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Did you fail? Of course. Your patient arrived at the ER in a condition worse that when you took over pt care, right? And it's your job to make them better, not allow them to get worse, right? So isn't the fail obvious? The questions really is, in my mind, did you do the best you could? Were you lazy, complacent, fail to reassess thoroughly enroute, yadda, yadda, yadda. No? Good on you, then you did your best today, and tomorrow I am more than willing to bet that your best will be better. And you know what? Without a fail today, tomorrow your best would be the same as it was yesterday, right? I'm confident that I've failed on every call that I've ever run, and certainly on every significant tall that I've ever run. The proof? That at the end of each of those calls I've looked back, either alone or with the help of my partner, and thought, "Dang it, I wish I would have done X instead of Y." "I wish I would have hit my first IV,..." I wish, I wish, I wish.... What is the epic fail? To run your calls and not learn from them. It sounds like your logic was good, your assessment sounds good, but I don't believe that this pt was sound until the moment the ER cut her pants off and then spontaneously developed a bruise and a fracture. Unless there is 'Flash Hematoma" that I'm not aware of? (I know it can sometimes happen pretty quick, but you know what I'm saying.) So yeah, you likely failed, and that should make you want to be better. When you don't fail...when you finally do every single thing right on one of these hinky calls? You will then have entered the club of those folks we all know that bullshit themselves about how good they are and have excuses for everything. My ultimate goal is to someday consider myself a peer of those hardcore medics that we also all know, the ones that make way fewer mistakes than I do. Good post man. What should you, could you have done differently? No friggin' clue. Dwayne Edited to fix typo.

Same cemetery, different night... 2 drunks, coming out of different bars, decided to take a shortcut across the cemetery. One, walking east, fell into an open grave, opened in preparation to a funeral for the next day. He struggled for an hour, unsuccessfully trying to extricate himself. The second drunk fell into the same grave, maybe an hour after that, while walking west. He also struggled to get out. Hearing the second drunk struggling, the first one reached out, tapped the second on the shoulder, and said, "You're not getting out of here." The first drunk suddenly found himself alone in the open grave.

An instructor should never take it personally since ultimately the goal is learning. Not to mention, on occasion even I have gotten so engrossed in a lecture that the words have come out backwards. Please, someone stop me and ask if that is what I really meant. Better that then having the class walk out with the wrong information. Now, if you feel that information is consistently being presented incorrectly, you might want to talk to the instructor or even the program director. Occasional bad info is one thing...but consistent bad information is another. ...it's all in how you do it...

Your mistake was in not reassessing the patient during transport. Luckily, didn't cost your patient their life, so its a good learning experience. Sometimes with hip dislocations, it is possible for the patient to pop the hip back in place by trying to get off the floor (or when you move the patient). The femur probably became displaced when you put her on the stretcher and straighten out her legs.

So, I will be the one too clear the air on my post. After speaking with a member from St. Albert it appears things were not as they were portrayed to me. The events that were communicated to me were indeed done in "good fun". The student I was speaking of was in on the games, and was making and losing bets, which resulted in playful "punishments" Having done a practicum at a fire dept, I can understand how a student gets wrapped up in the horseplay of the platoon, and it is easy to portray it as something more sinister unintentionally. I apoligize for my original post, and have no reason to think St. Albert is any less respectful and professional than any other service. Specific apology to KevKei for calling your service out on a public forum, when I obvioustly took stories as horror, when they were actually horseplay. Sincerely Mobey