EMS conditional_soup • 4 weeks ago • 100%

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

My local EMSA has approved IV Tylenol for pre hospital pain management in trauma patients. Supposedly, studies show that there's little clinical difference in the efficacy of acetaminophen and opioids in acute pain management. I've attempted to find this alleged research, and the link above is what I found. I can't quote it exactly because I'm on mobile and it's being weird, but the relevant section is towards the end and compares the efficacy of IV Tylenol to IV opiates. It leads with saying that the relevant evidence is considered low quality before indicating that (this is a VERY rough summary) IV tylenol seems to have a very similar though slightly less effective/durable analgesic effect. I recommend you read it for yourself. The study also doesn't seem to be limited to trauma patients, and seems to make no distinction between visceral and somatic pain, both things I was hoping to see. Overall, I can see the benefits: it's cheaper, not addictive, less strictly regulated, doesn't alter consciousness or respiratory drive, and doesn't induce a bunch of histamine to tank a patient's blood pressure. I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with it, and if it works as well as advertised.

California conditional_soup • 2 months ago • 91%

If you're like me, you've probably been bombarded with ads about how awful AB 886 is. You should know that AB 886 is an attempt to support local journalism by forcing large, for-profit platforms that share links to online local news articles, like Reddit, Xitter, Facebook, and Google, to pay money to those local news agencies for access to their work. The group behind the ads against AB886 is the CCIA, or the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which is a lobbying group whose membership includes such small, local journalism organizations as: * Google * Amazon * Facebook * Twitter * And many more Here's their Wikipedia page if you're interested: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_%26_Communications_Industry_Association So, predictably, this is down to huge for profit companies wanting to continue getting access to other people's work for free. If you're feeling like taking memes seriously and getting into fights with strangers, you might think about calling your assembly member and letting them know that the CCIA can go fuck themselves and to support AB886.

Rag & Bone Paranormal Community conditional_soup • 2 months ago • 88%

Thought I'd get a near death experience thread going. Doesn't have to be crazy to share. I had mine when I was about seven. I was living with my mom at a big house that the owner was letting rooms out in, and they had a pool without a fence around it. You probably already guessed by now, but I couldn't swim yet. I was in the back yard playing with the boy who lived down the hall when the frisbee we were playing with landed in the pool. I thought I could reach it, and the other kid encouraged me, so I knelt down and reached out as far as I could for the frisbee. It didn't happen immediately, I was reaching for a bit before the landlord's big dog came by and bumped into me. I fell in, struggled a bit, and ultimately went under. I remember looking up at the surface, seeing my dog, a black lab, swimming circles over me, and then just going to sleep. My life didn't flash, I didn't have a realization that I was going to die, no lights in tunnels, no voices, no being dragged through deep water or any of that. It was really just like "I'm tired now" and I went to sleep. Somewhere in all this, someone told my mom I was in the pool. She ran out, jumped in, and dragged me out. My next conscious memory is her pumping on my chest and me throwing up and coughing up water (kinda felt like both anyway). We never went to the hospital, in hindsight I was damn lucky not to have died of dry drowning later. In fact, I've been a paramedic for 14 years, and I've seen my share of drownings in home pools, and it only reinforces for me how lucky I got. It's such a narrow window of survivability, and my mom threaded it. Pools are no joke, don't leave your kids unsupervised around pools, and never ever trust an unfenced pool. This is a smaller note, but it happened to one of my patients, not me. I was treating a man having a massive STEMI, and when we were just thirty seconds from parking the ambulance, he coded on us. We'd seen it coming, though, and already had the defibrillator pads on him, so I had the firefighter start compressions while I charged up the monitor. Once it was charged, I cleared him and fired the shock, and we actually got Hollywood resuscitation, like his eyes popped open, he gasped, started looking around, the whole nine yards. Only time in my whole 14 years I ever saw that. But the guy looked terrified, way more than he had been before. I'm talking a real, fundamental lizard-brain terror in his eyes; it's possible you've never seen that look, but if you know, you know. I've always wondered if his experience was like mine, had he just gone to sleep and then been jolted awake when the monitor hit him like a freight train? Or did he experience something else?

Not my work, found it on YouTube and enjoyed this artist's work, so I thought I'd show my appreciation by sharing. Reminds me of the old school country vibes before it got taken over by make believe patriots.

