Long Transport Times?

[DwayneEMTP]

Yikes....great points and I would have missed them had you not pointed them out. Thanks for doing that...

I am in the FTO program to credential up as a medic in my agency. I'm currently working under my EMT-B license until I credential' date=' then it will switch over to my EMT-P license I obtained in Nov.

[EMT4455]

We have a 30-40 min transport time to the nearest hospital .They will stabilize and send them on a helo. When we have some bad cases we just helo out from scene. We only staff 2 ambulances. We have 4. But if both are out of county at the same time (which happens often) it is up to anyone who lives in the area and works for the service to grab a truck and go. This can get hairy for us. But our volunteer depts. are great a responding and have driven us in to the hospital many times. It works out for the most part because most of our staff lives in county, but if we hired more outside of county we would be in alot of trouble.

[iMac]

I think the quickest transport time I have ever had was 30 mins. Unless you work in the city here a lot of rural services required long transport times. If you are lucky you can work rural and have a hospital right in town, I know I havent been fortunate enough to have that blessing.

But yes during long transport times all you can really do is re-assess. Every 5 mins? Thats bit of an extreme. If the patient's condition warrants assessing that often then yes but most of the patients I have transported on long transfers like got re-assessed every 15 ish mins or so. Only a handful would have been critical enough to require many sets of vitals over short periods of times but those pts were flown out anyways.

[spenac]

I think the quickest transport time I have ever had was 30 mins. Unless you work in the city here a lot of rural services required long transport times. If you are lucky you can work rural and have a hospital right in town, I know I havent been fortunate enough to have that blessing.

But yes during long transport times all you can really do is re-assess. Every 5 mins? Thats bit of an extreme. If the patient's condition warrants assessing that often then yes but most of the patients I have transported on long transfers like got re-assessed every 15 ish mins or so. Only a handful would have been critical enough to require many sets of vitals over short periods of times but those pts were flown out anyways.

Wow you can get local fly out. We're minimum 90 miles to hospital from our station, no air support. If we call for air they meet us at the airport across from the hospital.

Are you bringing all dead posts back to life today?

[medic5740]

We are very fortunate on the one hand and very remote on the other. We have a rural health center staffed with a Family Nurse Practitioner. Our local EMS works hand in hand with the staff at the rural health center. It's a good thing, too! We have not had one single response and transport that lasted less that forty-five minutes even if the patient fell and broke her hip at the local airport right next to the airplane. Weather and air transport non-availability are the enemies when you work EMS on an island 32 miles from mainland Michigan. I can sympathize with the Alaskan post because some of our patients have been monitored for days before transport could happen due to fog or blizzard conditions.

One of the most interesting cases can be read at http://ruralemsisdifferent.com. It's a cardiac patient with serious problems that took us more than twelve hours to get to the mainland. "Unusual Transportation is Sometimes Necessary" is its title.

I'm glad to have found this Rural EMS area. I'll gladly share some stories with you if you will email me at medic5740@yahoo.com.Rural EMS IS Different

[CountyEMS604]

there is an agencey that I used to work fo rthat had 4 hospitals that were an equal distance from the county. One involved a ferry ride that is 20 min plus 15 min after that. The other 3 are a minimum of 20 min away. Solo with a critical pt as a B is the worst on a ride like that.

[conan]

im in a similar situation. with the nearest level 1 trauma system about 75 min away(from my station, 80-100 min from the furthers point we respond to) without much traffic and 2 1/2 hrs or more during rush hour we utilize the air med teams alot when we know that the local er wont accept them.

as far as routine calls....an average call for me is about an 1 1/2 hr from tone out to back in district. my partner and I dont screw around on scene and waist time nor do we kill time at the er post call. as soon as our stuff is done we're out!! and it still take that long to run a simple call.

there are 3 districts within my operation and if one of our other trucks is out and we catch a call in their dist then the transport time is only increased...not a whole lot in most cases but there are the times when you get sent to the far NE part of the country down a one lane dirt road thats so washed out and rough you cant drive more that 5-10 mph without just trashing your rig. then, once you get the pt loaded you have to drive back accross those horrible roads thrashing the pt and your partner all over the place in the back only to have to drive to the far SW part of the co. to get to the local/nearest er.

The longest response time i think I've ever had was about 28 min to the scene. We're lucky to have some good mutual aid agreements with neighboring fire and private services when need be.

[steph1030]

we utilize air trans alot because most of the nearest trauma centers are in philly.we are fortunate to have a few hospitlas within a decent transport time but anything major definitely goes to philly we also utilize other pa cities trauma centers as well depending on the status of the patient etc but even those patients are flown

[spenac]

I prefer the long transports. I have to use my brain. At my primary I have at least 90 miles(sometimes more than 150 miles) alone with my patient, no air support, can get another medic on board 60 miles from us if available. And all 911 no transfers. Yes at times its tough but I still prefer it.

At my part time 80% of calls are within 10 miles of hospital. It sucks no time to do anything and if you do something you don't often get to see if it helps them.

[marcum1235]

Our transports are about 35 min to 1 hour 1/2. We have no Hospitals in our county, so we must transport to surrounding counties. Our closes Trauma Hospital is about 70 miles. We try to use air medical units if weather permits use to do so if pt needs to go to trauma unit.