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I have been reading about the chest/pain panic attack and no injury motor vehicle calls, but this is one of the worst wastes of time I have ever been on. The call was dispatched as a "splinter in the foot"... no joke!
We got there and there were 6 adults sitting on the front porch with at least 4 vehicles in the driveway. A 2yom was sitting on his grandma's lap. I went up to the woman and asked who the patient was and what was the problem. She points to the childs foot and shows me a wood sliver aprox 1/2" long right under the first layer of skin! I tried to keep my cool, so VERY SWEETLY I asked, "So what would you like me to do about that?" (I was not about to remove an impaled object no matter how superficial in this day of lawsuits) They said, "We want you to transport him to the hospital." We are not allowede to refuse to transport anyone either, so we took the little boy in a car seat in the back of the rig along with the grandma to the hospital. (Mom was about 16 following with her boyfriend in a car!)
The clinic is only about 1/2 hour away but the thought of having our only ambulance out of service for this irritated me, but I had NO SAY in the matter! PS; the cost didn't matter to them because they were on state so it wasn't an expensive taxi ride, it was a FREE RIDE!

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Mike Livingston on July 22, 2008 at 6:48am

I must have been channeling you a few hours ago (0200) when I responded for an ambulatory adult c/o toothache (actually he said "dental abscess") four blocks from the hospital. Even if he did belong in the ER (?), he could have walked there in the time it took us to get to him.

Permalink Reply by Bill Anderson on July 28, 2008 at 11:46pm

Ya'll are gonna love this. 0530, been running the last 22 hours. Get a call to take a patient to hospice. We did the usual complaining all the way to the call. When we got there the hospice nurse met us and told us the patient was medically stable, and was going to hospice to get away from a neighbor. Seems the neighbor had threatened our "patient" and had got out of jail and was going to come over and shoot our patient. So we are going 20 miles to keep our patient from an early demise. No medical necessity except to keep from getting shot. According to the papers we had our patient had called hospice and badgered them into taking her in. To top it all off, when we got here to hospice she copped an attitude when I was giving the nurse report. Seems she had narcotics in her meds and the first nurse 'forgot' to tell me and count them. She griped because I was counting her meds and not "taking care of her." After that outburst we think we knew why she was being threatened.

Permalink Reply by Anita on July 29, 2008 at 6:51pm

Wow! At least my freeloaders were thankful. lol

Permalink Reply by Carrie Behr on August 1, 2008 at 8:11am

Okay, I have to say that one does take the cake.

I can only imagine the discussion before they called. Maybe something like....."Mom, can you find the tweesers? No. Should we go get some at the store? No,not with the gas prices. I'll call 911....they will have some, besides Junior will like the lights and sirens!" Can't you just see it?

Permalink Reply by Jennica Stout on August 4, 2008 at 8:39pm

When I was doing clinical ride time with the city we were called for a 4 yom, sob. Arrive to find mom and about 6 kids of various ages on the porch ready to go. The child had asthma, but was not having issues at the time. He needed a refill on the inhaler. It was a crazy trip, but the same deal. The 911 taxi...

I've always said I would like to drop private ambulance cards in the homes of these people...but what can you do?

Permalink Reply by don koerner on August 8, 2008 at 9:26am

i live in northern wisconsin and we have the routine pick up every first of the month they live 15 miles from town they get their checks have no way in they call we go they egt checked out in er and are on their way down town shopping with in an hour then they bum a ride home lol the wrst part is we cover 900 square miles of ambulance dist with one rig and the have to page second crew back in if another call goes out its all in the life of EMS

Permalink Reply by Katie Moon on August 17, 2008 at 5:39pm

Had a patient complain that his nose bled when he picked it. The obvious answer would be, keep your finger out of your nose, but no, he needed a doctor to tell him that. Taxpayers screwed again!

Permalink Reply by Abby Lawton on August 21, 2008 at 11:11am

We have an old man in our district that calls the ambulance whenever he gets lonely, which is a couple times a week. He is almost always complaining of difficulty breathing. When we get there he has his bags packed and he is sitting by the door with his coat on. You walk in the door and he says, "Let's go." And thats that. The worst part of it all is that he is not thankful at all for the ride. He will cuss you out and yell at you all the way to the hospital (over 30 min), unless you are his favorite provider, and even then some days you will still get it. He is so uncooperative that the hospital has their own protocals on how to deal specifically with him. He hates the nurses in the ER and will throw all kinds of things at them.

Permalink Reply by Katie Moon on August 21, 2008 at 11:25am

Every hospital and ambulance has their frequent fliers. It stresses the service, the staff and the other patients. I wonder why they cannot be committed to state care. We had an achondroplastic dwarf who was as hateful a human as I've ever seen. She'd pretend to have seizures to get attention. Once I spoke to her while she was "seizing" and she said "I can't talk to you now, I'm having a seizure!" Later she threw her bedpan at another nurse and inadvertently hit one of the docs with it. He was NOT a happy camper. He wrote her discharge papers and she threw herself on the floor.
These folks demand a tremendous amount of effort and resources. Anyone have any answer besides euthanasia?

Permalink Reply by Brian Dumser on August 30, 2008 at 6:17pm

I hope the ER staff educated these people as to how they tied up an ambulance for a superficial splinter! But then again, these are the same people who use the ER as their primary health care provider, after all it's free!

And here I am working 2 jobs like a sucker!

Permalink Reply by Ni on October 28, 2008 at 7:27am