Just Plain Ruff

holy mother of god almighty, visibility was zero and they still took off. I know that all I'm doing is taking the word of the above poster but really, taking off in zero visibility is a recipe for disaster. Is any patient worth us dying for? That is really the question? Is any patient, even your spouse or child worth you dying for?

Why am I saying all of this. Simple. If you have no healthcare, you do not take care of yourself at all, no follow up care and no simple physicals for prevention. That leads to higher incidences of ambulance usage. Higher usage equals higher incidents of accidents and fatalities. quote by sevenball You are way off on that one. I have been without healthcare, in fact I was without healthcare for 1 year due to financial restraints. I take extreme exception that you are lumping me into that demographic. I ran 2 miles a day, I ate well(as well as I can - yes you can eat a salad from McDonalds just no dressing) and I actually paid for my doctor visits. I was in better health when I had no insurance than I am now. Coincidence - not sure. You make a blanket statement like that and someone's gonna call you on it. Sure in general those without healthcare may not take care of themselves (broad generalization) but I did the opposite as well as the other 15 people who I worked with who also had no healthcare. If you think that having universal healthcare is the end all be all of this country's healthcare problem then you are sorely mistaken. Just go google Massachussetts, universal healthcare and you will see all the links of the problems with their universal healthcare. Please don't make Assumptions like this - it only makes you look silly.

You have finally capitulated my friend, I honestly wasn't nervous at all about this topic at all. Not at all.

the only reason this delivery was newsworthy was the fact that it happened on a airplane at 37K feet. nothing else newsworthy about the delivery, oh wait, we are making it newsworthy by discussing this here. Maybe ABC or CBS will pick up on our discussion here and give us interviews. My quote "I was not nervous at all, I was able to post on this forum and not break a sweat.!"

Terri, the information I have gathered about you from my contacts in homeland security, FBI, CIA, Interpol and all three credit bureaus would fill the warehouse that they housed the Ark of the Covenant in Indiana Jones. Before you sell any of my information, just remember who you are dealing with? ha ha ha

Patrick, take this from someone who has put their foot in their mouth several times here on this board, just quit while you are ahead right now. If you expect me or anyone of us to get two sets of vitals and a full trauma assessment on a patietn that says they are not hurt then you have more issues to get over. If a patient says I'm not hurt, I turn the report over, have them sign a refusal, and then write it up the way I found it.

Actually one service I worked for made the crews that covered those types of events do just that. It was a bls service and the person who asked for a bandaid had to sign a waiver of liability and a refusal. Needless to say, they didn't do too many events after that when enough people complained. But I think refusals should really only be signed when you respond to a the call. Not special event coverage.

not sure where you got the idea I was making this personal. Never intended for you to think I was making this personal. I'd sure like to know how I'm making this personal. But that being said. All I was simply asking was what your personal opinion was about thsi issue. You came here asking our opinions yet you had not made your opinion or ideas clear. If that is what you thought I was making personal then there was nothing of the sort intended. I've seen on message boards people who come in asking for opinions and in the end the real motive behind there requests was to get ammunition to go to their management and say "this is what they do elsewhere" I'm not saying that is what you were here doing but I will be honest, it crossed my mind. I still stand by everything I have said here, if you make contact no matter if they are injured or not they are still a patient. I'm sorry if you felt I was attacking you because that could not be further from the case. I hope you get other answers from others than me. But my answers stand, agree or disagree.

Yes, whoever you made contact with you get refusals from. If you made contact with all but one of them then you do refusals on all but one of them. What does your employer say? No matter how many patients are involved in an incident you get refusals on all the ones you personally talk to. Your partner does the same to those he talks to. Any others from your agency who make contact with those you don't get to they get refusals for those. Let me ask you this, what do you think should be done? Do you think you should get refusals from those who you make contact with but do not have any injuries. Put it this way, you make contact with 99 people on the bus that you mention earlier. You find out that all 99 are saying they are not hurt. You then clear for service and go back to base not filling out a single refusal. 2 hours later one of those uninjured patients turns out to actually be significantly injured. They now sue you for negligence. You say, "Hey, they said they weren't hurt so I cleared for service" The patient suffers injury. You have no documentation saying you saw them, no documentation that says you looked them over. They say you just asked if they were ok but didn't ask them any more questions. How do you refute what they are saying from what really happened. It's your word against theirs. Juries are notably sympathetic to injured persons or there wouldn't be 250 pages of lawyers in the phone book. 12 pages of lawyers in a phone book that covers a county of 12000 people. You will lose if you don't have the documentation to prove it so once again I ask, what is your opinion on this issue, you asked us now I'm asking you.

whoever thougth of that policy on sending everyone to a female who fell out or whatever was a MORON with capital letters. There should be no reason to send a dozen people to a single patient. What an overkill.

