KC9DDI

To be honest, I find these discussions on "natural born" leaders to be a bit irritating. What do we actually mean by "natural born?" Just based on the wording, I'd consider a "natural born" leader to be a leader based on something that they are naturally born with. The Queen of England would be a "natural born" leader, because her entire claim to leadership is based on whom she was born to. And I suppose some people are born with some natural talent or aptitude for leadership, much like some people are just born with an above-average aptitude for math, languages, music or athletics. But we don't talk about "natural born mathematicians," do we? No one can do multi-variable calculus straight from the womb, these skills must be learned, practiced, and even developed over time. Much like leadership. I'm sure that some people are born with the personality and thought processes which give them an advantage when developing their leadership skills. Others might not be born with these same advantages, and have to work a little bit harder to become decent leaders. Still others, no matter how hard they try, might never become decent leaders. So here's my question for everyone - Why are we so concerned with what our youth leaders are born with? By the time they're 15 or 16 or so, shouldn't we be more concerned with what they can and can't do at this particular moment, rather than what talents we suspect they may or may not have had at birth? It sounds to me like we should replace the phrase "natural born leader" with "good leader" in these discussions. And, yes, I understand that the "real leader" in a group might not be the one with the position patch on his sleeve. Or that the one with the position patch might not be a fantastic leader at 12 years old. But, this is the Boy Scouts for pete's sake, not the Green Berets - there's some leeway for things to go wrong, for learning opportunities, and even for *gasp* leadership development. All of this talk of focusing on "natural born" leaders (whatever we decide that actually means) at the expense of "potentially good" leaders makes me worry that we'll create a kind of caste system in Scouting, where those who weren't "born right" won't be given the same opportunities as those who were. I believe that leadership is a skill that can be developed, just like music, math or athletics. And there is room for "leadership develop" in Scouting. I agree with the Kudu camp to the extent that I think the move away from a rigorous outdoor program and into the classroom is NOT the way to do leadership development in Scouting. But, that does not mean that better ways don't exist.

Personally, I don't really care for the idea. Then again, I'm not sure I care for the idea of of the Toten/Firemen Chit cards either. (But that might be because every time I try to type "chit," the first letter ends up being an "s"). I can see some validity to having a "certification program" for sharp things and fire due to the safety risks involved. But I'm not sure how you would justify a similar program for electronics? Where do you draw the line - cell phones, MP3 players, cameras, flashlights, wrist watches...? I suppose a kazoo or harmonica could be used inappropriately - do we need a "handheld musical instrument chit?" I think I agree with what you said in the original thread - electronic use is acceptable as long as the behavior is appropriate and respectful. But we can manage that by modeling good behavior, and correcting bad behavior. I don't think another "paperwork program" would really help with that.

I agree with BD - part of our job is to model and teach courtesy and respect. Blanket bans are not the way to do that.

I think that copyright law doesn't come in to play here - if it did, Half Price Books, Good Will and St. Vincent de Paul thrift stores would all need to stop selling second-hand books! Be careful what you wish for - do you really want some private corporation (like the BSA) to have the power to tell you what you may or may not legally do with the things you purchase? Would you want your automobile dealer to prohibit you from selling your car, or to prohibit you from having it serviced by a competitor? And have those ridiculous prohibitions legally enforceable? The BSA does not have any "right" to "control" my own personal property, even when that personal property is an item manufactured by the BSA.

Yep, how dare a business not give their products and services away for free! In all seriousness, my previous council did provide one set of the Eagle badge and medal, and maybe a parent or mentor pin. It was paid for from the FOS fund. My troop traditionally supplemented that with the blue Eagle neckerchief, and a plaque. We also had a tradition where an Eagle neckerchief slide was passed from one Eagle to the next, which I thought was pretty cool. Some of the parents would work on getting a collection of congratulatory letters from celebrities, and usually one of the US Capitol flags. The troop would also generally allocate a reasonable amount of money to get an additional unique gift for the Scout. I honestly don't see National or the council having any obligation to provide anything other than some formal documentation that the Scout completed the requirements to earn the award. National is a business which provides resources, services and supplies. I think it's a nice gesture if the council offers to cover the cost of certain award items, but I don't see it having any obligation to do so. If nothing else, it gives people an opportunity to be smug about how no one but them is "in it for the boys" :-)

Boy Scouts? Do more backpacking. If they want to carry all that extra weight, in addition to the food and supplies they actually need, then let 'em have it.