EMS conditional_soup • 3 months ago • 100%

www.hmpglobalevents.com

EMS Expo 2024 is taking place in Las Vegas, September 9-13th. I haven't been to an EMS Expo since 2010, and that one was pretty okay. Has anyone been recently / planning to go? Is it any good?

Rag & Bone Paranormal Community conditional_soup • 3 months ago • 85%

Going to lead with: no, this isn't a skinwalker story. Back in the early 2010s, my friends and I would hold regular airsoft practice in the woods behind my house. A lot of it was the sort of dense, old growth that covers to southeast US. Our last practice back there, we were wrapping up when we heard a very distinct whistle. We figured it was probably one of my neighbors who might have gone back to see what we were up to, so we called out to them, and, after getting no response, whistled back at them. We got another whistle back within ten seconds, and while we could figure out a general direction the whistling was coming from, we couldn't find anyone there. Getting a little concerned, we called out again, and decided to just pack up and leave when we got no response again. Everything seemed mostly normal while we were packing up, though two of the people in our group insisted that they'd seen a figure peeking out from behind a tree at us. It wasn't until we were leaving that things got a little more exciting. On the way up the trail, my friend's dog kept indicating to the same area of to our right. We also heard that whistle every few minutes, getting closer each time we heard it. My friend with the dog later insisted that he saw a dark figure ducking out of sight from just behind us and off to the right of the trail. Thankfully, that's about the point where we started coming to the edge of the woods, and the events mostly stopped. The whole time that we were packing everything in the trucks, though, my friend's dog was laser focused on the woods. I had some other kinda weird stuff happen at that house, like something hitting the back wall so hard that I thought the refrigerator had fallen over. To this day, my friend who claims to have seen it is sure we encountered something paranormal, though I'm not convinced that the whole situation wasn't just a bunch of college guys getting freaked out by someone in camouflage having a laugh.

EMS conditional_soup • 9 months ago • 75%

So, I wanted to have a level-headed discussion about this case. I've been loosely following it since it happened, and I'm curious to see what others think of it, perhaps hear from folks who followed it more closely. For those out of the loop, here's the JEMS article on it: https://www.jems.com/patient-care/two-co-paramedics-found-guilty-in-death-of-elijah-mcclain/ The tl;Dr is this: Aurora fire medics are dispatched to assist Aurora PD with a combative patient they believe is in an altered mental state. Aurora FD EMS crews identify this patient as qualifying for their excited delirium protocol based on PD and patient presentation, and administer the maximum dose of ketamine allowed under their weight-based dosing (which was well over what Elijah weighed). Now, there's other details (this IS a tldr), but after the ketamine, the patient goes into respiratory and cardiac arrest and is eventually declared. The paramedics involved were found guilty of negligent homicide. The FD has stood by their paramedics, saying that they followed their policies appropriately. Let me lead with this: it seems to me that McClain's case was a foreseeable (albeit low likelihood) and unfortunate outcome that was the cumulative result of many lesser individual poor choices on the part of both law enforcement and EMS. We lack the personal context to really appreciate those choices, I think, and we're left to armchair quarterback those decisions with only the information available to us. I do believe that Mr. McClain should still be alive, and likely would be under different systems-level conditions, such as training and clearly defined interdepartmental operations protocols. Personally, I disagree with the conviction based off of my current understanding of the situation. My current understanding of the facts does not persuade me of the presence of gross, nevermind criminal, negligence on the part of the EMS crew. There absolutely is a conversation to be had here about PD leveraging field sedation and integrating field emergency care as a compliance and law enforcement tool as opposed to a healthcare response to a medical emergency. There's another conversation to be had about systems-level choices that likely influenced this outcome. I think that just throwing these guys in jail fails to accomplish anything on those fronts, and, as such, is a false justice. So, I'd like to ask you guys for your thoughts. Was it preventable? Was the conviction helpful? What can be done to prevent this in future, if anything, and what's your take-away?

EMS conditional_soup • 10 months ago • 83%

I was wondering how many of you have experience using pre-hospital ultrasound. I've heard for a long time that it's the "next big thing", and I can see it for rural systems or maybe even community paramedicine, but I've not seen much in the way of it actually getting adopted. Do you find it to be a meaningfully useful addition to your skillset and protocols? If you were around when it was introduced, how do you feel about the introduction? What were some lessons learned by you or the system along the way?