No need to get your knickers in a bunch, you made no reference to already knowing your services answer. So many people come here and post what should they do when they haven't even gone to their management to find out what they require you to do. so that is why I pointed out that you needed to get your information from your service and not from us. now that we know that you know what your service requires, then in my opinion, if you make it to the scene, you make contact with the injured or uninjured then they are your patient. When in doubt, get a refusal, you gotta write a refusal and report. It takes you minimal time to write it up.

Actually I would strongly caution anyone from buying their own glucose paste, pb or cake icing to use on a patient while you are working on the ambulance. I think you open yourself up to significant liability if you use your personal glucose paste, cake icing or whatever. Using the patients own stuff, that's ok, but providing your own while working a shift is asking for trouble.

yes you made contact with them they said they weren't hurt you get a refusal. But you really need to talk to your powers that be rather than here because you will get answers across the board, some right some wrong but only your ems agency you work for can answer this question.

explain what the medic who has an issue with this, what's his issue? It might be valid or it might not be. Lot's of good minds on this forum, I'm sure at least one of us here have had this issue before.

i can't believe I got spenac to stop talking. I think he's tonguetied

GAWD have you ever tasted d50? Nasty If they are conscious and alert why not give them the paste followed by a meal prepared by the mrs.?

There are some who will not be nervous so it's not uinversal I'm just messin with Spenac

you are making a lot of assumptions here spenac You are assuming that the guy is a moron You are assuming that you're reaction would be universal to everyone.

i'm playing Spenac's Anti-advocate - Why do you assume he was crapping in his pants? Maybe he really was calm cool and collected.

well this might be a good job for national registry put him on a blacklist there and when he applies for nat reg status they write him back and say - Screw you dude, you shouldn't have gone on tv ha ha ha Then send him a musical card from hallmark. when you go on national tv and say you've falsified a report then do you really have a defense? All your calls and all your medical treatments need to be suspect and called into question. Medicare should go into his service and do an audit on all the patients he took care of, ask for reimbursement for those claims since he says he has falsified reports. He's gonna end up costing his employer a lot of money if medicare comes after him.

I see many pregnant women on airplanes every week. I'll bet I flew with 3 of them this past week. Why is being away from her OB at 7months an issue here. I just don't see the issue that you all have with this guy? This is a really discouraging thread. I don't even really see an issue with his statement about not being nervous.

holy crap we are chastising a kid who delivered his child. What the hell do you all want, I mean if you really want to discuss this let's put him on a small rowboat in the middle of the atlantic in a hurricane and have him deliver his baby. Why are we slamming this guy? It's not like he had any freaking choice as to when his baby was coming. Do you think he made that statement out of pure bravado rather than he was really nervous and he didn't want to say he was?

Actually I see where the disputing poster is coming from. I know what you were asking - in my case I am responsible for none but when I was working EMS I was responsible for 5000 upwards to 300K depending on how many ambulances we had on the streets at the time. But are we really responsible for that many people. I don't think we are. We can say that we have a patient to EMT or patient to medic ratio of 2500 to One or 25K to one but we are NOT responsible for that many people, no matter what anyone wants to say. I agree with the post that I'm only responsible for one patient. and only one patient at a time. It's great PR for a service to say we have a patient to EMS ratio of whatever but does it really mean anything, honestly, in the long run scheme of things?

well if he was in the coast guard, he must have faced hundreds of death defying instances in his career in the coast guard and this was a cake walk.

Come on spenac, if a caveman could do it so could this guy. I don't think he was really concerned about the 2 months early, just more concerned for his baby and wife. I guess when you are 37K feet in the air your options are extremely limited. It's not like you have a OB kit in the plane? You take what you can get and if all you have is a bunch of blankets, a medical kit the airline offers and the support of the HOT flight attendants you do what you can with what you have. I don't really see what the big deal on this one is.