Continued
Okay, so I agree to work the truck shift. This means I get a grand total of 30 minutes at home to shower off the lingering campfire and beer smells from the night before, and throw myself into a uniform before I need to be at the station to put the truck online. My partner for the evening is newly "cut-loose" (Squad term for capable of functioning with just one other person on the truck) and our cadet is someone whose abilities I have deep, deep doubts about. Misgivings aside, we check the truck online, and go to work.
I manage to piss off my partner (I think, he's a weird dude) by quizzing him very briefly on how he would get to a hospital from where we are. I back off when he gets mad, but at the same time, I'm not sure homeboy is gonna be someone I can count on. We make it back to the apartment, and I crash. I just hit one of the beds and try to sleep.
Note: try
Because you see, God hates me. I laid in that bed for 4 hours and didn't sleep a wink. I tossed, turned, sniffled, yawned, counted sheep (seriously) and prayed for sleep. Nothing worked. Finally at about 1:40 we were paged to Granville East for a drunk girl who was capital D-Drunk. She'd had an incredible amount of alcohol over a very short period of time, and had puked in such a way that had she been Scarlett Johannson, she would've been ugly. Since she wasn't Scarlett, she was hideous. Her sister on the other hand was kinda cute, and flirted back and forth with me all the way to the hospital. Anyway, back to the action. This girl is in the "I just want to die!" phase of true drunkeness and absolutely refuses to help us in our efforts to get her on our stretcher. We stand her up, and she collapses to the ground. Landed her bony ass right on my foot actually. After about a minute of attempted coaxing, I say fuck it, we're doing this the hard way, and I grab her under her arms while my partner grabs her feet, and we carry her bodily across the room to the stretcher. All the while this girl is begging, loudly, for me to kill her.
Here's the truth folks- if it was legal, I might've. She was loud, obnoxious, and the alcohol on her breath alone was strong enough to give me a pretty good buzz while she was shouting. After strapping her to the bed, we go down to the lobby in the elevators, and on the way out the door I'm accosted by this gray-haired old lady behind the desk who says (in a voice that clearly says "You should bow and scrape before me peon, for this is my domain) "Excuse me. Can I get some information from you please?" I don't know how to adequately describe the derision in this woman's voice, but it was there, and it pissed me off. Luckily, the federal government has provided me with a weapon for just this sort of asshole. HIPPA. This says that I can't give any sort of identifying information about a patient to anyone not involved in caring for said patient. This lady got a very quick "No ma'am, I can't." and I was out the door without looking back again.
We get to the truck, pitch Drunky McDrunkstein in, and I'm ready to be off. I push my partner and the cadet inside the back to take care of the girl, while I go drive to the hospital and talk to the cute sister. The ride to the hospital is pretty uneventful, and short of having to remind him to do a call-in to the hospital, my partner doesn't screw anything up too badly... or so I think.
Once you walk through the doors with a patient at UNC, you're expected to walk to the charge desk and give your report. In a normal partner relationship, the report is handled by the person who was in the back of the truck, since they'd theoretically know more about the patient. Apparently, my partner never understood this, because once we were inside the doors, he grabbed the clipboard and was off doing paperwork before I could blink. Meanwhile Jim the RN is looking at me like "Well...?" There are very few ways to make me madder faster than you will if you make me look stupid through your own stupidity.
I walk over to my idiot partner, and steal his info sheet so I can at least give Jim some information, while I try to figure out what should already be known. We finally move drunk girl over to her new bed, and I get some new linens for our stretcher, and start to clean the trunk. About now I remember that our cadet has been around the whole time, and has done basically nothing. Now I'm a big proponent of self-motivated training. If you don't want to learn, you won't. But at the same time, I'll push people in the right direction.
So I take the cadet aside and ask "What questions did you ask in the back of the truck"
She replied "Ummmmm... (Seriously, I've never known anyone who 'umms' like this girl) how she was feeling, and if she was going to throw up."
Now don't get me wrong, those are valid questions, but not exactly the most important right now. So I say "What sort of things might we have wanted to ask, that didn't get asked in this case?"
What followed was the longest umm in recorded history.
I finally cut her off and explained the need to actually find out a little bit about our patient's medical history, what medications they might be taking, any allergies... really basic EMT stuff. About 2 minutes into the spiel, she goes "Oh yeah! SAMPLE" (SAMPLE is an acronym to help you remember all the parts of a medical history. Comes in somewhere around day 3 of an EMT class) I just shook my head.
So on to my partner. The one who's supposed to know all this. The one who's supposed to be training her. Uggh. I go over the same things with him, and again, it's like he's hearing them for the first time! You can't show up to the hospital not knowing a damn thing about your patient. It's unprofessional, unsafe, and more than anything else, just stupid.
