About Kevin Wetherbee, AS, NRP, EMS-1

Kevin Wetherbee, AS, NRP, EMS-I, began his EMS career right out of high school in upstate New York in 1984. He became a paramedic in 1986 and has worked in some form of EMS system since that time. He has experience in 911, non-emergent transport, emergency room care, inter-facility transport, critical care transport and industrial EMS. He currently instructs for DistanceCME, is a critical care medic operating in Columbia, SC, and is an educational subcontractor for the Teleflex corporation, providing emergency medicine device education throughout the country. He is a continuing education program administrator in South Carolina as well as an instructor in CPR, ACLS, PALS, PHTLS, AMLS and CEVO courses. He has earned his Associates of Applied Sciences degree in Emergency Medical Services and graduated with high honors from Corning Community College in Corning, NY.

What A Shock! – History of the Modern Pacemaker

The History of the Modern Pacemaker and Symptomatic Bradycardia The year was 1952 and Paul Zoll introduced the first transcutaneous cardiac pacemaker to treat symptomatic bradycardia. Six years later, the first successful implantation of a pacemaker was performed in Sweden on Arne Larsson by performing a thoracotomy and suturing 2 epicardial electrodes to the heart. [...]

Pediatric Assessment and Treatment

Very few things strike as much fear in most EMS providers more than the critically ill or injured pediatric transport. Some of the forces that instill fear in most EMS providers is the lack of available appropriately sized pediatric equipment, the general lack of familiarity with what would be deemed “normal” vital sign parameters, the [...]

D.E.A.T.H. a mnemonic to remember

Many providers in EMS often strive to and eventually attain their certification to transport patients via rotorcraft and/or fixed wing modes of transport. While these modes of transport are often looked at as the apex of one’s EMS career, non pressurized flight comes with not only emotional and intellectual stressors due to the inherent acuity of [...]

Special Healthcare Needs

The term “Special Healthcare Needs” means different things to different people. Collectively, patients with special healthcare needs encompasses the geriatric, bariatric, pediatric, sensory impaired, technologically dependent patients, behaviorally challenged patients and many others. Every group has special challenges, risk factors and needs as well as the fact that our approach to them as health care providers [...]

The body’s Nervous System

      The body’s Nervous System is a very complex system that controls all functions of the body from purposeful movement to regulation of homeostasis and everything in between. We will be dividing it into the Central nervous System (CNS) and the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS) for the purposes of this discussion. These two subdivisions [...]

Why do Navy Chiefs hate Kidney stones? It clogs the P ways…

The human renal system is responsible for not only filtering blood of impurities, it is also responsible for maintaining the acid base balance within very tight tolerances and discarding toxins and by products of cellular metabolism via urine.  It consists not only of the kidneys but also the ureters, urinary bladder and the urethra. The  nephron [...]

Strategies to improve care for mechanical ventilation patients

Mechanical ventilation has come a long way in ease of use and adjustability, but there is still no substitute for provider judgement and intellect. No one piece of the puzzle is 100% reliable, so the practitioner must use all pieces in unison to arrive at an informed decision as to whether the patient is benefiting from interventions.