History of IV therapy in EMS

[KyleKIR]

Kyle, it's more than appropriate to take a couple of minutes on scene to provide good patient care. Probably the biggest source of errors that I've seen in EMS--and one which my organization has been really trying to correct--is when crews rush to get to the hospital instead of sitting on scene for a bit to provide good, quality care. We've got to get it out of our heads that our primary goal is to get people to the hospital and get it in there that our primary goal is to provide patient care. Especially when it comes to treating pain (which you said they didn't do, which is unfortunate but I wasn't there so I can't speak for their reasons).

Out of curiosity, what happened when you got to the hospital? Like, did they immediately give you something for pain? How long did you have to wait for pain management? For tests? For a diagnosis? For other treatment?

I guess I was just in pain and didn't like that we had to sit there..especially because I wasn't sure what was wrong. Everything was just a random sudden onset.

When I got to the ER they began tests pretty quickly. Blood, CT, etc. They administered pain med shortly after which helped a lot. The walls started moving After that I laid there and waited for some results as to what was wrong.

Turned out I had an intra-abdominal abscess and Peritonitis. I was admitted for one week NPO -- which really sucked. Abscess was too small to drain and the antibiotics took care of the rest. No other complications since.