Hey, so, I was hoping someone could break down the strategy or rationale behind team Biden's current messaging? Cards on the table, I plan on voting for him in the general election and primary, but the Biden camp's messaging seems insane to me. I know a single person irl who's doing well financially right now, everyone else is feeling the pain. The messaging so far seems to be (and please correct me if I'm wrong): everything is fine actually, and we should all be praising him, and it doesn't matter if you disagree because the other guy is Hitler. It just comes across as super disconnected, I don't know any IRL left/Dem voters that resonate with it, and it honestly reminds me of the general vibe of the HRC campaign from 16. This election is too important to fuck up, so this messaging has got me concerned. Can someone explain how this is supposed to win Biden the election?

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Yerba Santa is actually several closely related annual plant species native to California and Oregon. In my personal experience, Yerba Santa can frequently be found along roadsides and in disturbed soils in the Sierra Nevadas, but CalScape suggests that they're mainly found in the mountains around SoCal and along the Pacific side of the Diablo range. The leaves are tough and leathery with a rich, dark green coloration on top and a fuzzy underside that looks much paler. The plant can be a little unpleasant to handle due to the sticky resin it secretes. The leaves are long and toothed, and grow off of stems that don't branch. I've never seen a single yerba Santa plant by itself, it almost always grows in small, dense clusters like you see in the picture. Yerba Santa also puts off clusters of trumpet-like purple-white flowers from the top that are used by native butterflies, but I haven't seen this in person. Multiple sources report the medicinal use of Yerba Santa by both First Nations peoples (Miwuks and Yokuts to name a few) as well as Spanish settlers to treat a variety of remedies. As bitter as the plant is (also, tar is another foraging red flag for me; where there's tar, I usually expect that there's some pretty bioactive compounds like Nicotine, and that's a recipe for a bad time), I can't help but imagine that there's probably some compounds in it that might not be great to put in your body all the time, so I highly recommend doing your own research here. Also, a lot of the information about the supposed medicinal qualities seems really apocryphal and like it's just something that people repeat but never verify; I'd want to follow up with some people who have real experience with this plant before just going and chewing on it. For animals, Yerba Santa provides food for butterflies, native bees, and birds in the form of nectar and seeds, and has been documented as a forage of last resort by native blacktail deer when most other plants have already died or gone dormant. Additionally, Yerba Santa has been documented as being useful for stabilizing disturbed or scorched soils. There's a few weeds that could conceivably appear similar to Yerba Santa due to their habit of growing as a cluster of dense, non-branching stalks, but the tell I would suggest is the leaves. Most weeds that have similar growth habits won't have the same thick, robust, tar-covered leaves that Yerba Santa has, and won't have the trumpet-like flowers. The most serious lookalike, imo, is Oleander. Oleander is a woody shrub that gets much larger than Yerba Santa, but has similar-looking, rich dark-green, tarry leaves with trumpet-like flowers. **OLEANDER IS VERY POISONOUS AND WILL KILL YOU IF CONSUMED**. Oleander is not native, and is widely used as an ornamental throughout California. As a rule of thumb, if it's woody OR big OR looks like it's supposed to be there, it's Oleander. Yerba Santa varies in hardiness. Like many California natives, it is wholly unafraid of summer sun; though most natives do fine with at least a little shade in the day, Yerba Santa is beyond such weakness. Some species of Yerba Santa can grow quite aggressively in disturbed soils, while others in the Santa Barbara region are seriously endangered. If you want to get your hands on this plant, I'd advise against harvesting Yerba Santa from the wilderness for several reasons: * you could be harvesting an abandoned Oleander plant, and Oleander will kill you if consumed. * you might accidentally be harvesting one of the endangered members of the species, which is not only unethical but likely illegal. * Yerba Santa ain't no slouch, that plant is doing work where it is, holding the disturbed soil together and providing forage for wild animals through parts of the year when forage is scarce. You're hurting a lot of things that depend on that plant by taking it out of the ecology. Instead, I'd strongly recommend getting some seeds from a reputable source and trying to grow some from seed.

memes conditional_soup • 11 months ago • 88%

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Headlines have never made me watch ads or accept cookies

