It is Paramedic Services Week and the RPPEO would like to acknowledge and honor the hard work and dedication of the paramedics of Eastern Ontario. Over the past year more has been asked of paramedics than ever before, and you have answered the call. Every day you respond to calls for help from the ill and injured. Each call for service is made by someone who sees or feels a problem they believe they cannot manage on their own, and there is a noble place in history for those who come to help.

The BLS Patient Care Standards are the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care expectations with respect to how paramedics will interact with their patients.

Go to Medical Directives

Palliative Care Treat & Refer Directives are now available.

The Palliative Care Medical Directives provide the standards of paramedic care for patients receiving palliative care who are attended by emergency paramedics participating in the Ministry of Health's special project, Paramedics Providing Palliative Care.

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Patients can now have one support person accompanying them at an Ottawa Hospital (TOH) emergency room (ER).

On August 16, 2021, TOH updated its visitor restrictions. The Ottawa Hospital is currently in low visitor restrictions as part of the hospital’s ongoing response to COVID-19. 

Paramedics are encouraged to inform family and loved ones of patients who would benefit from a support person that they may go to the TOH ER.

Issue 1.8

Insight for Paramedics

What you need to know:

• A new directive and more changes coming to the ALS PCS this month
• Time to find out how we make our regional Acute Stroke Bypass program better
• This CTAS infographic will make relying on your memory a thing of the past
• Is a revision to the Ontario paramedic clinical app in the works?

Read the issue here!

MyGriefToolbox.ca helps paramedics respond to palliative care calls and expands their capacity to provide quality care.

The first seven modules provide paramedics with:

• Tactics to support patients and families in acute grief before and after a death.
• Strategies to intervene sensitively.
• Guidance to constructively manage work-related grief and the other stresses of working with people at end of life.
• There is also a module for your friends and family to help them understand and respond to the stresses of your career.
• Your words and actions matter. They significantly impact your patients and their families and have the potential to make a positive (or negative) impact for years to come.

Remember when you could bring a page of notes into your math exam? Having all the formulas written out in your teeny-tiny scribble really helped not to forget that r was squared and c was a constant equal to the speed of light.

Now you've got a similar tool integrated into the Ontario Paramedic Clinical Guide.

The new tool isn't for math, though. The Ontario Base Hospital Group put the key highlights for applying the prehospital Canadian Triage and Acuity Score (CTAS) to your adult patients into graphic form.

Issue 1.8

Insight for Paramedics

What you need to know:

• A new directive and more changes coming to the ALS PCS this month
• Time to find out how we make our regional Acute Stroke Bypass program better
• This CTAS infographic will make relying on your memory a thing of the past
• Is a revision to the Ontario paramedic clinical app in the works?

Read the issue here!

The Ministry of Health has published a partial revision to the Advanced Life Support Patient Care Standards (ALS PCS) that will come into force on Monday, November 23, 2020.

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.