Posts filed under 'News Articles'
There is a great article on the use of hypothermia to reduce post resuscitation neurologic injury on MSNBC this week. The human aspects behind adopting the technology as well as the financial impact are analyzed in terms anyone can understand.
Cooling therapy has chilling effect on heart attack deaths…
The authors (uncredited on MSNBC) do an excellent job of looking at the hurdles to adopting post arrest hypothermia. Things like the need for equipment, cross departmental staffing and overall by-in for the procedure by health care providers.
Take a look at this excellent write-up and then as always, tell us what you think here at Studio-A.
Chris
August 31st, 2010
There is an excellent article onJalopnik this week that looks at the use of human cadavers to develop safer automobiles.
Author Justin Hyde looks at the history of auto testing and the progression from cadaver studies to crash test dummies and the emergence of digital simulations.
In the article, Hyde discusses the part cadaver studies have played in the development of the new inflatable rear seat belts that are being introduced with the 2011 Ford Explorer. It turns out that even with the increasing sophistication of human dynamics modeling, the need to do actual studies using human cadavers is still important.
It is a facinating and short read, go take a look and tell us what you think.
http://jalopnik.com/5622667/how-a-cadaver-made-your-car-safer
August 26th, 2010
Last week in my article “Friday Night Lights” I asked some significant questions about being prepared for football season and introduced a new CBT session being offered on our companion site, OnlineNEMSA.
- Did you know that a high school athlete is three times more likely to have a permanent head or neck injury than a college or professional player?
- Do you know the recommendations from the American College of Sports Medicine for airway access, CPR and spinal immobilization when confronted by an injured player in full protective gear?
- Do you know how football helmets differ from motorcycle helmets?
- Do you know how to interact with the trainer, team doctor or other responders on the field?
After some discussion with the staff here at the National EMS Academy, we decided to make the entire CBT course free to any first responder, EMT or Paramedic who wants to take the course for the next 90 days.
In order to do so and receive credit through CECBEMS for one CE hour, you simply need to point your browser to www.onlinenemsa.com and follow these steps:
- Click on the New User link and register. You must do this prior to attempting to launch the lesson so that we can track and record your progress!
- Use your newly created credentials to enter the site.
- Click on the “Claim Free Course” link on the front page and then “add” the course to your shopping cart
- Enter FTMIGDY4 in the “Claim Discount Code” block to get a 100% discount on the purchase price.
- Click on “review your order” leave the credit card information blank, you do not need a credit card to complete this transaction
- Click on “Place Your Order”
After completing these steps, you will be able to access and take the the lesson for the next 30 days from the “My Account” page. Upon successful completion, you can print your certificate and retain it for your records. If you need another copy anytime, even after your license to the course expires, you can return, log in and re-print the document.
Have Fun!
As always, we look forward from hearing from you here at Your Studio A.
August 24th, 2010
What is Virtual Instructor Led Training?
One of the biggest challenges for EMS professionals is balancing the demands of a busy work schedule and the need to stay informed and current as emergency care changes and evolves. The last thing you want to do after a busy shift is to spend the day in the classroom.
In the past, the only real option was a traditional classroom presentation. Attendance required travel and time away from home, usually at the worst possible time for you. Fortunately, now there is a solution, you can attend live continuing education sessions from your own home or favorite place by logging in at www.OnlineNEMSA.com and registering for a “Virtual Instructor Led” training session.
OnlineNEMSA, a division of the National EMS Academy is now presenting live continuing education sessions via the internet. If you have access to a broadband internet connection and a telephone, you can now attend class, ask questions and get feedback from our highly experienced EMS instructors. No need to travel in order to attend; we bring the classroom to you!
By using a virtual classroom to connect the instructor and student, you get all the power of a live class without the scheduling conflicts and travel hassles associated with a traditional classroom. These fast paced lessons provide the information you need in a dynamic, interactive format using your internet browser. When you attend, you can see the lesson, hear the content and interact, just like a traditional classroom. Need to ask a question? Just raise your hand. Need a review? Just click on the feedback tool.
Each session consists of a short pre-class handout, the live VILT session and a short, focused completion exam so you don’t have to spend your whole day in a classroom. Simply choose the class times and dates that best match your schedule and register anytime. When the scheduled time arrives, log in and attend. No travel, no lost time.
If you need just one CE session or a whole refresher, the National EMS Academy can meet the need with fresh, current material written and presented by the same EMS instructors who train the staff of Acadian Ambulance, the largest private EMS system in the U.S.
Our scheduled VILT sessions are CECBEMS approved for continuing education and accepted as live training so unlike computer based training; there is no limitation to how many hours you can attend.
August 18th, 2010
It’s that time again, the stadium lights are glowing, teams are practicing and pretty soon EMS crews will be standing by at football games throughout the land. While catastrophic injuries are thankfully rare, they do occur. Are you ready?
