December 10, 2025 Breakfast Meeting Notes
The 50/50 was won by Ken Williamson,
Erica won the chance to draw in the card game but pulled the 4 of spades. The game continues.
Rotary weekly highlights: We had a good Saturday at the Hometown Holiday Celebration. Thanks to all who volunteered! Local feedback was very positive. The announcer reported that people actually come up from Concord for this parade as it is the best around, and it did not disappoint. We did have a couple of glitches but they were minor and resolved quickly. We had 39 floats this year, the most we’ve ever had; it took an hour for the parade to finish. The brass instruments all froze up with the cold, so unfortunately they weren’t able to play. Kudos to MaryBeth, Alicia, and Interact for the float. We gave out 552 candy canes at the visits with Santa. Denise reported that the food sales went well. Cheeseburgers and hot dogs were the big sellers. We grossed $850 and we still have to pay for the food. Only a couple of people asked about the bonfire.
We passed around a card for Tom; it was presented to him at the end of the meeting.
Alicia is starting to focus on the transition grants. She has reached out to a couple of women-owned construction businesses, and Greg has lined up a female auto mechanic, among others. We have a lot of dates to fill!
Erica presented trivia, “Ski areas in New England” edition.
Greg was our speaker today. He has been in EMS services since 1998; he started in ski patrol and worked at Winter Park in Colorado for 10 years. He lost the first head trauma patient he rescued; the experience led him to decide to go to nursing school. He continued in nursing, training in two high level trauma centers. Today he spoke to us about what to expect if you should need an ER visit.
When you arrive, you get registered and meet a triage nurse. This person will quickly evaluate you to determine how severe your injuries are. You will be rated on an Emergency Services Index, ranging from 5 (dental pain) to 1 (cardiac arrest, respiratory failure). The great majority of patients are 2-4. This classification helps determine what services are needed.
Frequently the hospitals have to work with a large volume of patients and so people may need to wait a long time. They lost a lot of nurses during Covid and a lot of hospitals are under tremendous financial pressure, so you will need to be patient. Once you get in an exam room, they will start putting in lab tests (blood, urine, imaging) so that they have results ready by the time the practitioner examines you. In the first 5 minutes, they typically know if you will be admitted or discharged.
Fear and anxiety is a huge motivator for patients; practitioners need to be calm in order to focus on their job. Some of the older more jaded practitioners will be grumpy with (for example) young parents who are worried about their child with a fever, and this can come across as uncaring. Greg has spent a lot of time in the last few years emphasizing this to students and reminding them of the emotional experiences of the patients..
You may be hospitalized if you have a more serious or ongoing problem. Greg is constantly on alert; he looks for the automatic external defibrillator (AED), for example, every time he enters a new building. He also keeps a well-stocked first aid kit in his car at all times.
Not everything that happens to us requires a visit to the ER. There is no such thing as an orthopedic emergency; you will be asked to wait and see an orthopedist if you have a simple fracture. if there is a skin defect, that needs to be addressed right away to help prevent infection. Urgent care is something that Greg has mixed feelings about. Commercial urgent care facilities try to upsell your care; hospital based urgent care doesn’t have the pressure to sell you drugs you don’t need. Commercial ones want for medication to be prescribed as it is a profit center for them. Do NOT go to urgent care for chest pain, shortness of breath, sudden onset of headaches; these could be very serious and you should go to the ER. You can see your primary care doctor for blood pressure spikes. Urinary tract infections, minor cuts and bruises, or minor orthopedic injuries can go to urgent care. Make sure that the place you intend to go has x rays if you have a fracture or other problem requiring X-rays; if they don’t, they will just send you on to the ER but you will then have to pay for two examinations. Most urgent care facilities don’t have ultrasound or CT scans, so you will be sent out for these procedures. High velocity traumas (gunshot wounds and the like) should go to the ER. Mental heath cases may be treated first in the ER for physical or toxic injuries (such as hanging, shooting, stabbing, or poisoning) before being transitioned to the mental health services
Mike Son commented on the anxiety levels of students and nursing students now; it must be extra hard to teach them to remain calm under pressure Greg noted that the schools are “teaching to the test” and the anxiety really ramps up. He feels that the process has led some people who shouldn’t be nurses, but are good at test-taking, to manage to pass, while some who would make great nurses drop out because of the pressure. Things need to change.
Happy dollars were shared by Sharon, Mike, Denise, and Tony.
Respectfully submitted,
Lora Miller, secretary