“Honor thy father and mother”.
I was working at County yesterday when we were dispatched to a fall. The son met us in the driveway. The first words out of his mouth were “She’s paranoid schizophrenic and she’s in the back yard”. Nothing good can come of this.
We walked into the back yard. No one there.
The son called out to us “She’s in the shed!”
Okaaayyyyy….
We opened the shed. The smell smacked us in the face. Smelled like cat urine, bad enough that inhaling resulted in a scratchy throat. There’s mom, laying on the floor. Yes… They have mom living in the shed.
But wait, it gets better. She has no cat. She is running a temp of 102.1. After getting a bit more history, it hits me. She has a UTI bad enough that the smell could peel paint.
We have been running a lot of calls lately that warrant social services.
My shaken baby from southside died last week. I have grown cold to most things, but this almost killed me. The baby was living in a two story trash can. