Beware of “Negligent Completion” of the PCR

[NYC-EMS]

In late June 2002 a New Jersey appeals court used the New Jersey version of the Good Samaritan Law and ruled that emergency medical technicians are not entitled to immunity for negligence in documentation...LINK

[dahlio]

I want to say this has been brought up before.

But let me just say

De Tarquino’s case included expert testimony provided by a physician who said that if EMS had reported the vomiting to the ED staff, they would have ordered a CT scan that would have revealed the extent of De Tarquino’s injury.

I seriously doubt that.

[spenac]

I want to say this has been brought up before.

But let me just say

I seriously doubt that.

LOL. Yeah they read the reports we leave. The easter bunny, santa clause, the giant pumpkin, the tooth fairy, the......... are all real too. :wink:

Pretty much the only way we influence the ER docs actions is if we go seek him/her out and emphasis what we saw that concerns us. Even then they usually blow us off as we are uneducated taxi drivers.

[fiznat]

I was skeptical about the same thing when I read this article, but then again I don't doubt that this is exactly how the case would go just about anywhere else. Of course the buck gets passed. It seems to me that if the patient was alert and coherent enough to be discharged than he was alert enough for the physician to elicit a proper history from, in which he most certainly should have asked those important questions.

It doesn't matter though. The principle of the case - that documentation of prehospital care shouldn't be covered by the good samaritan law - makes sense to me. I don't see any reason why we ought to be protected from obvious (sometimes critical) errors while sitting down and writing a report. The proper transfer of care is probably one of the more important things we do, and despite what many people think, our reports ARE read and taken seriously. ...Especially in trauma and other cases where "the story" is important to the patient's disposition. It matters quite a bit that we get the PCR right, and I have no problem with a judge asserting that fact.