Divemedic

In order to promote justice, this principal should be fired. I’m not going to hold my breath, though.

Fifty two percent of all EMS responders report having been physically attacked on the job at some time within the previous twelve months. According to the University of Maryland, the risk of nonfatal assault resulting in lost work time among EMS workers is 57 cases per 10,000 workers per year. The national average for all professions is about 1.8 cases per 10,000 workers per year, making the relative risk for EMS workers about 30 times higher than the national average. This isn’t just EMS getting hurt: in 1999, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that 2,637 nonfatal assaults occurred to hospital workers–a rate of 8.3 assaults per 10,000 workers. Healthcare providers are twice as likely, and EMS workers 15 times as likely, to be assaulted on the job than police officers or prison guards are. Some locations and cities are obviously seeing injury rates that are far above the average.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has identified violence in the medical setting as a potential hazard, and found the training of medical staff to identify and deal with potential violence ineffective. It is the third leading cause of on the job injuries in EMS (only lifting patients and vehicle collisions injure more EMS workers) and the second leading cause of on the job fatalities (behind vehicle accidents), yet the only training we get is “don’t enter the scene unless it is safe.” This approach is obviously not working. There remains a reluctance on the part of EMS agencies and hospital administrators to provide training to effectively address workplace violence.
This begs the question: Why are EMS agencies so reluctant to face this issue? In most agencies, there is no policy for dealing with violent encounters, training for dealing with such encounters is rare, yet the problem seems endemic. There appears to be a variety of reasons, some may not recognize the extent of the problem, and thus don’t perceive the need for training personnel in basic defensive measures, while others erroneously perceive using defensive tactics as fighting, or a form of aggression. Still other agencies feel that the liability that defensive uses of force would bring upon the agency is greater than the costs of treating injured employees. Whatever the reason, allowing the situation to continue as it is now is resulting in seriously injured workers, and the problem is not going to get any better until we as a profession find a way to deal with this issue.
Some changes are desperately needed if we are to see an improvement in the number of injuries that are inflicted upon EMS workers by their violent patients. It is obvious that the current policy of “scene safety” is not working. There is a definite need for research into this area that impacts the safety of our medical workers, so that a solution can be found for preventing and dealing with this epidemic of violence.

A couple of recent incidents have caused me to have to adopt a new personal policy. In the first, I was lecturing an Anatomy and Physiology class, part of the class was about reproduction. I talked about spermatazoa, oocytes (female eggs), and genitalia, and how they worked to pass on genetic material in humans. Two female students filed a sexual harassment complaint against me, and said that talking about those things is offensive. They also complained that, during a break, I told a joke involving a gay bar and another student that was in the class. The problem was that I was not the one that made that joke, it was another student.

When they got the complaint, the school flew off the handle and pulled me off the class without even seeing if the mention of genitalia was appropriate to the class material. I was on the verge of resigning from teaching. If you can’t mention body parts in an anatomy class, how can you possibly teach it?

 So the next morning, I went to the CEO of the school, who questioned several other students from that class, and they confirmed that the lecture was professional and well done, and that the off color joke had not been me. I finished the lecture as originally scheduled.

 (On a side note, certain immature students need to decide if they are cut out for the paramedic profession. I pity their future coworkers, because those girls are a lawsuit or a termination waiting to happen. Talk about potentially career ending coworkers.)

The second incident involves a car accident. I was backing up in a parking lot, when another vehicle, also backing up, collided with mine. There were no witnesses at the time. That is, until a week later. That was when a man came forward and suddenly the accident was confirmed as my fault. My insurance is now paying the damages.

After those incidents, and after seeing the number of stupid police stops, I have decided to do the followng:

I am going to purchase a couple of video cameras, and will be recording certain high risk activities like driving and teaching class. I am looking for an in vehicle DVR system that will record my driving. It has to have certain features:
1 Record front and rear views with audio
2 Store video in a secure format that can only be accessed with a password
3 It would be nice if it could transit video off site on request

There will be a second camera bought that will record my lectures, and I will archive them all for a period of time, perhaps two weeks or a month.