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Chenopodium Album, also known as Goosefoot, Pigweed, or Lambsquarters, is a member of the amaranth family that has become endemic to much of California up to 5900 ft in elevation. It's originally native to Europe and Asia, where it has been known to be grown as a food crop for people and livestock. Lambsquarters' distinguishing features include soft, arrowhead-shaped, gently toothed, dark green foliage that appears silvery-gray on the underside of the leaf; the leaves also can have a fine, white powdery substance dusting their surfaces; the plant is an annual that has a large, shrub-like growth habit that I've seen grow to roughly seven feet high under good conditions, though most top out around four of five feet; it has strong stems that, as the plant ages, get streaked with purple and dry to a woody texture when the plant has died; in the late summer and early fall, the plant manifests inflorescences from which very small, black seeds will eventually fall.* The plant prefers disturbed soil, and is a common sight in agricultural and untended urban settings. *Some sources indicate that Lambsquarters can start flowering in May. I have spent a lot of time around these plants and I can't remember ever having seen that, but it's possibly down to regional variance. Like many other invasive species endemic to California, Lambsquarters is extremely drought tolerant. This is probably one of the more aesthetically pleasing endemic invaders come August or July, as it's one of the few remaining wild plants that appears healthy, happy, and green. I have some experience foraging Lambsquarters; its flavor is just sort of an unimpressive green flavor, though the leaf has a nice bite. Apparently, the leaves are very high in protein, and I think it'd probably do swell in a soup (though, again, I'd recommend boiling the leaves in a change of water first, as some sources suggest that Lambsquarters has oxalates that'll mess you up over the long run). I have no experience using the seeds as a food source, but it seems fairly straightforward, winnowing aside. The seeds are extraordinarily small and likely won't lend themselves to milling, but would probably make for a good supplementary grain to a porridge or something like that. So, how bad is Lambsquarters? Well, the California Invasive Plant Council doesn't have a page dedicated to Lambsquarters. That said, it has been known to be a reservoir of viruses for crop species also in the Amaranth family. It's likely that Lambsquarters, like the other invaders from the Amaranth family, are both practically impossible to be rid of while also being generally self-limiting, in particular given the plant's preference for disturbed soils.

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Hello, everyone! I'm going to start profile common invasive species to the central valley to help people recognize them, know which are good, bad, and ugly, and distinguish them from true natives. I'm starting with a special guest the central valley drivers will soon be getting re-acquainted with: the Tumbleweed (Salsola sp.). The tumbleweed, also known as Russian Thistle, was first introduced by Russian immigrants to the Dakotas in the late 1800s. The plant spread aggressively, and was in California before the turn of the century. In terms of physical characteristics, Salsolas tend to have a darker, olive green appearance, with the larger stalks taking on purple-hued streaks later in the season. The leaves are sort of clusters of feathery spines (with some not so feathery spines mixed in for good measure). Later in their growth season, they have small, purple-hued flower like structures (though I don't think they're true flowers) at the nodes. They have an erect habit that forms a small, oblong sphere of a bush, about two to three foot high (there's a lot of variety there, but I'd say that about two foot is average) and a little wider than it is tall by the end of the growing season. Salsolas are hardy plants that thrive in disturbed souls and hot, dry conditions. In fact, they have a root structure that's designed to release the stalk of the plant and let it tumble once it comes into contact with water, which is why you generally start seeing them jump out in front of traffic around the time of the first rains. Salsolas are safe to eat in small quantities, and I have some personal experience with this. You really only want the new growth from very young plants, anything else is going to be tough as boots and half as appetizing (nevermind the spines). Young plants have smaller, softer spines and the new growth tastes of spinach when boiled (which is how I prepare it, I never eat it raw. As I recall, it has some quantity of oxalic acid in it that will wreck your kidneys with enough exposure, boiling removes the oxalic acid). I'm not personally fond of foraging Salsolas because their preference for disturbed soils generally means a high likelihood that they've been exposed to some pretty nasty stuff, and they're really only acceptable for cooking while the plants are less than a month old. So, how bad are tumbleweeds? Well, as far as I can tell, in the way of invasive plants, you can do a whole lot worse than tumbleweeds. According to the California Invasive Plant Council, Salsolas actually seem to help native grasses by stabilizing disturbed soil and introducing phosphorus. They're not very competitive, and rarely dominate anywhere long term. In fact, they note that Salsolas tend to be the first thing that will grow in disturbed soil, and are usually followed and eventually squeezed out by other plants and grasses that benefit off the shelter, phosphorus, and stabilized soil that the Salsola provides. Additionally, native animal species (in particular small lizards and reptiles) have been observed to use the Salsola for both shelter and hunting grounds. Salsolas don't have a significant impact on ecology in terms of fire risk or water patterns, either. Probably the worst thing about them is that they can be kind of a pain in the butt for humans when they swarm streets or highways or pile up on fences. I'm considering planting some Salsolas in my back yard to try and stabilize the loose soil this winter, and I'll cut them back once other plants start to take over.

