Are You A Spinner?

[Richard B the EMT]

Part of not being a "spinner", I guess, is, no matter your training level and/or level of education, knowing how to bluff that you know what you are doing, especially when you don't!

[JaxSage]

Saying that it's not my emergency may sound heartless and disrespectful, I'll agree. But ultimately it comes down to the fact that if we lose a patient who went into cardiac arrest despite our best efforts, we get to go home after we clock out and we leave the job at the ambulance once we leave. To be honest with you, while I'm with the patient, I pretty much have no emotional attachment to him or her. At that moment, I could care less whether or not we could bring this person back to life or save him. After the call, however, it hits me to the point that I start thinking about the family, calling my wife and telling her the news, and feeling sorry for the patient and his family. But while with the patient, his problem is not mine and that helps me to focus on my job and to do a good job calmly and efficiently. This is not to say that I have no respect for the patient and that I don't care to do my best for him, but overall, it's not my emergency. It's like sticking a person with a needle: it hurts him, not you

I don't know if I agree that a degreed program better prepares a person than a tech school. I really think it depends on the school, the instructors, and the student. I believe that experience is the best thing to help us be more calm and controlled during any type of call despite with educational route you took. I agree that the "old-timers" are much less prone to spinning off the handle than the young pups who are fresh out of school. I think with the older veterans, they've, in a way, seen it all -- that is to say that they've done it over and over numerous times and that they realize that no matter how bad a call is, the same procedure would be done the same way. ABC's are always first

[chbare]

Hehe, I thought this was going to be a thread on some new alternative life style.

Take care,

chbare.

[Dustdevil]

To be honest with you, while I'm with the patient, I pretty much have no emotional attachment to him or her. At that moment, I could care less whether or not we could bring this person back to life or save him. After the call, however, it hits me to the point that I start thinking about the family, calling my wife and telling her the news, and feeling sorry for the patient and his family. But while with the patient, his problem is not mine and that helps me to focus on my job and to do a good job calmly and efficiently. This is not to say that I have no respect for the patient and that I don't care to do my best for him, but overall, it's not my emergency. It's like sticking a person with a needle: it hurts him, not you

I'm totally with ya there. I don't even care about kids. I'm certainly not against that attitude. It's what gets you through the night. So long as a provider is 100 percent committed to doing the very best he can for his patient, I could care less if he gets emotionally attached or not. Empathy does not require attachment.

I've used the "It's not my emergency" phrase before, myself. It's often appropriate. I just don't think that it is a particularly good way to develop new providers when it is used out of context. And proper context would include educating that provider about the proper way to operate, and more importantly, the reasons why it is proper, so that they can come to a complete and intelligent understanding while developing their operational style. Phrases like this just strike me as cop-outs, just like all the acronyms and mnemonic devices we feed students these days that help them memorise details, but do nothing to help them understand the overall concepts. I oppose such "dumbing down" of the profession.

[reaper]

I always stay calm on a call. My old partner used to make fun of me, because she thought nothing affected me.

Then she picked up on a tick that I have. We could have the worst call and I was as calm as could be, just doing the job. Then she noticed my right leg shaking. So from then on, she knew a call was serious if she saw the leg shaking.

I guess all my adrenaline just pools in that leg! The rest of me is as cool as ice and my right leg will be going 90 mph.

[Richard B the EMT]

What is that old adage? Oh, yeah:

Never let them see you sweat!

[CBEMT]

When I have a partner, I don't care what the call is I'm typically cool and collected.

It's when I start off on the call alone that sometimes I can get a little warm under the collar.

[JaxSage]

One of the best ways to bluff is to put the patient on a heart monitor, frown and seriously say, "Hmmm?" Then, put a nonrebreather on the patient and say, "Just breathe and don't talk." If the patient and family members were giving you a hard time, this just might keep them quiet and distracted

[mobey]

Is it limited to young n00bs?

Quite the opposite here, it seems as though even at the BLS level they are teaching "Slow down and think"

Is it the predominant culture in your area?

50/50

Does it often seem to work itself over time?

Actually, seems to get worse if everyone accepts it.

Are there any other identifiable factors contributing to it that you have noticed that I have not listed?

In the services I have been involved in, it is the highly experienced/undereducated ones. The people who took thier EMT 15+ years ago when it was a 3 week course and have not opened a book since. The problem is now these people are in positions of seniority and passing it on to the newbies. In my area (not my service) they have a great way to save time on trauma scenes. They immobilize with LBB, Collar, straps, then one person just manually holds the head all the way to the ER (yup, through the ditch, walk backwards as the pt is loaded, and down the hallway in the hospital). All the while chanting "Scoop and scoot".

OK sore subject :wink:

This is a serious problem in rural Sask/Ab, due to the lack of continuing education requirements emt/medics can "hide out" in the rural sector and go stale, and since they are friends with the MD nothing is ever done about it.

Were you ever a spinner? How did you work it out?

On my 1st practicum, my preceptor said I would not pass till I got my head out of my a$$. I soon calmed down.

[zzyzx]

I haven't worked with too many spinners. What I do see more of are people who yell at others. A few years back when I was doing my clinicals, I observed an ER doc running a code. He got angry with the nurses and techs if something wasn't done fast enough. I noticed how tense everyone seemed to be. They were afraid of getting yelled at. I thought it was so odd that this doc, who was older and must've run thousands of codes, was getting so worked up. I think he liked being dramatic. It probably made him feel like he was a doc on the TV show "ER."

I never want to be that guy. I do often get impatient when I'm on a serious call and I feel things are being done too slowly. I try to not let me impatience show.

By the way, that attitude, "It's not my emergency," I have to call bullshit on that. It's our patient that we've been entrusted with, so of course it's our emergency.