[fm2606]

As a former firefighter-paramedic of 14 years which I left in 2020, our LifePak monitors went up to 360J. We did use self adhesive pads and never once did I have any odd smells after "welding" someone. We used stacked sequence, starting out at 200J, 300J and 360J. Our LifePaks did have AED but very few people used that option, so yeah, medics and agencies still require to know how to read traces. To know which rhythms to shock and which ones not to isn't rocket science, nor are there that many. There are only two pulseless rhythms that get shocked. There are also a couple of reason to shock conscious people with rhythms that does require a bit more training and knowing when to give the shock but it isn't all that difficult to learn.

Not sure why the "us kids" comment. How come you aren't boasting about not wearing gloves and PPE? I've heard about "back in the day" how it was a badge of honor to be covered in someone else's blood. That shit ain't cool at all, but it does occasionally happen where blood does get on unprotected skin, it has happened to me.

Did we have to know as much as back in the 70s, 80s and 90s? No, not at all but that is advancement and not necessarily watering it down.

If I have an out-of-hospital emergency I definitely would want street medics and firefighter there for help. I am still shocked how often I've seen doctors and nurses loose their shit because they aren't use to having to think on their own or they don't have a team of 10 or 15 people there to back them up. I've seen it in firefighters and medics as well, just not as often. Most nurses aren't allowed intubate in a well lit hospital room, let alone lying on the asphalt of a highway or floor of someones home.

[Johnny555]

>Not sure why the "us kids" comment.

>Did we have to know as much as back in the 70s, 80s and 90s? No, not at all but that is advancement and not necessarily watering it down.

Sounds like you do understand the comment and agree with it, but still took offense.

[8338550bff96]

Best of both worlds

[softgrow]

Hi fm2606, I left ambulances in 1991. Probably was 1986 when we got Lifepack 5 (the first one that came in under $12000 AUD and totally manual, the lifepack 3 was in limited use from I think 1983 but way too expensive to have more than two for my city (1M people), cost was a real barrier). On introduction the only thing we had for conductivity was a gel. After a year or two the gel pads came out. The "us kids" was really a comment about my amazement at after more recently being trained in AED and the darn thing does everything for you. It has a whole lot of technologies that simply weren't available then (recognise rhythms, text to speech, record rhythms to storage etc etc). So much cheaper, lighter, don't need spare batteries, and seeing the huge change that technology has brought. (P.S. We were ignorant in the 80's. No gloves, no hard hats, had to wear ties and a fancy cap. No reflective wear except for bright yellow raincoats that we only wore to stay dry.)

[closewith]

> Did we have to know as much as back in the 70s, 80s and 90s? No, not at all but that is advancement and not necessarily watering it down.

We need to know much more now than ever before, as the number of treatments performed on scene has grown enormously. Not to mention survivability is orders of magnitude better.