Excuse me, but does Laerdal StifNeck (a company that makes adjustable cervical collars) employ giraffes exclusively? According to them we are all a bunch of fat short freaks with no necks. I'm sure many of you EMS'ers have picked up on this and have had a chuckle or two over it, but I'll explain this for everyone else.
Laerdal StifNeck Select collars have 4 neck height settings, from tallest to shortest: Tall, Regular, Short and NoNeck (a size name they have trademarked). The ironic thing is, almost everyone is a short or a "NoNeck". Excuse me Laerdal, I have a fucking neck thank you very much. Is it me or is that kind of insulting? Those smug bastards at Laerdal are calling us all freaks.
I have probably collared at least 30-50 individuals with StifNeck collars in the past year, and only one was a regular and I have yet to meet a "tall". So here's my open letter to the folks at Laerdal StifNeck.
Dear Laerdal StifNeck,
This is not a "regular" neck length:
So until you start manufacturing cervical collars exclusively for the lovely Kayan people of Burma, please stop being a bunch of assholes and referring to the rest of us as no-necked turtle-freaks. Every time someone applies a cervical collar on me and adjusts the collar to your trademark size of "NoNeck", I think I die a little on the inside.
Please, revise the size categories of your cervical collars to make an inch of sense.
Love,
Lucid.
2 comments:
One thing I have learned in my years in EMS is that everyone is a "no-neck". It is the most used size in the field. I will say I have used no-neck collars on 8 out of every 10 patients I treated for c-spine injuries. Shepp
Granted, the old "No-Neck fits all." theme is a popular one, but just because it FITS doesn't mean it fits WELL. A properly fitted collar should slightly extend the chin, it can be very tempting(in my own experience, I'll grant you!) to slap a no-neck on any old boy because you can get it on. Sometimes, however, the right size is a little larger.
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