Fuck Cars conditional_soup • 11 months ago • 78%

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Kanye is getting less and less excited as the ACE rail extension to Merced gets more and more delayed. I reckon they're doing it like this to tie in to the HSR station, but come on, man.

This is a list of reputable brands, seed dealers, and nurseries for acquiring native plants, both online and offline. If you'd like to add one to the list, just post it below, and I'd appreciate a little blurb about your experience with them or why you find them reputable. The list is currently pretty sparse, but with everybody's help, we can make a great list! # Nurseries ## Online ## Offline ### SoCal ### NorCal ### Bay Area ### Central Valley ### Sierra Nevada #### Mariposa ##### Creekside Nursery **Address:** 5047 Stroming Rd, Mariposa, CA 95338 **Phone:** (209) 742-5107 **Web:** https://www.creeksidemariposa.com/ **Blurb:** Small nursery, literally by Mariposa creek. Known to carry several native shrubs including Ceanothus sp. and California Rose, as well as seeds for California Poppies. # Brands ## Online ## Offline ### SoCal ### NorCal ### Bay Area ### Central Valley ### Sierra Nevada # Seed Dealers ## Online ## Offline ### SoCal ### NorCal ### Bay Area ### Central Valley ### Sierra Nevada

Make sure you're planting a native species for your area first! Milkweeds have a very wide range, and there's been issues with tropical milkweeds being planted here in California, since they don't go dormant during the fall and winter. That means that: * Along the coast, they're more likely to be exposed to high levels of moisture that will promote disease growth that can be spread to Monarchs * Monarchs might lay their eggs on the non-dormant plants instead of migrating, which will likely cause the caterpillars to die, being out of season. California has some 15 species of milkweed that are native, with one of the more common being the narrowleaf milkweed. You can buy seeds for narrowleaf milkweed online, and now's the time to do it if you plan on directly sowing the seeds, since they need to get cold in order to germinate reliably. Some fast facts about milkweed: -It's a perennial, and once established will continue to spread through tubers. -It's very drought tolerant once established -The flowers are said to be highly fragrant and are known to draw in a lot of pollinator species besides monarchs.

If you've ever thought about planting some native plants, early fall is usually the ideal time to start planting for California natives. I'm considering picking up some more California Poppy seeds, as well as some milkweed. I have other ambitions for some larger shrubs, like Manzanita or Flannel Bush, but I don't know how well that's going to go. The biggest battle I'm currently fighting is that I'm lobbying to replace our crepe myrtle with a Toyon shrub. Do you guys have any natives that you're considering planting?

In case you're interested in learning more about or advocating for native flora, it's definitely worth checking out the CNPS. They've got chapters all over California, and many of them regularly do relatively easy hikes for educational purposes. Also, October is the month that most chapters participate in a native plant sale, so your local chapter may have some native plants available for you right now!

youtu.be

Hello, everyone! I thought I'd share this really neat in-depth presentation on how to make a garden with native trees and shrubs that requires very little to no irrigation and doesn't look deep fried by July.

New Communities conditional_soup • 11 months ago • 100%

c/ca_native_plants https://lemm.ee/c/ca_native_plants !ca_native_plants[!ca_native_plants@lemm.ee](https://lemm.ee/c/ca_native_plants) This community is for identifying, promoting, and discussing plants native to California, as well as encouraging their use in landscapes and gardens. Questions about identification are welcomed, but the community should be only ever considered a second opinion for foraging purposes.

Welcome to California Native Plants! I hope you enjoy your visit to this community and learn something new. While you're here, here are some guidelines to keep in mind: -Don't be a jerk, keep discussions civil. -Don't promote illegal activity. (AFAIK, Guerilla gardening isn't illegal per se, and tends to fall more in the realm of civil dispute, so it isn't covered by this rule. If you're going to do it, please try to proceed respectfully and don't vandalize people's property) -Forage with caution! You're welcome to seek plant identification advice here, including for the purpose of foraging, but we make absolutely no guarantees about the quality of the identification, as none of the participants here are vetted for their knowledge. I highly recommend doing your own homework and seeking out the opinion of local experts and guidebooks over relying solely on the opinion of internet strangers. However, communities like this one can be a useful resource for a second opinion, and that's how I recommend you use it for identification purposes. Foraging is a serious matter, and eating the wrong plant can leave you or others dead or disabled. You consume any plants on the advice given here fully at your own risk, as we should not be considered a primary source of knowledge on the matter of foraging. -Mistakes are welcome, malice is not. Users suspected of intentionally giving malicious or willfully bad advice or promoting blatantly ecologically destructive practices will be warned exactly once before being permanently banned. -This community is focused primarily on plants native to California. For better or worse, a lot of non-native plants can be found in our state as well. It's not against the rules to discuss or identify non-native plants, but the primary focus here is on promoting plants that are native to the state.

Fuck Cars conditional_soup • 11 months ago • 66%

www.youtube.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkQUE8Xr-cc Bigfoot came out just to watch the train. A true Renaissance Man.

Rag & Bone Paranormal Community conditional_soup • 1 year ago • 92%

My personal favorite genre of ghost story is the healthcare ghost story. Nurses have told me some stories that have made my eyes water, though that's not the tale I came to tell, because for all of my later attempts, I've never been able to do it justice. Let's share our medical spooks I have 13 years of experience working on an ambulance as a paramedic. I've seen a lot of things, some horrible, some funny, some downright bizarre, but nothing I'd really classify as paranormal. This story was told to me by a co-worker on another ambulance shortly after it happened to her, while she was wrapping up documentation at the hospital. They'd been dispatched to a sick person, which is sort of the catch-all complaint when dispatch doesn't have a more applicable complaint. When they arrive at the house, they find that the patient is a man in his late fifties who's gone unresponsive. Thankfully, the man's parents are able to let them inside the home and provide them with the information they need. Suspecting Sepsis, they try to hustle and get the guy out and down to the hospital. He dies shortly before arriving at the ER. Despite the efforts of both the crew and the emergency room, they can't get him back and the man is declared dead. Law enforcement comes by to start writing up their report and starts asking for information that the crew didn't obtain. It's no problem, though, the crew tells law enforcement to just do a 911 callback to the house and ask the guy's parents. So, the officer tries it, but gets no response. Having exhausted the easy stuff, the officer goes out and decides to visit the guy's parents. When he arrives, however, the doors are locked up tight, and there's no sign of anyone else. As the officer's poking around, a neighbor notices and goes to ask if he can help. The officer tells the neighbor what's happened and asks if he can help him contact the man's parents. The neighbor looks very surprised and says that the guy's parents have both been dead for years. And that's the story of how a co-worker got medical history from a dying patient's dead parents.

I feel like this is a really obvious one, but I can't find it. Is there a community for requesting features and reporting bugs in Lemmy?

EMS conditional_soup • 1 year ago • 100%

One thing I've recently seen be a point of contention is whether it's appropriate to disrupt sleep hours of 24 hour units for non-urgent transfers. That is, should 24 hour units have a time in which they're protected from being sent on non-urgent transfers? When this came up in the past, the consensus of "no" seemed to be coming from people whose systems weren't mixed 911/transfer systems and didn't do 24s. On the other hand, most of my 13 years in EMS has been with mixed-service 24 hour systems, one system of which was also a system-status deployment model (yes, I know that system status and 24 hour shifts are supposed to be mutually exclusive, but that fact never bothered company leadership). So, suffice it to say, I've had my fair share of riding 2 hours at 0300 on 30 hours without sleep for what could be an outpatient consult or because the local ED doc really wanted some other doc to take the liability for the discharge. A small company that I work for (mixed service, consecutive 24 hour shifts) recently started turning down overnight transfers for non-urgent reasons. The local (rural) ED was pissed and threatened to call other ambulance companies, but all the other companies got a good laugh when they heard where the hospital is. And in all fairness, they've laid some real stinkers of transfers in their time, including transferring due to CT glitch and transferring an 17 year old to the children's hospital two hours away for uncomplicated strep throat. To me, it seems clear that 24 hour shifts are still well-suited to rural EMS, and I don't think it's at all unreasonable to not gamble with the lives of your crew, patients, and fellow drivers for what essentially amounts to the convenience of the ED staff. I don't think you can even argue that it's about patient convenience, because if it's ed-to-floor, then the patient realistically isn't going to see the specialist until business hours anyway (and there's a decent enough chance that the transfer is urgent at that), and if it's ed-to-ed, then there's a good chance (in my experience) that they're just travelling 2 hours away for a discharge, and where's the convenience in that? Stranded two hours away with an extra hospital bill and an ambulance bill so that they could get an outpatient appointment; now that's what I call _service_. The industry has had a nasty habit of pretending that people can just choose not to be affected by lack of sleep for too long, and there's been a lot of unfortunate consequences because of that. I don't have a problem with formalizing it and making sure that it doesn't get abused, but I just don't see the benefit in rawdogging your crews on non-urgent transfers. What do you guys think?

