ArkansasEMT72556

UPDATE: Woman dies day after paramedics make wrong call Reported by: Brent Solomon Email: bsolomon@fox16.com Last Update: 3/28 7:15 pm Paramedics make wrong call on patient Two senior paramedics with Metropolitan EMS are on paid leave. Two senior paramedics with Metropolitan EMS are on paid leave. The medics thought a patient died, but she was very much alive. The woman died Sunday. The MEMS director is not faulting his employees just yet. He says all of his paramedics are highly trained to detect a patient’s vital signs and make important medical decisions on the spot. So what happened Friday when two paramedics responded to an emergency and determined the patient was dead when she was actually alive? "It's a lovely quiet neighborly neighborhood,” says Janet Hoover describing her community. It's why people in her west Little Rock subdivision were shocked to see all of the commotion Friday morning. "When I came out I saw a fire truck, an ambulance, and a police car." Her only thought was, "What's going on?" Authorities say they responded to a home on Hunters Cove Drive after getting a call that 52 year old Pamela Harper was lying unresponsive in the yard. "We had a unit respond initially and assess the patient, leave, another unit was called in,” says MEMS Executive Director Jon Swanson. Both paramedics said the woman was dead, but when a detective and a deputy coroner arrived, they found otherwise. That's when another paramedic showed up to get the woman to a hospital. "At this point you're not sure if protocol was followed or not?” we asked Swanson. “That's the point of the investigation is to make sure we understand all the facts,” he replied. Swanson says he has faith in all of his medics, but wants to get to the bottom of the issue. "They obviously encountered something extremely unusual, something that we had not encountered before so the whole point of the investigation is to find out what did happen," he said. Neighbors wonder how the situation even got to that point. "It is surprising that she laid there that long,” Hoover said. Saturday morning, Harper was still listed in critical condition at Baptist Hospital. Saturday night, hospital officials confirmed she was still there. Swanson says he's been director for 12 years and hasn't seen anything like this before. He adds the medics in question are “experienced and highly skilled.” They're on paid leave during the internal investigation. MEMS will determine what if any corrective action to take during the suspension of the medics. Copyright 2010 Newport Television LLC All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed

Ok folks, I have read all the posts on this topic, and for those of you who care to know the facts of the story, here they are. The newspaper article was written only from the family's side of the story. I am the EMT-B that was on this transfer. First and foremost, I do know and did know that the medic was to be in the back with the pt. at all times. I have NEVER allowed a pt. to be in the back of my truck by themselves. Had the investigator gotten a copy of the surveillance tape from the camera outside the ER door he would have seen that there was only one person in the front of the truck. I do not have any way of knowing what the medic in the back was doing during this transport. There is not a camera back there nor any other way for me to see in the back from the front besides turning my head to look, and I had other things to concentrate on other than, was the medic doing his job? I have been through that run back and forth and there has been a conclusion drawn as to how the family thought they saw the medic in the front. The family believes what they think they saw, and Mrs. Kiehl's daughter states in the article, "I saw what I saw." Here is where I can dispute that everything she "saw" was not correct. She says in the article that I went to the intercom outside of the ER door and said I need help. There is no intercom outside that ER door, the only thing there is a keypad that I put the door code into and went inside. So, this should give some idea as to the story being not totally reliable as fact. As for my probation, I was only put on probation for going to the wrong hospital, which was a dispatch error, and I never saw the transfer form in the paperwork given to the medic, to see that I was originally given the wrong destination. The outcome of this transfer was awful, and I am sorry that the pt died, but I am not the reason that it happened, and am really tired of catching the blame and flack for this run. I hope this will set a few of you straight. Me going back to basic school would not teach me anything more than I already knew that day.