More on Helicopters

From JEMS:
NTSB urges steps to prevent air ambulance crashes
The National Transportation Safety Board issued stringent safety recommendations for air ambulances Wednesday, after investigating 55 crashes that killed 54 people and seriously injured 19 others between 2002 and 2005.
Included in the NTSB’s inquiry, which focused on the crashes of 41 helicopters and 14-fixed wing aircraft, was [...]

More on Helicopter Crashes

From Ascribe.org:
BALTIMORE — Post-crash fires, darkness or bad weather greatly decrease the likelihood of surviving an emergency medical service (EMS) helicopter crash, according to a study by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Injury Research and Policy and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Improving crashworthiness of helicopters and reducing [...]

Former Va. EMT pleads no contest in prank death of colleague

From JEMS:
LEBANON, Va. — A judge convicted a former rescue squad worker of involuntary manslaughter for zapping a co-worker with defibrillator paddles in what turned out to be a deadly prank.
Joshua Philip Martin, 25, faces up to 10 years in prison when he is sentenced in March. Circuit Court Judge Michael Lee Moore, who found [...]

FOUR Score instead of the GCS?

From BrightSurf:
Mayo Clinic neurologists have created the first new, reliable and easy-to-use clinical tool in 30 years for measuring coma depth, a proposed replacement for the Glasgow Coma Scale. The new scoring system, called the FOUR (Full Outline of UnResponsiveness) Score, will be described in the October issue of Annals of Neurology, to be published [...]

ED Telemedicine in Mississippi

Information about the “TelEmergency” program at the University of Mississippi Medical Center:
In response to a lack of emergency care and physicians in many rural areas of Mississippi, the University of Mississippi Medical Center has developed and directs the operation of a rural health telemedicine initiative called TelEmergency.
Providing qualified emergency care in rural hospitals with [...]

Air Medical Safety

From the NY Times, via Symtym:
Air ambulance crashes killed 54 people, most of them pilots, paramedics and nurses, in a three-year period ending in early 2005, according to a special study by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The report, which was approved by the board on Wednesday, concluded that pilots were not good at analyzing [...]

Cigarettes and Oxygen Don’t Mix

Posted on Medlaw.com:
A resident died at an Escondico, CA, nursing home after his oxygen tank burst into flames, according to the San Jose Mercury News. The 67-year-old man was reportedly sitting outside at Palomar Heights Care Center and smoking a cigarette while his oxygen was turned on.
SNF employees sprayed him with a fire extinguisher after [...]

Smart Cards

From Information Week, via Medgadget:
Mount Sinai Medical Center, along with eight affiliated hospitals, next spring plans to begin deploying more than 100,000 smart cards to its patients. In total, there will be more than 45 related and affiliated health facilities in the region involved with the smart card initiative.
The project, which will be rolled [...]

Boone, Iowa - Dr. Kenneth Friday

From Boone Today:
Making the transition from working at a family practice to becoming Boone County Hospital’s Emergency Room (ER) director is a drastic change but it’s a transition that Dr. Ken Friday has achieved successfully. Friday’s experience in the medical field has allowed him to handle the increased patient load seen recently at the ER.He [...]

Iowa Board of Medical Examiners: Privacy

From the Des Moines Register:
A judge has ordered the Iowa Board of Medical Examiners to quit disclosing publicly the reasons behind charges it brings against the doctors it regulates. The meat of the allegations must remain secret until the charges are resolved, the judge ruled. That can take a year or more.
The medical licensing board [...]