Personally, I can't stand the leaders who are dressed like South American generals. They are likely more in it for themselves than for the boys. Kind of reminds me of that old saying, "Don't judge a man by the content of his character, but by the color of his pants." In all seriousness, I too am a bit amused by the guy whose uniform makes him look like an admiral in the Portuguese navy, but that has no bearing on the guy's motivation, focus and commitment to the program and the youth. It probably just means he doesn't have much fashion sense.

Beav - That makes sense, thanks for the explanation.

Once they declare you not suitable for BSA, then destroy everything. All you need from that point fwd is a name. Why? It would seem to me that if they're going to deny you membership, they'd need a reason beyond "your name is on this list."

You could do what Packsaddle mentioned, or maybe just say something to the Scout Shop manager like "Water seems to make the colors in the flag bleed. Could you maybe pass that along to someone in quality control?" Friendly, courteous, kind, etc etc.

If National had an "ideal" scout in mind, as a true representative of the program, which scout would it be? Why does that have to affect your own unit's program? It seems like we're giving National a bit too much credit. Unit-level folks have a much bigger impact on an individual Scout's experience in the program. Can National be blamed for units running watered-down programs? I agree that National has been moving away from outdoor adventure in some ways in recent years. But that doesn't limit your troop's ability to take on a challenging outdoor program, develop a strong patrol system, etc.

Are you proposing creating one course that "counts" for both ILSC and ILST? Or doing a one-day thing where ILST is done in the morning, and ILSC in the afternoon (for example). Or running ILSC in one room, while ILST is being run in another room at the same time?

Beav - Respectfully, you're extrapolating invalid conclusions from the data and recommendations presented. To compare this to CPR again - Less than half of lay responders perform CPR effectively (http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/274/24/1922.short). However, we still teach lay people to do CPR because the benefits still outweigh the risks. In out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, even with rapid access to EMS and hospitals, survival rates are abysmal (http://ohsonline.com/articles/2009/12/05/report-outofhospital-cardiac-arrest-survival-rate-unchanged-in-30-years.aspx). But yet, we still rely on CPR, as it's necessary to have ANY chance of successfully resuscitating a patient whose been in cardiac arrest for longer than a few seconds. There is a high risk of complications from CPR, even when performed correctly (http://chestjournal.chestpubs.org/content/92/2/287.full.pdf) - but we still do CPR anyway. And we still teach lay persons to do CPR. In any study that concludes that CPR should continue to be done, you will find mentions of complications and risks. There's risks and complications associated with any medical procedure. It shouldn't be surprising that studies which support the use of tourniquets include mentions of risks and complications. But, my question still is - can you show that these risks and complications are more significant than the benefits of the procedure? So far, you have not.

Beav - We're not talking about policy. We're talking about the best way to treat life threatening injuries. Needle decompression is a skill taught in every paramedic program that I am aware of. We don't teach that MOI is fundamental to treatment, though admittedly many professional responders make inappropraite treatment decisions based only on MOI. MOI can sometimes be fundamental to assessment - but treatment depends on assessment, not MOI. So let's take a look at your list of reasons for NOT using tourniquets: Applied when not indicated? Possibly, but what harm did that do to the patient? Possibility of ischemic damage after more than an hour of prolonged use? Possibly, but was that damage permanent? Did it do more damage than would have been done if bleeding was inadequately controlled? How often are you more than 78 minutes away from definitive assessment and treatment? Reperfusion injury? Mitigated if removal is done appropriately. Beyond that, same questions as above - temporary or permanent injury? More or less severe than damage done by uncontrolled bleeding? Not effective with poor training or poor equipment? Agreed, everything is better with good training and good equipment. IV Pain Management? Well, you need to be alive to feel pain... And IV pain management can be initiated early on by EMS or by the hospital. No doubt that tourniquets have the potential to do harm - just like CPR and needle decompression. In fact, I've seen more instances of harm caused by CPR than by tourniquets. But that doesn't mean we're going to stop teaching CPR. Beav - You seem to be basing your entire argument that tourniquets do more harm than good. Do you have any evidence to support this belief?

