We in EMS are now 're-using' our N95 masks, but only to a certain extent.
It's crazy to think but only 3 months ago we would burn an entire N-95 mask on a new-hire just to fit test them, and then throw it away. We would use 20-30 masks a month just on testing and then toss them. It seems crazy in hindsight. I doubt our company will ever adopt this practice ever again. We will still fit-test people of course, but I imagine we will tell the person to keep the mask.
Now? Now we have to use the same mask for an all-day shift and even then some employees are choosing to keep them after their shift.
We are telling them that if they use an N-95 mask, and if in their own best judgement the patient did NOT have COVID19, then they can re-use that mask for the rest of their shift. If the patient might well have or confirmed does have COVID19, then we are telling them that the mask is contaminated and to throw it away and get another one.
We are becoming stretched. As part of the Operations leadership team we have to find the fine line between protecting our people now, and protecting our people 6 months from now.
It's easy to say to our EMTs and Paramedics, "Wear full PPE on every call no matter what." And that would in fact offer our people the best possible protection. But if we do that, then in 3-6 months we might very well have nothing left to give them and then we'd be seriously up shit's creek. Then the best we could do is tell them to pull their t-shirts up over their nose.
It's not easy to find the middle ground. Right now we are trying our best to work with Dispatch (which is complicated because they just recently joined the Teamsters and have become a bunch of angry little Soviets who care more about being allowed to dye their hair green than they do about making our operation function) to try to give the EMTs a 'best guess' as to when they might want to wear their PPE, and combine that with educating our own EMTs on our end as to how to define a potential COVID patient.
------
For instance, 2 days ago we had a crew who was Dispatched to a 36 year old male who 'had a cough'. Dispatch told the crew to 'Wear Full PPE' because he had a cough. The crew did this and put on all of their PPE before they made patient contact. Then they got on scene and discovered that this was actually just a psych patient was was pretending to have a couch because he thought it was funny to fuck with people.
We burned through 2 full sets of PPE because this one motherfucker thought it was funny.
If PPE supplies were infinite then this would be no problem. But PPE supplies are very much not infinite, so this is a problem. We have a lot of stock, and we could keep going down this path of hypervigiliance for probably a few months. But what happens if we keep going down this path and COVID is still a threat in September and we have finally run out of stock? Then what?
So in the last 3-4 days we have issued protocols that are designed to give our people all of the access to the PPE that they need, but in turn we are also advising them to not waste any of it on frivolous claims.
------
We're in a real pickle. It's not even about money. We have the money. It's that we need to protect our people right now, but also need to be able to protect our people 6 months from now.
How do you draw that line? How do you tell a group of 300+ 20-something year old EMTs to be fully vigilant against COVID... but also not to waste supplies or else we might all be in big trouble come Autumn?
-----
Dispatch is telling them to wear PPE on damn near every call, and we are forced to tell them to NOT wear PPE on every call. We are telling them to take each patient on a case by case basis. Protect yourself, yes. But understand that if you go too far in this direction then you might not be able to protect yourself later down the road. We are THROWING MONEY at the manufacturers and they are telling us, simply, that no amount of money can make their machines work faster. It's not a money thing it's a capacity thing.
Crazy times. I've been taking pictures of my base. It's like an alien world. Things are SO different than they were just 3 weeks ago.
forward.com