On a positive note, I found the sister on Facebook, (Creepy, sure, but why do you look surprised?) and I'm trying to figure out if I should send her a message.
I'm tired as hell now, and I'm ready for bed. I'll finish the night's events, and give the promised cheerleader stories tomorrow.
I manage to piss off my partner (I think, he's a weird dude) by quizzing him very briefly on how he would get to a hospital from where we are. I back off when he gets mad, but at the same time, I'm not sure homeboy is gonna be someone I can count on. We make it back to the apartment, and I crash. I just hit one of the beds and try to sleep.
Note: try
Because you see, God hates me. I laid in that bed for 4 hours and didn't sleep a wink. I tossed, turned, sniffled, yawned, counted sheep (seriously) and prayed for sleep. Nothing worked. Finally at about 1:40 we were paged to Granville East for a drunk girl who was capital D-Drunk. She'd had an incredible amount of alcohol over a very short period of time, and had puked in such a way that had she been Scarlett Johannson, she would've been ugly. Since she wasn't Scarlett, she was hideous. Her sister on the other hand was kinda cute, and flirted back and forth with me all the way to the hospital. Anyway, back to the action. This girl is in the "I just want to die!" phase of true drunkeness and absolutely refuses to help us in our efforts to get her on our stretcher. We stand her up, and she collapses to the ground. Landed her bony ass right on my foot actually. After about a minute of attempted coaxing, I say fuck it, we're doing this the hard way, and I grab her under her arms while my partner grabs her feet, and we carry her bodily across the room to the stretcher. All the while this girl is begging, loudly, for me to kill her.
Here's the truth folks- if it was legal, I might've. She was loud, obnoxious, and the alcohol on her breath alone was strong enough to give me a pretty good buzz while she was shouting. After strapping her to the bed, we go down to the lobby in the elevators, and on the way out the door I'm accosted by this gray-haired old lady behind the desk who says (in a voice that clearly says "You should bow and scrape before me peon, for this is my domain) "Excuse me. Can I get some information from you please?" I don't know how to adequately describe the derision in this woman's voice, but it was there, and it pissed me off. Luckily, the federal government has provided me with a weapon for just this sort of asshole. HIPPA. This says that I can't give any sort of identifying information about a patient to anyone not involved in caring for said patient. This lady got a very quick "No ma'am, I can't." and I was out the door without looking back again.
We get to the truck, pitch Drunky McDrunkstein in, and I'm ready to be off. I push my partner and the cadet inside the back to take care of the girl, while I go drive to the hospital and talk to the cute sister. The ride to the hospital is pretty uneventful, and short of having to remind him to do a call-in to the hospital, my partner doesn't screw anything up too badly... or so I think.
Once you walk through the doors with a patient at UNC, you're expected to walk to the charge desk and give your report. In a normal partner relationship, the report is handled by the person who was in the back of the truck, since they'd theoretically know more about the patient. Apparently, my partner never understood this, because once we were inside the doors, he grabbed the clipboard and was off doing paperwork before I could blink. Meanwhile Jim the RN is looking at me like "Well...?" There are very few ways to make me madder faster than you will if you make me look stupid through your own stupidity.
I walk over to my idiot partner, and steal his info sheet so I can at least give Jim some information, while I try to figure out what should already be known. We finally move drunk girl over to her new bed, and I get some new linens for our stretcher, and start to clean the trunk. About now I remember that our cadet has been around the whole time, and has done basically nothing. Now I'm a big proponent of self-motivated training. If you don't want to learn, you won't. But at the same time, I'll push people in the right direction.
So I take the cadet aside and ask "What questions did you ask in the back of the truck"
She replied "Ummmmm... (Seriously, I've never known anyone who 'umms' like this girl) how she was feeling, and if she was going to throw up."
Now don't get me wrong, those are valid questions, but not exactly the most important right now. So I say "What sort of things might we have wanted to ask, that didn't get asked in this case?"
What followed was the longest umm in recorded history.
I finally cut her off and explained the need to actually find out a little bit about our patient's medical history, what medications they might be taking, any allergies... really basic EMT stuff. About 2 minutes into the spiel, she goes "Oh yeah! SAMPLE" (SAMPLE is an acronym to help you remember all the parts of a medical history. Comes in somewhere around day 3 of an EMT class) I just shook my head.
So on to my partner. The one who's supposed to know all this. The one who's supposed to be training her. Uggh. I go over the same things with him, and again, it's like he's hearing them for the first time! You can't show up to the hospital not knowing a damn thing about your patient. It's unprofessional, unsafe, and more than anything else, just stupid.
On a positive note, I found the sister on Facebook, (Creepy, sure, but why do you look surprised?) and I'm trying to figure out if I should send her a message.
I'm tired as hell now, and I'm ready for bed. I'll finish the night's events, and give the promised cheerleader stories tomorrow.
posted by C at 11:26 PM
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