Beav - Your digression on the differences between civilian and military EMS is not relevant to how we treat immediate life threats, and only serves to confuse people unnecessarily. Life threatening bleeding is life threatening bleeding, it doesn't matter if it was caused by a machine gun or a boat propeller or a beer bottle. Mechanism of injury, MCI triage, and incident rates don't matter, especially at a basic first aid level, where the goal is to teach how to identify and effectively treat imminent life threats, like severe hemorrhage. Even worrying about re-attachment is a red herring. 1) As you probably know, amputations where there's a good possibility of re-attachment rarely cause life threatening bleeding. 2) Re-attachment will never be possible if your patient bleeds out before you get to the OR. Why would you think that we can't learn from injuries occurring in combat? Does it matter is a guy's leg gets run over by a tank or by a Toyota? It's still broken. Does it matter if a guy gets shot by an insurgent in Iraq or by a drug dealer in Detroit? It's still a gun shot wound. Does it matter if a guy's artery get severed by shrapnel from a hand grenade, or shrapnel from a broken beer bottle? It's still (potentially) a life threat that needs to be treated immediately. You asked for more references. I tried to find some that at least had abstracts freely available on line. The bibliographies on these abstracts are also worthwhile. If you happen to have access to any of these journals, you can obviously find many more full-text results. It sounds like you have some background in advanced first aid as well - I'm sure the bibliography from a recent textbook would be a good place to look as well. From the Journal of Trauma: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18376169 From Prehospital Emergency Care: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18379924 From the Emergency Medicine Journal: http://www.tacmedsolutions.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/tq-civ.pdf From the Journal of Emergency Medical Services: http://www.jems.com/article/major-incidents/appropriate-prehospital-tourni Now would you mind answering my question: What evidence is there of harm being done due to tourniquet use? What evidence is there that this harm outweighs the positive benefits of tourniquet use? With this in mind, the need to use a tourniquet would rarely be needed. Eamonn - How do you figure? Severe bleeding can cause irreversible damage in less than 5 minutes. And considering that the onset of temporary nerve and muscle damage hasn't been shown to occur in less than two hours, even if a responder did err on the side of caution and apply a tourniquet unnecessarily, it could still be identified and removed promptly at that hospital that's five minutes away.

Sure Beav, here's one good one. I don't know if the full version is freely available, but the abstract offers some pretty compelling information: http://journals.lww.com/jtrauma/pages/articleviewer.aspx?year=2008&issue=02001&article=00008&type=abstract There were good reasons for the instructional policy change to strongly discourage their use in civilian responder courses. What exactly were those reasons? I reckon there's also a difference between in-town/frontcountry use where transit times are short, and wilderness/backcountry/sidecountry use where transit times are longer and tissue necrosis is a bigger concern Yup, big differences. You need to balance concern for tissue necrosis with concern for blood loss during the long transport. Training & practice, training & practice. Of course, the evidence is showing that tissue necrosis and nerve damage is less of a concern than we previously believed. When considering policy changes, yeh have to look at unintended consequences as much or more than your hoped-for intended consequences. Sure, but you also need to look at real, measurable, evidence-based results, statistics and practices. You need to balance that with fear, uncertainty and speculation about unintended consequences. Look at CPR, for example. There's risks involved with CPR (broken ribs, organ damage). But we still do CPR (and teach "civilian responders" to do CPR) because we've learned that the benefits far outweigh the risks. And part of our training includes learning to recognize indications and contraindications for the procedure, and how to minimize "unintended consequences." Tourniquets are no different. There's risks, the procedure can be done incorrectly, and can be done unnecessarily. But the benefits outweigh the risks, and the risks can be managed with good training and practice. This discussion is nothing new - it comes up any time evidence supports changing the "conventional wisdom" way of providing first aid or prehospital medical care. Heck, the same conversations ensued when the recommendation came to move away from tourniquets. The same thing happened with the recent changes to CPR. And, in the industry, the same conversations are going on now about spinal immobilization and ACLS drugs. As we learn more and more about the effectiveness of various procedures and interventions, the recommendation on how to train both professional and lay responders will change. And people will resist these changes on the basis of vague speculation about "unintended consequences." It's always been like that. Eventually it will catch on :-)

Again, actual evidence from actual cases where tourniquets have been applied (many of which were in combat situations) show that the benefits of tourniquets FAR OUTWEIGH the risks. This strong evidence is probably why more and more organizations are training for it. Like anything else in first aid (or anything else in Scouting), it's a skill that must be learned and practiced to be done correctly. That's not a reason to not teach tourniquet use - instead, it's a reason to teach it correctly.