EMS conditional_soup • 1 year ago • 100%

Coming to you live from San Diego

New Communities conditional_soup • 1 year ago • 100%

[!rag_and_bone@lemm.ee](https://lemm.ee/c/rag_and_bone) lemm.ee/c/rag_and_bone Come, join us by the fire and have a rest. You're always welcome to listen, but if you're feeling generous, you can tell your tale to the fire and add it to the rag and bone man's collection. We're not bothered about whether your spooky story is true or not here. The night is too long, and the beans are almost ready.

Rag & Bone Paranormal Community conditional_soup • 1 year ago • 91%

So, what's your experience with weird people? I don't mean socially awkward people, mind, I mean people that might actually be wizards or three aliens in a trench coat kind of weird. When I lived in the poor part of Tulsa, there were people like this in spades. One old goat had the monicker of "crazy man Stan". Stan had a way of just appearing, almost out of thin air. You never saw him coming, you'd just look over one way, and look back to find Stan there. There was a laundry list of other weird shit Stan was known for that I've since forgotten. One day, he fucked my mom's truck up. She was sitting there, gabbing with a friend, when Stan does his presto-hobo apparition trick, leans in through the driver side window, and forces the turn signal switch back and forth as hard as he can for the few seconds it takes my mom to get over the shock and hit his crazy ass. Every time she hit the turn signal after that, the horn would beep in time with the light coming on. We had our last straw with Stan when a friend and I saw what looked a hell of a lot like Stan actually appearing in the middle of the street out of thin air one night. My mom declared that he must have been in league with the devil. My step dad had been putting up with Stan's antics because it's Oklahoma in the late 90's, what else do you have going on? I don't think he believed that devil stuff, but he was always pretty keen at figuring people out, and I think he reckoned that Stan was the kind of person that had trouble hanging around him like a cloud of flies. and decided he didn't want any. There was another guy we knew who would scry for random treasures on a map and did aura readings. Besides the claim to psychic abilities (he never referred to them as such, he was the type of Christian that believed he was given gifts due to the manifestation of the holy spirit in his heart), he usually had smart things to say, so he was sort of the shaman of the ghetto. I can't speak for the aura readings, but everyone who ever went out with him on one of his adventures vouched for him finding something interesting. He never did it for money, so it wasn't like it was some kind of scam he was running, at least as far as I could tell.

