Re: List Etiquette_WAS_ List behavior

I thought that was my point. I agree that an honest evaluation of equipment and vendor support are appropriate topics for list discussion and in my opinion can and should be presented on Flightmed in a factual and professional manner. What do you completely disagree with? Are you saying that you don't mind rude behavior and think that a "warts and all' free-flowing exchange of whatever comes to mind is best? Fair enough...my computer has a delete key and I use it often. However, I doubt that the vendors that serve our industry will take us seriously if the best we can muster for a product description to a colleague seeking information is that something is a "piece of shit".

It is a certainty that such an "endorsement" gets a vendor's attention but not in way that will improve the tools we need to practice our chosen profession. Do you think that lowering the discussion to such a level works in a productive way or does it make us appear childish and immature? Regardless of how important we think we are, Air-Medical transport is a very small segment of the health care industry. If we turn off the manufacturers who can make more money serving larger markets such as ground EMS and hospitals, we will end up working with and trying to adapt equipment designed for use in those arenas to our needs. It will not be worth their time, money, and effort to develop or improve the equipment that we use by making it smaller, lighter or more user-friendly as the financial return is simply too small to focus on our industry's specialized needs.

I do not wish to try making an HP Merlin monitor work off the aircraft inverter and doubt that you would want to try loading a Bennett 7200 into an EC135. While those are obviously absurd examples, I think everybody understands what I mean. While vendors should be held accountable for poor service it is easier to work with them than to be adversarial...they already know that the word spreads quickly throughout the air-medical community when there are problems with customer support. Bad news always travels faster than good...

Flightmed list postings are archived and just about everyone has signed off with their program affiliation at one time or another. We represent our programs when we come here whether we include it on our signature block or not and I'll repeat what I've said before; If we keep our communications on this list professional in tone and presentation, there should be nobody that feels a need to omit or hide their names and organizational affiliation. I am proud of my flight program and know that in participating on Flightmed that I have not said anything here to discredit or place it in a bad light. It is just as important that our community be viewed positively by all that come in contact with it in any situation or in any media outlet. We need to be ever-mindful that this is a public list. I would hate to see Flightmed become a moderated or closed forum but I've seen it happen before on other listservers when things got out of hand.

This is pretty much all that I have to say on this topic. And, just in case anybody was wondering, I speak for myself and have no interest or personal stake in MRL and we do not use their monitor at STAT MedEvac. After a long evaluation trial and comparison testing of the Zoll, MRL, and Physio-Control offerings, we found that the LifePak 12 best suited our program's needs.

----- Original Message -----

I completely disagree. I would like to hear about vendor support.
Rude behavior is Rude. Honest evaluation, Can be professional. I
would like to hear it all. If I have to protect myself to more than
milktoast, thats how it is. Long memories being what they are and all.

Michele Moore