Support your Paramedics

Where will you find October MedicNEWS when it's December? It's in the MedicNEWS archive, of course! 

We've put back issues of MedicNEWS in the Resources tab on the menu. If you're searching for a topic we've covered or want to flip through old issues, check out the MedicNEWS archive.

You'll find a major focus on palliative care with this year's online Fall CME. Giving you a better knowledge about this patient population will help in care whether or not your paramedic service goes on to implement the new care pathways that the Ottawa Health Research Institute plans to introduce through the Paramedics Providing Palliative Care Project. We've included a discussion forum in MedicLEARN to help support the lessons' content.

Issue 1.6

Insight for Paramedics in Eastern Ontario

In this issue:

• The real reason we tell patients about the scariest risks of refusing transport
• A smoothie-drinking patient case study
• 69 % of ACPs have this in common (Hint: it's a CME thing)
• Saying goodbye to one of our associate medical directors

The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting almost everything in our lives and clinical practice … even medication supplies!
Increased demand is fueling medication shortages in some cases. In other cases, the active ingredient is not available locally or manufacturing has slowed down.
All of these lead to the same results: medication is harder to supply.
Some of you have already experienced the effects of medication shortages such as:

• Medication needing to be substituted, such as amiodarone and lidocaine
• Lack of prefilled syringes
• Complete lack of a medication
• Changes to medication labelling – we may get medications in other languages (there is Spanish salbutamol and ketamine in Canada now) or with other names (adrenaline instead of epinephrine)
• Changes to ampoules or vials so that they are easily mistaken: one service has ketorolac and naloxone vials that look very similar