The challenges of emergency calls

Yet another day, I find myself backed into a corner, I wanted so badly to write something, although my head is spinning, and I cannot come up with anything! I do my best to try and assemble things I believe someone might actually want to read or care about. In three years, you would think that I could have came up with some really good stories. The problem is remembering them. I can guess that most of them were probably in the nursing home or running crap calls. One night around closing time for the local bars, we are dispatched to one of them. The call comes in as a man down. We respond with lights and sirens, it is only a few minutes from our location. We arrive on location at the same time as the police. While we grab equipment, they get the details. The guy was in the bar mouthing off, and looking for a fight, he is pretty drunk and comes outside, and someone hits him and knocks him down. We find a crowd surrounding the guy, a couple are holding the guy down, and holdi...

One night, myself and my partner were notified by the local police department, that they needed a subject checked out. We arrive at the police station, and find a subject in the holding cell, and a lawyer at the desk outside the cell on the phone. The officer state, he is complaining of hand pain, my partner looks at it, it might have a fracture. He evidentally struck another guy in the head with his fist. He is complaining that the handcuffs are hurting his arms. My partner and I splint it with a SAM splint, after the police release the cuffs. He is being released, anyways the lawyer was bailing him out. The report given to us by the police was that, he was in the bar, and dragging his girl around and talking bad to her. Another man didn't like it and told him to stop. The kid then made a threat to the other older fellow. The older fellow then identified himself as a state patrol officer. The kid then proceeded to hit him in the head and face. I don't know if the ...

ATV's can be dangerous, as I have found out through a few calls. We are dispatched for an ATV accident, we go to the location, which is a few miles from the road. My partner takes off and goes down, while I get the truck turned around and try to get things setup for her. She calls back for me to radio for a helicopter. In just a few minutes she knew we needed a chopper. I called for a chopper telling dispatch to go ahead and dispatch a rescue crew to setup an LZ for us, since the fire department was already on scene with us assisting. The male was riding with a young girl on the back, they had went down into a creek, and then on the way out, the four wheeler front end lifted up, he was able to throw the younger girl off, but he wasn't able to clear himself from the path, as it fell backwards onto him. He was partially in the creek and underneath the large ATV. He was cold, and pale, he looked like he was dead, and his respirations were shallow, all the primary signs of...

Another call I remember well in my memory is my first stabbing. My second partner and I ran hot to the location with the instructions NOT to approach the scene until the sheriff's deputies arrived to clear the scene. We arrived and staged about 2 blocks away from the location. Within seconds it seemed the deputies had cleared the residence, and were calling us in. We enter the residence to find several people upset, they house smelled of alcohol and smoke. There were blood splotches on the carpet. It was like a brownish white carpet, anyways and looks like it needed cleaned. We find the patient sitting on the floor, complaining of shortness of breath, he had been stabbed in the chest on the left side I believe. We got the cot into the house, and boarded and placed the patient onto the cot. We called for a helicopter as the nearest trauma center was 2 hours by ground. We arrived at the LZ and the deputies assisted with clearing the LZ and radioing the chopper with information on the...

Emergency, it means different things to many people. For some it means someone is hurt or an injury has occurred. To the police, it means they are being shot at, an officer is in trouble, or is in an unstable situation. To firefighters, it means a co-worker is trapped, the building is unstable or run over with fire, or something is wrong. To an EMT, emergency means someone is ill, dead, or in danger of dying. Emergency is something not everyone considers the same way, some people think not finding their car keys is an emergency worth calling 911 for, others think that for the common cold it requires an ambulance, a cat in the tree deserves a fire truck, or they don't get the food they ordered so they call the police. I often think to myself when I hear such stupid calls of a phrase commonly hear, "Innocent until proven guilty," I prefer to title these folks "Stupid until proven otherwise." I flash back this time to my first few days in EMS, and realize that I ca...

I wrote this several days ago, maybe weeks, I am behind putting them up so there might be several days blasted with updates and blogs which are longer. When did I book the trip on this insane train? I was enjoying some computer games when I heard some thunder . Shortly after that it began to rain, I mean POUR! I am hearing radio traffic like crazy, police, city crews, sheriff's department, Department of Transportation, WATER IS EVERYWHERE, and the highways are even impassable and are close to traffic. 1 hour later, I get a call from work, They need me in for a transfer of a critical patient, and we are taking a nurse. I tell them I will do my best to get there. My street has a few places where water is running over the road, I go a few blocks and then find more water. I have never seen this much water standing and moving, at least not here! There is a stress you have to deal with in this situation, you have to worry your vehicle will be carried by the water as you go through the wa...

I have often wondered if someone really told management about what they thought of them in a letter of resignation what it would be like or what it would sound like. I played with this a bit and wrote this about 1 month ago. I put some thought into it, I put myself into the place of one of those employees who gets ticked off by everything and don't care who hears them yelling or ranting about it. So here goes, it is kind of in poem form. Attention Management: Attention Management, I won't be coming back to on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or EVER! Attention Management, I have had enough of your micro management Attention Management, I am not working for the pennies a day anymore! Attention Management, I love the way each year you raise my insurance and cut the benefits Attention Management: I love the way our pay is below the National Average! Attention Management: Just because I don't see you doesn't mean you can't leave a note saying you appreciate ...