Speaking of pediatrics...

Here's my accomplishment of the year, and a reminder to CHECK YOUR GEAR:

I'm in charge of medical inventory for my search and rescue team. My first run-through of our 3 gigantic emergency care backpacks was pitiful. Broken 02 regulators, missing c-collars, and the worst find: the single BVM in one of the packs was completely broken and non-functional.

Imagine sitting beside an apneic patient on the side of a mountain 6 hours from civilization and desperately trying to assemble a broken BVM.

Anyways, I noticed that we were only carrying 1 pediatric c-collar and 1 pediatric non-rebreather in each pack, although we had plenty of infant and pediatric-sized equipment stored away. I also noticed that one of our packs would be impossible to bring back up to par... for adults.

Inspiration struck; let's turn the crappy e-care pack into the team's first pediatric pack. And so it was born: a pack filled with pediatric and infant c-collars, NRBs, BVMs, BP cuffs, etc, etc. Now I feel I can treat a kid with our supplies with confidence.

(By the way, that BVM looked totally fine, until I tried to assemble it. This just illustrates how important it is to check your equipment thoroughly instead of just giving it a glance-over)