Swiss Valley Ambulance District Board members learned Wednesday that a member of the Baltic Emergency Medical Technician Squad has received a written reprimand for what was termed an incident of “inappropriate behavior.”

Officials declined to elaborate on the behavior or provide the names of those involved.

The issue was discussed during a lengthy meeting in Village Hall, adjacent to the fire station on W. Main St.

Bannock County is still struggling with ambulance services. The county is trying to recruit some volunteers to fill the EMT shortage they have been faced with for the last few years.

Fortunately, there are people like Canda Dimick...

Canda Dimick, Volunteer EMT: "What I think of life is we are there to help each other and wherever we need to step up, we need to."

During the day, Dimick is the city clerk in Lava Hot Springs, but she is also an on-call volunteer EMT trained to save lives.

Heroic Teen Saves Drowning Friend

A 17-year-old is a hero Monday night after rescuing his friend from dangerous waters.

JT Hart, 17, was swimming with his friend, 17-year-old Ronnie White, in the Cumberland River when his friend under.

Universal rules are needed for doctors playing the "Good Samaritan" to members of the public who fall ill outside hospital, says an experienced medic.

Dr Rubin is a paediatrician by training, who has responded to some two dozen pleas over the past 25 years to help a member of the public who sustained injuries or became critically ill.

Doctors may not always be suitably qualified to take on all manner of public emergencies, he suggests. But no one ever calls out: "Is there a paramedic in the house?" he says.

Many specialists are not used to dealing with the kinds of emergencies that occur on the street. A person in a road traffic collision would be better served by a lifeguard than a dermatologist long out of basic training, for example

Aside from the possibility of mouth to mouth resuscitation, which, research shows, deters some doctors from responding to calls for medical assistance in public places, legal implications increasingly play a part in their discomfort at getting involved, he suggests.

The ‘Good Samaritan’ law, which supposedly affords doctors legal protection from subsequently disgruntled patients and their families "is not exactly airtight," says Dr Rubin.

It does not guarantee that someone will not sue, nor does it provide immunity from malpractice claims, he says.

Yet calls for public help are likely to become more frequent, given increasingly ageing populations and higher rates of chronic illness, he says.

"Are we comfortable relying on random physician expertise, availability, and willingness to meet our emergency needs in the air or on the ground?" he asks. "It is time to figure this out," he concludes.

Written from a news release by BMJ Specialty Journals.

Okay, we should be ready to start a beta test pretty soon.
First things first, what additional features do you want? Right now, the setup is basically this:

* Everyone has their own customizable column
* The most read article will be on the right
* Recent comments on the right
* A toolbar above and a menu on the left that will take readers to all of the writers in each field
* A full list of writers in all fields will be below it.

As you can see by the changes we are almost ready to go into beta testing with the site.

For those of you who signed up to write in the last two weeks or so, we apologize for not realizing you had signed up. Account activation was working but we didn't have it notifying us because we just had the generic engine up here and no interface. We'll get you set up in the next day.

This gives us a chance to answer a few questions people have asked.

Paramedic Blogs is an online community for pre-hospital rescue personnel. It's a resource for news, information,

education and insights all in one convenient location. Everyone has a story to tell. Please visit during the beta

period in February 2007 and tell us yours!

You're looking at the bare engine right now.  This is not the final interface.  It will look a lot better.  So please