That is the world we live in now. Cover your ass is the name of the game.

One of the disagreements that I have with the TEA party is about pay and benefits of public workers. The TEA partiers like to claim that public sector workers get an overly generous pay and benefits package when compared to private sector workers.

Firefighters in Central Florida are required to graduate from the fire academy, have passed the state firefighter exam, graduate from EMT, pass that state exam, graduate from Paramedic school, pass that state exam, and then take and pass other minor classes like EVOC. All in all, this takes about two years of full time school. (a year for paramedic, 3 months for EMT, and six  months for firefighter) At the end of that schooling, you are paid a starting wage of $13.25 an hour, on average. The work schedule of a firefighter is 56 hours a week, but firefighters do not receive time and a half for over time until they work more than 53 hours in a week. This means that the $13.25 an hour translates to just $40,000 a year. (although 3% is deducted to pay for pension)

Working for private EMS is not an option, because although they get overtime when working more than 40 hours, the starting pay for a non-emergency paramedic nets you a starting pay of $13 an hour for that year of training.
So pay is $26,000 a year.
Now one would think that this means that firefighters are being paid a fair wage, but remember that private EMS in Central Florida means routine transports of shuttling people back and forth from the nursing home to their dialysis appointments. There is no skill or decision making to be done there.

Compare that to registered nurses: RNs have a two year school. One year, if you are already a paramedic. for that two years of schooling, the starting pay for an RN is $32.50 an hour. That is equal to about $65,000 a year. This leaves a prospective firefighter with a choice: Spend two years in school to work 56 hours a week for $40,000 a year, or spend the same time in school to make $65,000 a year working 40 hours a week. The difference used to be that firefighters got a decent pension.

Not any more. Firefighters hired after July 1 (the beginning of the fiscal year) in Florida will likely not be allowed to partake in the pension plan. This makes nursing a lot more lucrative. This is one of the reasons why I left, and is the reason why many firefighters, including my son, go to nursing school in order to leave what is increasingly a bad career choice.

I understand that the TEA partiers want to save money and pay less taxes, and if that is what they want, I can respect that. However, when that happens, don’t complain about the level of service you get from the lower paid workers that arrive at your house, because the smarter ones left for greener pastures. Especially considering that public pensions only account for 3% of the state’s budget, while Medicaid eats up 30% of the state budget.

The savings are in giveaway programs, not by cutting the pay of people who will simply find employment elsewhere.

Several days ago, Graybeard put up a post about how we may not be capable of thinking like gun grabbers. After reading this:

“The Senators feel the best course of action is to remove all weapons from law enforcement and private citizens so no one else gets hurt,” said a Senate communications intern. “When the gunman realizes that nobody else is armed, he will lay down his weapons and turn himself in…. that’s just human nature.”

I realize that he was right. There is no way that I can get my head that far up my ass. (PS: I know the article is satire.)

I have used Turbo Tax for years, ever since I discovered how H&R Block does taxes: They put some schlub that has no accounting or financial experience through a class on how to use their software, and then they simply ask what the computer tells them to, and fill in the blanks. Then they charge you a pile of money for it.
Problem is, they often screw it up. Case in point: My girlfriend. She has done her taxes at H&R Block for years. She was showing me her return, and I caught an error. We went through her taxes for the past three years, and they have caused her to pay nearly $4,000 more than she should have.
Now we are having to file amended returns. For 2010, she is past the three year limit on filing an amended return, so that money is gone.
We just finished her amended return for 2011, and the IRS owes her $1724, thanks to the wonderful morons at H&R Block.
Once her refund check comes in, we will have to refile her 2012 taxes as well.
What got me started was her complaining that H&R Block claims that they will file a 1040EZ for you for free, but then they charged her $85, because they had to file a 1040A in order to take advantage of a $71 credit that was available to her. The difference in her refund of $71 caused them to charge her an extra $85 in preparation fees, meaning a net loss of $14 to her. We began looking closer, and saw that they had missed quite a few deductions and credits, including education credits.