“When EMS crews are dispatched to an emergency involving a football player, they are confronted with a patient who is encased in a system of protective pads and a full face helmet. Unless the responder is very familiar with this situation, their first instinctive response is to remove the helmet and pads to gain access to the face, airway and thorax. Unfortunately, this immediate response in most cases is wrong and increases the chance of permanent spinal injury to the player. ”
- Did you know that a high school athlete is three times more likely to have a permanent head or neck injury than a college or professional player?
- Do you know the recommendations from the American College of Sports Medicine for airway access, CPR and spinal immobilization when confronted by an injured player in full protective gear?
- Do you know how football helmets differ from motorcycle helmets?
- Do you know how to interact with the trainer, team doctor or other responders on the field?
Even if you know the answers to all these questions, a good refresher before the season begins can literally be a lifesaver.
Sports Helmets and Spinal Immobilization from www.onlinenemsa.com
The National EMS Academy is now offering the same computer based training program we use for Acadian Ambulance’s medical staff each year as we prepare for football season. You can access the complete CBT from the comfort of your own home at www.onlinenemsa.com using a broadband Internet connection at your own pace. The lesson is worth one hour of CECBEMS approved CE credit and can be counted as flexible core content in trauma for the National Registry of EMT’s certification process or as additional CE hours.
Taking a course is easy, simply point your browser to www.onlinenemsa.com and register free of charge. Once you have completed the registration process, you can purchase access to this course or one of our other anytime CBT programs whenever you have the time to complete the program. We also offer scheduled Virtual Instructor Led courses which are presented by a live instructor on a convenient repeating schedule.
Hope to see you soon!
August 16th, 2010
Prehospital Emergency Care has just published the abstracts for the 2010 NAEMSP scientific assembly and there are a number of interesting topics being presented. One that caught my eye was “Lifting as an alternative to the log roll technique in the prehospital management of traumatic spine cord injury” by Bradley Demeter and John Borstad at the Ohio State University College of Medicine.
In this article, the authors applied a tracking device to a cadaver spine and measured movement using the log roll and “alternative” lifting techniques and found that lifting was superior to the log-roll in preventing movement. Even more interesting; after creating an unstable spinal injury, lifting was still superior in preventing spinal movement.
I had suspected that this was true while working on a training program for Acadian Ambulance medics on the management of football players with a suspected spinal injury, but it is really neat to see this confirmed.
In the lesson, we emphasized a technique recommended by the National Athletic Trainers Association called the “6 –man Lift”.
During filming and photography, we easily lifted a very large football player in full gear while maintaining spinal alignment and everyone involved remarked about how effective the method worked.
Of course, we had seven rescuers, six to lift the victim and one to slide the board into place along with plenty of room to work. In the real world, everything is a trade-off and EMS crews will seldom have the luxury of this many hands and enough space to slide the board in from the feet. In a bathroom at 0200, this just is not going to work.
If you have not had a chance to look at this year’s abstracts, I strongly urge you to get a copy of the January 2010 supplement and take a look at where EMS research is going, in a few years, we may be teaching a lot of what is being presented in this symposium.
As always, we look forward to hearing from you here at Your Studio A
Chris Mixon
June 24th, 2010
The company now has 92 medics deployed from Freshwater City in Vermilion Parish to the Alabama-Mississippi state line, said Marc Creswell, Air Med operations manager and operations chief for the SMS Oil Spill Incident Command.
Some of the medics are on work boats or are standing by for transports or in areas where work crews are being staged. Others are on the “floating hotels” that have been set up for the workers who are trying to stem the tide of oil before it reaches the coast.
More medics are needed, Creswell said. “The calls just keep coming in from different contractors,” he said. “We’re going to put people out there until we can’t staff anymore.”
On Wednesday, Creswell and Dr. Ross Judice, chief medical officer, will visit Acadian’s medics who are deployed for the spill.
“We’ll be delivering supplies, equipment and safety manuals, and thanking them for a job well done,” Judice said.
Matt Savoy is serving as incident commander for the SMS Oil Spill Incident Command. Other members of the team are Creswell and Gentry Perry, operations chiefs; Leighton Guilbeaux, logistics chief; Eddy Dupuis, finance chief; Scott Domingue, planning chief; and Dr. Don Thibodaux, medical chief.
The incident command hotline number is 877-818-7397; the e-mail address is oilspill@acadian.com.
Article by: Denise Richter, Media Relations, Austin
June 9th, 2010
Acadian’s Air Med, the One Gulf Offshore Emergency Call Center and Acadian Ambulance played a key role in rescue efforts after Tuesday’s oil rig explosion off the coast of Louisiana, transporting 18 of the workers injured in the blast to local New Orleans area and Alabama hospitals.
Read the entire article about the Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig.
May 7th, 2010
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