April 18th – Iredell EMS used the Ultrasound for the first time on an Level 2 trauma who was tachycardic and complaining of abdominal pain. Thankfully, the FAST exam was non-diagnostic for free fluid in the abdomen. More impressively, no fluid was found on her CT either. We have a protocol to notify the trauma centers if we have positive or negative studies, but to date (4-18-16) 5 studies have been done. All were non-diagnostic in the field, and none were later found to have fluid where it shouldn’t be. So far, so good! I can’t wait for the first true positive – talk about being able to help. Giving the trauma team a 20 minute “heads-up” about critically injured patients will be incredible.”

April 11th – Everyone is ready to go. We had our last formal training session as a big group today. Lots and lots of FAST exams. There is no question that the paramedics can get the correct views! And Dr. Mell let them know that their performance on the written test on the 28th was awesome. With the exception of one image (that literally everyone missed – more likely a projection problem) no one missed more than 1 out of 20 abnormals hidden within a series of 50 images. I think they are only going to get better with time!

March 28th – Kathie and a new Terason rep came down on March 28th, and we did more training. We really focused on the crews’ ability to find abnormal images hidden among normal ones. The crews did great! They are really learning their stuff. The Medical Director and the Chief figure only have one more training on image acquisition and I’ll be released into the wild! As it is, the supervisors have all four ultrasounds up and running and have been practicing with the crews every chance they get.