DO YOUR JOB

When working in the medical field you are responsible for people’s lives. One wrong decision can injure or potentially kill someone. This weekend I picked up a shift (won’t mention where) and I ran into probably the worst paramedic I have seen in 5 years…

We respond to a call around 2100 for a person who has been down for approximately 2 hours. When fire opened the door the front entry was full of blood and a woman was lying on the ground. Her face was swollen and covered in blood. She was awake and able to respond (Spanish speaking only). My partner and me we setting up the backboard and gurney preparing to C-spine her, when the medic tells us no neck or back pain no c-spine.  The guys pick her up and put her on our gurney. The captain then yells out she smells like ETOH (she’d been drinking alcohol) so we need to C-spine her.

Another call goes out in the area so the medic asks if they could leave and go to the other call (without assessing the patient fully) the captain says no they need to follow up (which means to ride along with us ALS). He rolls his eyes and says fine.

We get the patient in the back of the rig one medic jumps in the back and just sits there doing nothing. I tell my partner to start cleaning her up to see where the blood is coming from. The medic gets on the phone and contacts the base hospital. He tells the hospital that he doesn’t understand why his captain wants him to follow up and that the patient was stable vitals were good (before the vitals were taken) she was NSR on the monitor (they had not set her up on the monitor) he had not even assessed the patient.

We ended up taking the patient by ourselves BLS … We reported the neglect to the nurse.

Regardless if the patient was BLS or not look at the patient before that decision is made…

The patient was hypovolemic, hypotensive, had a fractured hip and a broken nose and a possible skull fracture.

"When people go to work, they shouldn't have to leave their hearts at home."  ~Betty Bender