Gunny - There are times when a tourniquet should be the "first line" intervention - like when bleeding is so profuse that the patient will bleed out while you're playing around with pressure points and elevation. Again, actual evidence shows that tourniquets do much more good than harm in these cases, even if you "err" on the side of applying a tourniquet. Yes, there absolutely is a training element that is required to identify the types of injuries where a tourniquet should be applied early. But it is not correct to teach that a tourniquet should ALWAYS be a last resort.

My opinion of (what I think was) the latest edition of the FB was that it contained only a very high-level overview of Scoutcraft, and contained very little detailed information beyond what was already in the handbook, or that you would have picked up naturally after camping a couple times. I did some googling, and it looks like National actually has the fieldbook online in PDF form at http://fieldbook.scouting.org . At random, I took a peek at Chapter 11, "Gearing Up" - http://fieldbook.scouting.org/filestore/fieldbook/pdf/33104-11.pdf -- here's what I found: - Heavy on full- and half-page photographs, which take up a lot of page real estate while containing limited or no useful information - Around 50-75% of the content is duplicated from the BSHB, with little or no additional information to offer - Most of the remaining content is "common sense," that anyone whose been camping or hiking more than a few times, with a quality troop, should already know. Just my opinion - if other's find it useful, that's great, I won't argue with you. But I have a related question: What is the general opinion of the current quality of merit badge books. I know that some are better than others, as they're all written by different people. But, my theory is, I'd be OK with the HB and FB offering a "101-level" overview of various topics, provided that they were covered in detail in some other resource, like the MB books.

Yup, tourniquets are back for severe, uncontrollable arterial bleeding. Evidence has shown they do much more good than harm, so please don't be afraid to teach their use. Starting a couple years ago, civilian ambulances started being issued the same tourniquets used by military medics

Heh - I purchased one of the final versions of the Fieldbook. It contained absolutely nothing of value.

Learned something new about the lightning detectors, very cool, and good to know. I've tried setting up my cell phone for weather alerts, but have never been able to make it work as reliably as a weather radio. Another problem with using a cell phone for this purpose is battery life. Even if you do have coverage, it's likely to be very weak coverage in most rural areas. And the battery use increases dramatically when trying to maintain a weak cell connection - especially when trying to use data communications that these weather alert programs require. Weather radios, on the other hand, typically get very good battery life, especially if you keep them in the mode where they're "off," but still able to receive the coded alert messages. While it's true that you may find yourself in an area that doesn't receive weather radio signals, it seems like the overwhelming majority of the country is covered (NOAA has coverage maps broken down by state at http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/Maps/)

There's several reasons why a Scout might chose to be a Lone Scout, rather than joining a regular unit. Limited access to a regular troop is just one reason. I'm not sure that this is the appropriate type of thing for an Eagle Board to question? The type of program that a Scout registers in is up to him and his parents, and subject to approval by the council. Would you ask a Scout "Why did you register with Troop 123 instead of Troop 456?" Probably not, right? So why question why the Scout chose to be a Lone Scout? That said, this doesn't mean that you have to lower your standards when it comes to providing guidance and approval through the Eagle Project process. But I would encourage you to communicate with your council advancement committee to learn more about the Lone Scout program first, so that you can ensure that you are treating everybody as fairly as possible.

Yep, Lone Scouts are a legitimate program, and I'm pretty sure there's still references to it in the Boy Scout Handbook. Google is your friend - searching for Lone Scouts returns several resources directly from the BSA, right in the top 5 results. Including the Lone Scout Friend & Counselor Guidebook, which explains the program in detail. Lone Scouts is a different program from a traditional pack, troop or crew, and the youth-adult dynamics will be different. There's also a variety of reasons why a scout may be a Lone Scout, rather than a member of a traditional unit. It may be worth conferring with your council's advancement committee to help devise a fair way to conduct subsequent interactions with these families.

About lightning detectors... Maybe it's just the geographic area that I'm in (the Great Plains) but I'm not sure I've ever been "surprised" by cloud-to-ground lightning, and I'm not sure I see the need for a lightning detector. In every case I can remember of camping through severe weather, I think I've gotten fair warning that lightning may be close (hearing thunder several minutes before the storm hits, looking west and seeing scary black clouds billowing, etc). I'm just curious - are the weather patterns in other areas of the country such that you might not get adequate warning of impending lightning without a detector of some sort? (This message has been edited by KC9DDI)