Abandonment

[whit72]

If your service considered that abandonment, then your service needs a reality check. Yeah I wonder what the outcome would have been if your on scene with all those criticals and the medics remained in the back with his finger up his butt splinting a wrist injury.

You made the right decision. I am sure that if put in that position again you would again make the correct decision.

[Dustdevil]

If your service considered that abandonment, then your service needs a reality check. Yeah I wonder what the outcome would have been if your on scene with all those criticals and the medics remained in the back with his finger up his butt splinting a wrist injury.

Probably the same. I didn't read anything about immediate, life-saving interventions performed on scene that made any difference in survival for anybody. Did it make everybody feel better to have help there faster? Sure. Did it save any lives? Probably not.

And the alternative was not for him to be sitting on the scene with his finger up his butt. The alternative (which the company correctly pointed out) was for him to keep on going and not been on the scene at all.

Of course, to reiterate my previous post, before anybody gets their knickers in a bunch, I am not saying anything wrong was done here. Not at all. I'm just clarifying what the alternatives were, and keeping it real regarding whether or not any tangible good was done by stopping.

[Just Plain Ruff]

I did have one similar situation

taking a child with a fractured left foot to the ER from a school. We were taking a slow boat to china drive to the ER and had a woman run out to the curb and flag us down.

Her friend collapsed and was in cardiac arrest. She heard the ambulance go by earlier and when he collapsed she saw us coming.

I put my emt driver with the kid, called dispatch to send a full response and got our equipment together and went inside. Started the code just like you would do so if you were in acls and did the first 11 minutes of mega code on the patient while waiting on the response of the FD and our other ambulance. Was able to get a return of circulation but the guy eventually died in the ICU after a couple of days due to massive heart damage caused by his MI.

ONe other situation was we had a lady from the nursing home being brought into the ER for a peg tube replacement. Call for a choking child came out, we were 5 blocks away so we responded to that scene while the ambulance crew was scrounged up from the base. Long story short, child's airway was clear by the time I arrived. Mom and dad wanted child checked out so we packed that child up in our ambulance and put the 2nd ambulance in service. Transported two non-emergent patients in the ambulance. Parents were thankful that they didn't have to wait on the 2nd ambulance and the old woman got a little 3 year old to play with during the transport. A good outcome on this one.

We do what we have to do, if you are rural you know what I mean. Not saying that urban is not as good but in an urban setting you usually have more ambulances available while in a rural setting you may wait 20 to 40 minutes for a 2nd ambulance to get to you. That's why I utilize helicopters so vigorously as they can transport the most serious of multi patient incidents and freeing you up to do more with the sometimes little that we have.

If you take this post to be a urban versus rural post then you have too much time on your hands and that was not the intention.

[Dustdevil]

If you take this post to be a urban versus rural post then you have too much time on your hands and that was not the intention.

I sure hope that nobody does, because that was really an excellent point. Certainly one to consider when we start throwing out rules about "always" doing this or that. Few two situations are the same, and each requires it's own evaluation prior to decision making.

[whit72]

I dont think I made that statement clear. What I meant was, do you think there could have possible liability actions if the medic remained in the back with the wrist injury and allowed the EMTs to deal with the MVA?