5 Supervising Dispatchers, (1 for each borough and 1 or 2 surplus), then 17 Dispatchers total in the three boroughs. As far as EMS goes, there is at least one Captain on duty, with three or four Lieutenants, and then however many dispatchers they have working.
Now, I'm not sure what kind of standards you're talking about. If you mean APCO, and all those national standards, forget it. Come on, this is New York City, where things are done our way. The job doesn't want to pay us overtime as it is, much less bring someone in to get us certified. They actually gave an award to one of my big bosses at Metrotech for controlling the overtime(meaning cutting it). And discovering Dispatch Anamolies, as they put it. You know that means detecting our screw ups and writing people up for it.

Technically, the call-takers are not NYPD. They're independent of any agency, but in reality they fall under NYPD's umbrella. They answer the call and begin to take your information. Once it becomes apparent who the neccesary agency is, a dispatcher from that agency is conferenced in. To the best of my knowledge, the call-takers are not EMD. From the looks of the information they input, they don't even have a GED. Sorry, but it's pretty bad.
This system hasn't helped a thing except the bottom line, which we all know is the only important line to this mayor. Response times are in fact UP! The clock still starts when FDNY is given the call, but now all of the address and emergency information has been retrieved before the clock started. The clock should start when the phone is answered, but it's not. UCT time is not factored into overall response time.
This is a lesson in how to achieve what you want without actually doing it. The anwser? Just change the rules to suit your needs.

So many stories...
The NYPDTransit Bureau radio network is notorious for dead spots and malfunctions. One night Central was having a real trouble hearing units in the field, and asked a unit to repeat their transmission several times. Finally someone got on the radio and announced, "Central, change your location and try again."
I think almost every NYPD division has or had a Chewbacca on it. "Chewie, on the air?"
One morning a sector was trying reach Central, and either the dispatcher didn't hear it or had stepped away from the console, someone played the Verizon telephone operator over the radio. "I'm sorry the number you have called is not in service at this time. Please hang up and try your call again."
I got central one morning. I had arrested someone for laying down in the transit system with an open warrant. I put over 'central show me with a 10 -12 times 1 (arrest) at Dyckman St."
The dispatcher responded with "Unit, what is the 12 for?"
Me, "Felonious Mopery"
Another unit chimed in "Aggravated Mopery"
Me" Yup, he's pretty aggravated about it"
Central, " very good, aggravated felonious mopery at Dykman, can I get a unit for transport?"

It hides the fact that you don't have proper staffing to get an engine out the door in the first place...

It hides the fact that you don't have proper staffing to get an engine out the door in the first place...

It hides the fact that you don't have proper staffing to get an engine out the door in the first place...

It hides the fact that you don't have proper staffing to get an engine out the door in the first place...

I can assure that on my rig, quality patient care is paramount. I offer the services of my hospital but always with the disclaimer that they are my employeer. I always try and do what is best for my patient. The attitude that voluntary units are only interested in insurance information and brining "home" paying patients is a slap in the face of hard working medics and EMT's who are doing their job. It has always driven a wedge between services in the NYC EMS community, and we wonder why they don't take us seriously.

I thought the crew cabs were ordered so that crews could recline a bit more when 89?

Avoiding duplicates on the same dispatch frequency is hard enough. Across different frequencies, we might as well be different agencies. By listening to PD and self dispatching you guys will be better informed and more efficient than becoming another cog in the machine.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to see locations like Central Park and Grand Central, with their own first responders, integrate into the system and utilize their knowledge of the area. Dual dispatch the local resource and EMS. Once "on scene" or at least close we could then contact the local unit on a point to point tac channel and get an actual location, best access, pt status, etc. The people that are paid to make that happen do not share the same views as me.

Municipal Units = FDNY EMS. Voluntary Units = Hospital based units that are dispatched and treated like a municipal unit. The hospital based units now run an even amount of BLS and ALS units. On the ALS side of things the municipal units and the voluntary units carry slightly different medications (controlled substances, cyanide/smoke inhalation antidote kits) and other tools (CPAP).
Being a paid provider in the NYC system, I have never had a bad experience with a volunteer unit. I have a lof of experience with Central Park Medical Unit, 90% of the time they are on the scene first and they always provide high quality patient care. Its too bad the powers at be don't see the resource that they have at their disposal.

Believe me, I am all for people not calling the PD, Fire, or AMB of nonsense calls. I may even suggest at times that a PT be transported by a family memeber. But people understand and often say, "Won't we get seen faster if we go by ambulance?" I advise them that this is not always the case!
There are very few excuses I will except for a delay, especially when I am on scene trying to deal with a Patient or the Patient's family! There are some good VAC's out there that have their stuff together and then there are some that should just be absorbed by other Agencies!

Sending 33% of your available ALS resources to a soccer game for a broken ankle is a waste of resources. The BLS level of the system has to operate effectively and efficiently too.

Good BLS is great, but the real problem is that the we are often the only reliable part of the EMS system in many of the areas. Given that, we tend to show up before a BLS truck gets on the road...thus the we get stuck holding BLS jobs down until a bus arrives, obtaining BLS RMAs, etc. You want to free up the medics, start getting those ambulances on the road in a timely fashion (before anyone has a stroke, I'm speaking generally!).
I guess my point is, we are really required on 100% of the calls 99% of the time because otherwise there would be no one else....

If BLS was faster and more reliable triaged dispatching would be more viable and free up the medics from many of the BLS calls they're sent on. However when you can't guarantee a timely response from BLS the risk of a incorrectly triaged call resulting in serious harm or death is too much.

I am the same way and thought the same as you until I started using the system my agency deployed. Basically it allows me to document much in the same manner as I did on paper and with much lest angst and I have prompts to list what I would write. It also has allowed us to get statistical information that has proven very valuable for budgeting, personnel staffing needs, response times, tracking equipment/medication usage etc. I utilize 2 different devices depending on which unit I'm on. The toughbook is my favorite as its a lap top and knowing how to type I fly through charts. The other is a tablet which many of us have asked for the blue tooth keypad for the same reason. Once you get used to it..its fast and you realize when you look over your completed charts...you've input the same info you would have written and depending on which software you use have plenty of places to do your own input on your assessment, findings, pertinent negatives etc. If your agency does little call volume..then maybe its a waste of time..but the uses we've come to use and get used to have been phenomenal on top of the time savings of QA/QI.
As far as having a narrative spread across 8 pages...again it keeps it orderly and not much different if you document head to toe. This just does it in a different order you have to get used to. The biggest thing is standardizing your charts for those things that don't fit neatly into the program so everyone is on the same page. I also highly recommend using software that you can change and/or add the things that are unique for you agency/area. Some don't allow that but it makes things a lot better and easier for those who are resistant to it to make them comfortable.