I stole my title from 9-ECHO-1. He has a thought provoking post up using a different title, but he uses that line in the post. The post is Unacceptible risks and such… . Give it a read. He points out that fire fighters are able to use PPE (Personal Protective Equipment). Why not EMS? For some reason, EMS seems to look at safety as Gloves on. Scene safe. This is not mission accomplished. This does not protect us from the most significant on-the-job risk we face. If we do not have any open wounds on our hands and wash our hands (or use alcohol-based hand cleaner) before and after patient contact, do we receive any benefit from the addition of gloves? No. If we do not wear seat belts are we protecting our patients? If we do not wear seat belts are we protecting ourselves? Patient dies so EMTs can buckle up seems to be just the right way to ridicule taking that risk. Do we think less of the police for wearing body armor? Some old timers do criticize this, but this is not intelligent criticism.

Original Source of Patient dies so EMTs can buckle up