dano Posted January 18, 2012 Report Share Posted January 18, 2012 What a terrible story. http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/52238-widow-emts-took http://bangordailynews.com/2012/01/17/news/mid-maine/questions-surround-skiers-death-after-widow-describes-horrors-of-ambulance-treatment/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack M Posted January 18, 2012 Report Share Posted January 18, 2012 Just horrible. I'm having a very hard time imagining any excuse for the ambulance kicking the wife to the roadside. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gcarve Posted January 18, 2012 Report Share Posted January 18, 2012 Interesting priorities..........................."the paramedics started an IV and assured her they would insert a breathing tube down his throat". IV before CPR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BobD Posted January 18, 2012 Report Share Posted January 18, 2012 You can understand that everybody makes mistakes, but to screw up with attitude is unforgivable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack M Posted January 18, 2012 Report Share Posted January 18, 2012 You can understand that everybody makes mistakes, but to screw up with attitude is unforgivable. QFT. However to be fair we only have one side of the story. I suppose, in the realm of everything, it is possible that the wife was fraught with emotion and unintentionally but severely endangering the rescue. But so far it is not sounding good for the EMTs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dano Posted January 19, 2012 Author Report Share Posted January 19, 2012 I'm also amazed the EMTs did not report the incident of leaving the wife stranded. There is no way the guy was stable enough to travel...epecially on icy roads for over an hour. http://bangordailynews.com/2012/01/18/news/mid-maine/rescue-law-expert-dont-rush-to-judgment-in-case-of-sugarloaf-skiers-death/ Best to demand a med-fight at the loaf... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skatha Posted January 24, 2012 Report Share Posted January 24, 2012 First off-there is a huge difference between a "first responder", an "EMT", and a paramedic. EMTs, at least in Texas, cannot start IVs or intubate. First responders are basically just lifting help-no one expects them to really do anything except call for help if the person is really injured... Calling a helicopter...not if it's cloudy or there's any precipitation....they won't fly.... Thirdly, if this clinic was staffed by a doc, the way EMTALA is written, he can't call for a helicopter for transfer without an accepting MD at the receiving hospital. Paramedics at the scene of an accident can call for a helicopter, tho....figure that one out... As I've said before, if you are in a trauma code, you are dead. A better manuever at the clinic would have been a needle decompression of a presumed tension pneumothorax-those can make you go from talking to dead pretty quick. But, those clinics may not be staffed with ATLS trained personnel.... In November 2005-my husband was involved in an accident. I was working as a hospitalist at a hospital 20 minutes away and finished admitting a patient prior to driving to the hospital where they took him-he had a open tib-fib fracture and was the driver of a car that was hit on the driver's side, "T-bone" style. I still had on my white coat....My husband dropped his pressure while the nurse was covering his exposed bone with gauze. I asked for a BP to be checked. Then I asked the nurse to bolus him with some fluids. Then I went into the ER control room and asked that my husband have an abdominal CT. I went to the scanner with him and saw the splenic rupture on the monitor. Did I mention that I do this same thing routinely with my unstable patients? I then went back to tell the ER doc (who, BTW, hasn't even come in to see my husband yet, nor did he) to call the on-call surgeon. The ER doc told me some claptrap about getting the "grade" from the radiologist first-I told him the "grading scale" is only used in pediatric trauma. Needless to say, my husband got his spleen out that night. He was mismanaged by the ER staff who did not give him adequate fluid resuscitation prior to surgery and he was as shocky as I've seen in 20 years of practice. So, can I believe some little doc-in-a-box clinic at Sugarloaf was in way over their heads with this? Yes. Should the team on scene considered a helicopter given the mechanism of injury and disregarded the fact the guy was talking? Possibly...if the helicopter was cleared to fly...the sad fact is, we've chosen, as a society, to put people in a position to make major medical decisions and because we, as a society, have decided not to pay those people well, the smarter people don't go into those fields...heck, most first responders and EMTs are volunteers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skatha Posted January 24, 2012 Report Share Posted January 24, 2012 And we call them "woo-woo"s because riding around fast with a siren on is one of their biggest motivations... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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