A reason for everyone to take a first aid course.

i got the knoladge, serverd 6 yr as a 3 for hands on,,,, and quit. i do see your point.

 

Remain anonymous.
To say it another way..
A way to gain more trouble in your life, is to try and get appreciation for your efforts.

 

Then your state views duty to act in a strange way. In the state I live in you have to be on duty and assigned to the call to have a duty to act. Also if there is undo risk to your life to attempt provide care such as the house is fully involved and not enough personnel immediately available to go interior attack to find a victim.
So here if you are driving down the highway and see an accident or are in the gorcery store and see someone collapse, no duty to act. If you are a volunteer and not responding to a call you were paged for, no duty to act. (Its volunteer so…) If you accept the page and take the call then there is unless serious life safety risk for you. (Crazy person with weapon etc) in those cases we wait down the street until the cops have done their thing.

i would never participate in a volunteer department that had assigned shifts. That would put you in a duty to act gray area. Straight up volunteer, go when you can, is good for me. Also our town carries insurance policies on all of us just in case as well. people ARE crazy and sue happy in some cases. Even though I don’t know a single case of someone ever winning a lawsuit against a volunteer department. I am not sure if any have been won against a full time fire or ambulance department here either.

 

I like doing it because i spent part of my life helping end other people’s lives while deployed. I feel better being on a team trying to save lives at this point just as a volunteer. I wouldn’t do it full time though. I like my regular job.

 

its worse then that. a duty to act acording to the standard of care. sop is written by physician sponser. emt 3 is 80% cardiac here. most calls are car wrecks. it was fun whiie it lasted and i got tte skill sers i wanted. iv been out a long time but i think ak had 3,4 emts sued cases. altruism runs rampant in vol fire/ems.

 

Oh your medical director sucks! Sorry.

 

EMTing in a volunteer FD can become toooo much with the wrong leadership ....

Our local FD was one of the first in IL - complete with an OEM ambulance unit >>> but - the volunteer Chief became paid full-time - soon the entire FD was a "paramedic club" - they wouldn't take new members without a commitment & qualifications to become a licensed paramedic - training for anything else was dropped - firefighting equipment neglected ....

had a major fire downtown from an arson - threat for it to spread from connected building to building >>> wasn't for the neighboring town FDs arriving it would have been a disaster - entire town was there - watched the incompetence of the younger guys that were supposed to be carrying the physical burden - older veterans were giving on-scene training on the basic basics - the other responding FDs couldn't believe the overall situation .....