Your Physical and Mental Jumpbag

Your Physical and Mental Jump-bag

By Alan Perry

September 19, 2013

The jump-bag is the one item you should always take into any EMS call, it must be equipped with the basics needed to save a life and start treatment for a variety of illnesses and injury. Your brain, mental preparedness and training are a similar set of tools, equally important, requiring your daily check-off and replacement and repair of expired or damaged items. Occasionally old items are removed to make use of new tools with proven efficacy or updates. The tools in the jump-bag should be those needed to deal with true emergencies and routine patient assessment while remaining highly portable, easy to carry, and easy to navigate. We all know this is not always the case, we also know that the information and training we have accumulated is perishable and needs to be organized in our head so that we can access it quickly and reliability. The next time you are checking off your jump-bag do a little mental check off; do you have all of your protocols memorized? Is your knowledge of basic A&P sufficient to determine what illness or injury may be present and how best to treat it? Do you know the indications, contra indications and side effects of the drugs in your drug box and common prescribed medications? Do you have tools in your head that need cleaning, repair or replacement? Have you taken action to correct it through study or repair/replacement through your training division?

I know you have grabbed a jump-bag at some point in your career and found that some critical item, perhaps oxygen, or a stethoscope was either missing, empty or broken, preventing you from doing what is required for the best patient care. It happens, and we do the best we can with what we have until we find someone else with what we need or we gain access to our back-ups. In our minds, if we draw a blank, forget or are unsure of what to do our back-up is the protocol book. I am not an advocate of “cookbook” medicine, if the protocol book has become your source for patient treatment options you are doing the equivalent of leaving your jump-bag in the truck. My “take-home” message is that you need mental preparedness just as much as physical preparedness, if not more. 

Doing a mental check-off, like doing an equipment check-off, requires some type of check-off sheet to identify the required items, there condition, and status if out for repair or on order. For a provider you can look at your protocols, pharmacology, certifications and education requirements; if you had to test out again today, would you pass? I would avoid simply meeting the expectations of your employer, agency or the public, this leads to complacency. You should be prepared to deal efficiently and effectively with every possible patient and scene presentation within, and maybe slightly beyond, your scope of practice. You didn't get into this business because it was easy, so let the fun begin.

Be Safe,
Alan