Rag & Bone Paranormal Community conditional_soup • 1 year ago • 100%

Around 2010, we lived in some apartments in Newnan, Georgia that used to be an old factory. Most of the other resident we ran into agreed that weird stuff would happen there, like seeing apparitions of people. Very little happened to me, personally, but my wife experienced much more than I did. Some of these experiences include, but aren't limited to: -She had the front door unlock, open, shut, and lock again all on its own. It happened with so little fanfare that she, at first, assumed that I had walked out until she realized I was in the shower. -She got a coat hanger thrown at her. We were in bed and she was woken up by the clatter of a coat hanger coming to rest on her side of the bed (concrete floor and metal coat hangers make a fair bit of noise). The hell of it is, the only place we kept coat hangers was in the closet, and the only two ways that it could have made it there from the closet was 1. to go left into the bathroom, make a 90 degree turn, and then forward out of the bathroom OR 2. launch up and over the closet wall and then go forward about ten feet. -She would feel somebody poking her feet at night time. Of course, nobody was ever there. A couple of times, we'd hear these loud footsteps go racing across the metal roof. I've had metal roofs before, and I know what it's like when trees drop stuff on them; you can hear the debris rolling and banging down the slope of the roof until it falls off or settles into a depression. This wasn't that. There would be loud, fast thuds that would run across the length of our apartment, across the slope of the roof in a matter of a second or two. We also had a friend stay there to dog-sit while we were away. He has excellent vision, and told us that he saw an extra dark shadow in the corner of our vaulted ceiling that the dog also honed in on shortly afterwards. When I say dark shadow, I mean that the lighting there was inconsistent with how it was every other day; that corner was never that dark before or after, but for whatever reason had a deep shadow in it for that one of several days my friend was there. What really sells it for me is that my wife never had any kind of paranormal experience before or since. She's not generally the kind of person who's into this whole scene; she loves a good ghost story as much as anyone, but she's not the type of person who commits much thought to it or sees spirits around every corner. Anyway, it didn't really seem to build towards anything, it was just kind of a thing that was there and sometimes you happened to notice it (or vice verse, I suppose). A couple of the residents tried to invite one of those ghost shows out, but the property management team caught wind of it and shut that down immediately. Used to be that you could see tenants talking about the haunting on their google reviews, but I just looked and they must have cleaned those up.

New Communities conditional_soup • 1 year ago • 100%

[!ems@lemm.ee](https://lemm.ee/c/ems) lemm.ee/c/ems My goal here is to provide a general space for EMS professionals to share and shitpost. People who are not in EMS are also welcome.

EMS conditional_soup • 1 year ago • 100%

Everyone's got a favorite "war story" to bust out when it's story time. What's your go-to? One of mine is the time I picked up some dude who slammed a brand new bottle of hydrocodone to try and keep from going to jail. They'd just picked up the bottle when he popped the lid off and just downed the whole thing in front of his family, who (rightly) freaked out and drove straight to the nearest fire station. By the time we got there, dude was on the dark side of the moon. We get the story, do an initial, take over bagging, drop 2 of narcan in his nose, load and go. I know this guy, he's going to be a jerk about it, and I don't to allow him the lattitude that he'll have at the scene. So, five minutes pass, IV's in, re-assess to find no change. Shocker. I dump another 2 in the line. Nothing. Well, shit. Re-assess to make sure I didn't miss anything, and opiates are still the best explanation. tl;dr we have a long transport time, so I end up making base contact a couple of times and finally dump the tenth mg of narcan in the line as we roll up to the receiving facility. We get inside, tell the hospital what's going on, transfer him over, and the dude jerks awake. He sits bolt upright, tells the doc "take your hands off me, {bundle of sticks}", grabs the NPA out of his nose, and then slings it into the corner of the room as hard as he can with an almighty "FUCK!" Everybody piles out of the room and sort of awkwardly stands there, waiting for security to show up. While we were waiting, I remembered it was EMS week, so I asked the nurses if this meant I could have my shirt now. They said no :c

EMS conditional_soup • 1 year ago • 100%

Those of you who left EMS, what are you doing now, and are you happy about your choices? I left full time paramedicine after 12 years. I've been in software development for a little over a year now, and I still do some part time for shits and giggles. I don't regret my choice, especially seeing how hard the full time folks at my company get ran. It's fun to do this job again now that I'm not dependent on it for finances. I will say, though, programmer stories make a much smaller impact with friends and family.

Rag & Bone Paranormal Community conditional_soup • 1 year ago • 100%

Welcome to Rag & Bone. This is a community for sharing your paranormal stories. Whether it's real or not isn't of any concern; this is a place for taking a rest from the scrolling and sharing stories. Mutual respect is expected here around the fire. We're all guests here, and the old ways demand that you treat your guests well. If your story has explicit or upsetting content, tag it so that listeners can choose for themselves if they want to hear it. Abusive behavior will not be tolerated.

EMS conditional_soup • 1 year ago • 100%

Welcome to c/EMS, Lemmy's community for EMS providers by EMS providers. Most topics are permitted here, though this might get adjusted according to the kind of traffic we get. This is a space for: -sharing industry-related news -professional discussion and development -sharing memes (allowed 24/7) -getting professional feedback and more. Some quick and dirty rules: Don't share any PHI, just don't. Use good judgment. Let's build a community based on mutual respect and good faith discussion.