EMS

Recently I've come across several well written blogs from people in the Emergency Medical Service business: ambulance drivers, medics, nurses & cops. It's nice change of pace from the gun-nut blogs I have been reading. While some of the gun nuts are intelligent and write well, I inevitable come across some ranting and raving about some idiot liberal. Sometimes these rants are well founded, but sometimes it's just plain rabid foaming. The later put me off because they aren't really telling me anything except that the writer has gone 'round the bend.

EMS, and modern medicine in general, makes me wonder about things, especially since there is all this hullabulloo about the cost of medical treatment. Let's just take EMS for starters. I wonder what percentage of their calls are really valid medical emergencies. How many are just to pick up drunks who've passed out in the street? How much treatment is done just to keep the lawyers happy? Does anybody keep track of this stuff?

On the other hand, if real emergencies are few and far between, then the medics may not get to practice their craft very often, which means when they actually do get called on, they may be a bit rusty and not quite as sharp as they could be. The military ran into the same thing with pilots not too long ago. If you want your fighter pilots to be sharp, they need to be putting in some time in the cockpit. You cannot just give someone some specialized training and then put them on the shelf until you need it. They need to be practicing their craft, whatever it is. So maybe all the bogus calls, the ones where they aren't really needed, also serve because it gives the EMS people some practice.

Someone who has become proficient at a craft over a period of years may be able to put it aside for a while and then pick it up again without too much delay, but until that muscle memory kicks in, they are going to be a bit rusty.

One more thing, just because we started on EMS. What is the proper protocol on busy freeways when you see flashing red lights approaching from the rear? I ran into this situation a couple of weeks ago, and it seemed to me that all the people who were attempting to pull all the way off the road onto the shoulder were causing more of a jam than if everyone would have just kept driving like normal. I don't think the ambulance gained anything. The freeway had just two lanes in either direction. I pulled over to the right hand lane and slowed down. In retrospect, I think we would have all been better off if I had just kept going in the same lane and at the same speed.