Ethical Question: Refusals versus Not Needed

[spenac]

are you in a bad mood CB?

Maybe the crotchity disease is getting him. :twisted:

[Happiness]

I know that small town and big city are on different spectrums of the ambulance needed scale. In my career I can only think of few times that a pt has actually refused to go. This in usualy because some third party has decided that they need to go to the hospital. They only time I had discouraged a pt from going to the hospital was a guy in jail that had broken his elbow 2 week prior and wanted out of the drunk tank (I was called for pain). In all cases they sign the lines on the back of my form and I go on my merry way.

There are two ways I look at this issue. One is that I am getting paid for 4 hrs and most of my calls last 1-2 hrs so if I am getting paid I will do my job and to me that is to take care of someone who needs my help. (I do realize bigger places are totaly different) The second thing is that if a pt calls me for help then there is something going on and I am not a doctor.

Here is a good example of that. I was call for a fainting. Thats it, everything was stable but the guy fainted. I noticed one other thing and that was that he was burping alot. Somewhere in my career I had heard that belching was indicitive to cardiac conditions and sure enough 1 hr later the guy had a full blown heart attack. Now I think that if my training I was told that fainting isn't a reason to take someone to the hospital (who hasn't fainted) I would have been called back to do CPR. So I say better safe that sorry.

[crotchitymedic1986]

Good point happy, syncope is one of my pet peeves. It is not normal for an adult to lose consciousness, especially elderly patients. How some medics can just discount that event and leave someone at home because they have stable vital signs 20 minutes later is beyond me. Now if you want to discuss 14 year old girls, or the sisters at my church this sunday, thats a different story.

[spenac]

Good point happy, syncope is one of my pet peeves. It is not normal for an adult to lose consciousness, especially elderly patients. How some medics can just discount that event and leave someone at home because they have stable vital signs 20 minutes later is beyond me. Now if you want to discuss 14 year old girls, or the sisters at my church this sunday, thats a different story.

Why the difference? That is very unprofessional of you to discriminate based on age or faith. The 14 year old girl could have an ectopic pregnancy and fainting was first real sign? Crap and you try and make those of us that know what we are doing look bad.

[crotchitymedic1986]

pull the hook out of your mouth spenac ? LOL

[spenac]

pull the hook out of your mouth spenac ? LOL

Nope no hook. I know everything you say has an ulterior motive. Or even when you say something by mistake you try and cover like it was a set up. I really hope you start trying a different approach. Some of your topics are worth discussing but the way you go about it is leading to no benefit for anyone except admin as there are lots of posts, valueless posts but posts non the less.