Veteran Working as Paramedic Creates Special Bond with Military Families
SAN ANTONIO — A veteran serving as a paramedic in San Antonio says his skill set and ability to connect with other military members has been an asset in the city's Mobile Integrated Healthcare program.
One of the families enrolled in the program says the bond has been special.
Read more at KENS-TV. (Source: JEMS Special Topics)
Source: JEMS Special Topics - August 30, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Leah Durain (KENS-TV) Tags: News News Videos Mobile Integrated Healthcare Source Type: news
Using the Skills of an Epidemiologist for EMS
Conclusion
Overall, an epidemiologist has experience and skills that can encompass the entire process of gathering data to getting it in the hands of others in an easy to digest way for actionable change.
The information and data you collect from a patient goes beyond the patient themselves and can be utilized for improving other patient care and establishing or changing protocols. Make a bigger impact within your organization and community by bringing in another team player: the epidemiologist. (Source: JEMS Special Topics)
Source: JEMS Special Topics - August 24, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Morgan K. Anderson, MPH Tags: Exclusive Articles Operations Source Type: news
Leading Transformations: Lessons Learned from Academic Medical Center CEOs
Conclusion
The imperatives and lessons discussed in this article are timely in our EMS profession and can be viewed by EMS leaders as a toolkit for proactive change.
As a profession, we’ve had the advantage of acting as spectators in the evolving healthcare environment. For EMS leaders, this should create a clearer view of our future and the need to proactively apply true quality improvement processes in our operations with developed benchmarks that can be applied across the industry and utilized in a value-based system.
Utilizing the imperatives presented as well as applying the lessons learned should be viewed as an op...
Source: JEMS Special Topics - August 22, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: William J. Leggio, EdD, NRP Tags: Exclusive Articles Administration and Leadership Source Type: news
New Device Allows for Real-Time In-Home Patient Monitoring and is FDA Cleared
SAN JOSE, Calif., Aug. 15, 2018 -- VitalConnect, Inc., a leader in wearable biosensor technology for wireless monitoring, today announced the launch of VistaTabletTM, which ushers in the next-generation of its Vista SolutionTMplatform for real-time patient monitoring. VitalConnect is the leading digital health patient monitoring company with U.S. FDA clearance for both hospital and in-home solutions. The mobile interface of the VistaTablet offers healthcare providers and patients unprecedented access to vital sign data continuously acquired by the VitalPatch® wearable biosensor regardless of patient ...
Source: JEMS Special Topics - August 22, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: VitalConnect Tags: News Press Releases Mobile Integrated Healthcare Source Type: news
Using the Rapid Emergency Medicine Score to Zero in on EMS Quality
Conclusion
Should REMS become an EMS standard? The potential applications of the score exist across the clinical, operational, and financial arenas of providing prehospital care. JFK currently uses REMS to assist in the validation of shutting off warning devices en route to the hospital, showing which patients gain no benefit through this added risk, and for which patients a few minutes may truly matter.
The ability to provide bundles of care with empirical evidence of efficacy allows the leadership team to focus clinical efforts on improving the less-effective bundles as well as identifying providers in need of added trai...
Source: JEMS Special Topics - August 21, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: James 'Jamie' Chebra, EMT-P, CEM, MS, DHAc Tags: Exclusive Articles Documentation & Patient Care Reporting Source Type: news
The Icy Truth: The World of Resuscitation is NOT Flat
For those looking for a better way to preserve the brain and vital organs in the future, an article released recently about work by scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital may give us a peek at a future tool in our resuscitation toolbox.
It’s a process that might prove valuable if used in conjunction with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), impedance threshold devices (ITDs) and head-up CPR to keep people in a suspended state of animation until their malady is found, corrected and allowed to begin healing.
Massachusetts General is the original and largest teaching hospital at Harvard Medical School. Their wo...
Source: JEMS Special Topics - August 20, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: A.J. Heightman, MPA, EMT-P Tags: Exclusive Articles Cardiac & Resuscitation Source Type: news
Expanding Glucagon Access and Use in the Prehospital Setting
In cases of severe hypoglycemia, an intramuscular injection of glucagon remains the preferred method of treatment.1 Unfortunately, in many states regulatory polices prevent EMT-Basics from being able to administer or carry glucagon, which makes treating such patients experiencing severe hypoglycemia with loss of consciousness far more complicated and slower than necessary.
In addition to the unavailability of glucagon, many EMTs aren’t permitted to perform blood glucose testing (i.e., fingersticks), which makes the identification and treatment of hypoglycemia even more challenging. Severe hypoglycemic events result...