So I went last night to see Penn and Teller perform at Hard Rock Live, located at Universal Studios Orlando. Even though there was no advance warning on the tickets, there were magnetometers set up at the entrance, and they were searching everyone. I walked up to the security guard and asked him if there were somewhere that I could secure my weapon. He said that they did not even allow cops to carry weapons in the venue. He said that because they served alcohol inside, it was illegal to carry weapons.

I pointed out that he was wrong, that state law actually says that:

Any portion of an establishment licensed to dispense alcoholic beverages for consumption on the premises, which portion of the establishment is primarily devoted to such purpose (emphasis added)

Since the area was primarily devoted to concerts, and the sale of alcohol was incidental to that use, I think that the law is pretty clear there. But, hey, private property and all that, and not wanting to miss the show, I asked what to do, and was told to lock it in my car.

There are two problems with that: I had parked my car in valet parking, and there ARE notices everywhere, both in regular and valet parking, that say Universal Studios is not responsible for valuables left in parked  automobiles. I pointed this out, and he suggested that I rent a locker in a nearby kiosk. So, I walked the several hundred yards to the locker rentals, and rented a locker for $4.

This didn’t surprise me, as Universal is owned by NBC, who are hardly defenders of gun rights, but it did surprise me that Penn and Teller would allow this sort of behavior at a show.

In short, the magnetometers were BULLSHIT.

According the Officer Down Memorial Page, there were 126 law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty in 2012. That inflates things a bit, because 18 of them were police dogs.

8 police dogs died of heat exhaustion
2 K9s killed in transportation related incidents.
6 K9s were shot
1 died from a fall

 Let’s take a look at what happened to the 108 human cops, shall we?
Of those 108:

There were 42 officers killed in transportation incidents, 39% of those killed.
3 from aircraft, 35 in auto accidents, 5 were struck by vehicles as pedestrians.

16 of them (15%) died from medical problems, or from accidents:
2 were killed by unspecified “medical emergencies”
1 died from hepatitis C that he contracted in 1983
1 died from complications of a surgery to repair an on duty knee injury
2 cops were killed by falling from heights
1 died from injuries sustained in 2009 when he fell off of a horse
1 died from heat exhaustion
7 died from heart attacks
1 killed in a training accident when an instructor threw him and caused a head injury

Of the 17 cops killed by non-firearm assaults:
11 were run down by criminals
1 was killed with an assailant’s bare hands
5 were stabbed. All 5 were stabbed by jail or prison inmates.

Of the 43 firearm deaths:
1 was killed by her husband, using her own gun
1 was killed by an assailant who overpowered the officer and shot him with his own gun
2 were shot by other cops in cases of mistaken identity

2 were shot and killed when a prisoner that was in custody, was handcuffed in a patrol car, and had already been searched, produced a handgun and shot them.
1 was ambushed and killed in his driveway by a convicted felon that he had arrested many times over a 40 year career.
1 was shot in 1965 and died in 2012. Hard to say this death is due to being shot when you live another 48 years.
2 were ambushed by domestic terrorists while working off duty jobs in their patrol cars.

By weapon type
19 were shot by unknown firearms
18 with handguns
1 with a shotgun
3 with unknown type rifles
4 with so called “assault weapons”

So out of the 108 cops killed in 2012, there were 36 cops killed by assaults on the street by people that they came in contact with. The rest of the deaths were accidents, medical problems, being shot by other cops, by their spouses, and other incidents. It is a myth that cops have a job that is so dangerous as to require that they disarm and subjugate every citizen that they come into contact with for “officer safety.”

If they really cared about officer safety, they would take away their lights and sirens, and force them to drive at reasonable speeds. That would have saved the lives of the same number of officers, and not led to violating people’s rights and roughing them up.