#98 Blood. I learned fairly early on in my career as a paramedic that I was okay with blood. One of my first few calls involved enough blood-letting in a kitchen it could have been fodder for skits performed by Dan Ackroyd as The French Chef on SNL. There was […]
Hal Newman
115 posts
A nugget of Big Medicine for your consideration. #97 Carpets. Carpets have figured prominently in several of my more memorable EMS calls. Yes, that’s right. Carpets. One of my least favourite carpet calls came in as difficulty breathing and then got re-prioritized as respiratory distress. The address was a very […]
A nugget of Big Medicine for your consideration. #96 End of shift Last weekend I had the privilege of meeting a brother medic/firefighter who has been on one helluva long godawful ride that has transcended hundreds of shifts and a large chunk of his life. The trauma Al experienced occurred […]
A nugget of Big Medicine for your consideration. #95 Test fire yourself. We are big on drills, exercises and simulations in EMS. We thrive on scenario-crafting. We roll on simulated cardiac arrests to practice our code protocols. We set up improbable Road Traffic Crash scenes to test our ability to […]
A nugget of Big Medicine for your consideration. #94 The Three Paragraph Rule Of all the diagnostic techniques I learned during my life on the streets, none has served me better than the Three Paragraph Rule. Of course, a positive result for Hand Drop Over Nose (HDON) was much more […]
A nugget of Big Medicine for your consideration. #91 Christmas Jew Long before the Brunelle Family introduced me to the joys of celebrating Christmas in the company of family at the foot of a beautifully decorated tree, I was a Christmas Jew. For on Christmas eve ‘tis the moment when […]
A nugget of Big Medicine for your consideration. #90 The bet Michael Smith still owes me a case of beer. The beer is the debt on a bet made between paramedics rolling the ju-jube dice and hoping for excellent vibes. Michael threw it down as a measure of extra karma […]
A nugget of Big Medicine for your consideration. #89 Tzedakah I wrote this piece a number of Christmakahs ago. I thought about it yesterday when I heard about the heartwarming story of Larry DePrimo, the NYPD cop who bought a homeless man a pair of shoes. We like to hear […]
A nugget of Big Medicine for your consideration. #88 The union we deserve I’m not a union guy but I once started a wildcat strike. Mike ‘Elwood’ Crowley and I reported for work about 45 minutes early, as per usual, at the Western Sector garage of Urgences Sante (Montreal EMS). […]
A nugget of Big Medicine every day. #87 C’est tiguidou As a semi-pro breaker of bad news I should have seen the signs. Ambulance Mike calling relatively early on a Sunday morning. No attempt at striking a Monty Pythonesque accent as per the previous hundreds of calls between us. Straight […]