Source: JEMS Special Topics - August 17, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Peter Kahn, MD, MPH, NREMT Tags: Exclusive Articles Patient Care Source Type: news
Building the Simbulance
(Source: JEMS Special Topics)
Source: JEMS Special Topics - August 16, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Training Exclusive Articles Slideshow Source Type: news
Building the 'Simbulance': An Ambulance Simulator
Conclusion
We created a low-resource, ongoing benefit with our Simbulance. The open house was successful for the program in terms of publicity, which led to securing funding from Vassar College to purchase a new stretcher. The publicity also led the EMT program CIC at Marist College to express a desire to come use the Simbulance, since they have the same limitations within their program.
One of our important goals as educators should be to provide our students with the best tools before they go out into a possibly dangerous and hostile environment. The best way to accomplish this is to expose them to as many levels of Bloo...
Source: JEMS Special Topics - August 15, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Kelly Kohler, MS, CHSE, NCEE, EMT-P Tags: Training Exclusive Articles Source Type: news
Looking Past Dementia Reveals Hidden Life Threats
Conclusion
Acute delirium is commonly underdiagnosed, and can be masked by chronic alterations in cognition and mentation. Delirium has many causes, and can be assessed using the acronym DELIRIUM. The most common presentations suggesting delirium over dementia are short-term memory loss, rapid fluctuation in condition, acute alteration, and a condition present that may be responsible for delirium.
Management includes searching for causes of acute alteration in mental status, negating environmental factors of delirium, and—only when necessary—reducing the patient’s threat to themselves or providers by using butyrophen...
Source: JEMS Special Topics - August 13, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Joseph K. Mesches, NRP, FP-C Tags: Exclusive Articles Patient Care Source Type: news
Study Seeks Better Understanding of EMS Experience With Hospice Patients
The Research
Donnelly CB, Armstrong KA, Perkins MM, et al. Emergency medical services provider experiences of hospice care. Prehosp Emerg Care. 2018;22(2):237–243.
The Science
This paper describes a simple study conducted by surveying EMS providers on their experience caring for patients in hospice. Eighty-six EMTs and 96 paramedics returned the survey. Fifty-four percent had 0–5 years, 26% had 6–10, and 20% had more than 10 years of EMS experience. They were asked to define hospice and palliative care, and there was no difference between EMTs and paramedics in their knowledge of this issue.
The lack of difference pe...
Source: JEMS Special Topics - August 3, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Keith Wesley, MD, FACEP, FAEMS Tags: Columns Mobile Integrated Healthcare Source Type: news
Soldiers Test Army's Newest Transport Telemedicine Technology
FORT BRAGG, N.C. -- Army Medicine is developing a technology to improve patient triage and communication during medical evacuations -- and looking for units willing to test the system.
The 44th Medical Brigade and Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, have already signed up to user test Medical Hands-free Unified Broadcast, or MEDHUB. MEDHUB leverages wearable sensors, accelerometers and other technology cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to improve the communication flow between patients, medics and receiving field hospitals.
Read more at United States Army
Military Techno...
Source: JEMS Special Topics - July 26, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: U.S. Army Tags: News Operations Mobile Integrated Healthcare Source Type: news
The iBeat Is a ‘Smart’ Watch, But It Can’t ‘Save Your Life’
The Emergency Medical Services and Fire industry is complex. Reporters covering Health and Health IT— including iBeat, the most recent darling — must carefully vet companies’ “Big Claims.”
I do not often comment on articles written about other companies — particularly because, having been a journalist for the first half of my career, I empathize with the challenge of writing quickly about hot topics, especially when they are complex, technical, and the interview subject is a something of a celebrity. But journalists are in hindsight eulogizing the many signs that were missed with res...
Source: JEMS Special Topics - July 20, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Jonathon S. Feit, MBA, MA Tags: Exclusive Articles Columns Administration and Leadership Source Type: news
Transporting Patients to Appropriate Receiving Destinations
Conclusion
EMS is in a position to be the initiator of specialty center destination. In large cities with multiple hospitals, EMS should transport patients to the closest, most appropriate facility based on patient condition, even if this requires passing a closer facility. Where there are hospitals with multiple specialty services, EMS may be asked to activate a specific team, such as the stroke or cardiac team.
In rural communities, EMS can communicate with the local hospital and by letting the hospital know of patient condition, help start the interfacility transport process from the field....
Source: JEMS Special Topics - July 19, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Dennis Edgerly, MEd, EMT-P Tags: Exclusive Articles Columns Operations Source Type: news
New Run Form Changes Patient Care In The Air
Flight EMS is a specialized type of prehospital patient work. You're away from the ground network, in a cramped space, often with a very medically complicated patient that has a lot of individual issues going on.
The documentation of a critically ill patient is crucial to the medical—and financial—success of an EMS organization. One EMS entity, Air Medical Group Holdings (AMGH), seized an opportunity to improve documentation of the critically ill in an effort to better protect their providers with more extensive data on a call, all while also improving upon their recouped revenue from calls of this nature.
Care In Flig...
Source: JEMS Special Topics - July 18, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Keith Finch Tags: Exclusive Articles Operations Source Type: news
