Category: ems-topics

Last night one of our long-time members came in at ten to relieve the on duty crew. He has been an EMT for over twenty years and helps teach the EMT class here in the suburbs. He heard about the code we did yesterday and talked to the new kid about it. “I wanted to…

The man is breathing like a fish cast up on land. He is quiet, then with all the effort of his chest, he gasps. He’s quiet, then he gasps again. His wife says he started losing conciousness an hour ago. He has terminal lung cancer. It has all been very quick. It started with back…

I’m precepting a nice young man who is very on the ball. He knows his protocols better than I do. I ask him the dose for Cardizem. He rattles it out. .25mg/kg first dose. .35mg/kg second dose after fifteen minutes if the first dose didn’t work. Once the rate slows, you run a drip at…

We’re called for a fall at a private home. When we pull up my partner says he’s been here before. He gets on the radio and cancels the district car. “What if she’s a big lady and we need a lift?” “She’s a little thing,” he says. We go to the front door. It’s locked….

We’re called for a domestic in an apartment complex. Minor injuries. The police are already there. They lead a man out of the front door. He is a big muscled man, six three at least with linebacker shoulders. Except he walks with a cane and I see a brace of his left foot. “What happened?”…

I’m standing in triage with my patient when I find myself looking at a man standing unsteadily by the entrance to the ER. A security guard has his hand on the man’s upper arm, both holding him up and keeping him from walking away. The guard tells the nurse. “I found him outside. What room…

About Tuesday I noticed a foul smell in the ambulance — a smell like someone had left a meat sandwich under the seat or a mouse had died somewhere in the woodwork. We left the ambulance outside with the doors open for two hours, but it didn’t help. It was a nasty smell, sometimes it…

We get called for a fall at the local fast food chicken restaurant. Back in the kitchen, the woman is laying on the ground between the fryers and the food prep table. She’s maybe twenty-two, but a big woman — looks like she’s been dining on the fast food fare most of her life. I’m…

Arthur is making up the stretcher by the linen cart just inside the ER doors. “I’m going down to the cafeteria to get a sandwich,” he says, as he tightens the last strap. “You want anything?” “No, I’m good. I just have to get times and drop off my report.” I end up getting in…

We’re sent on a priority to for the unresponsive, but when the cops get there they slow us down. It’s a 10- a dead body. We go in and walk down into the basement where we find the cops standing around the body. A man in his forties is sitting on a couch, his head…

We’re called for a person not feeling well in an elderly housing hi-rise not far from the hospital. The man is an emaciated AIDS patient, who is laying naked on the couch in his dark apartment. he has a colostomy bag. His girlfriend says they were at the emergency department for seven hours today, then…

We’re called for a child not breathing. The address is a convalescent home. It makes no sense. Then we pull up. There is a car parked askance by the entrance, two front doors and a back door open. The engine still running. In the front lobby two nurses and a police officer kneel over a…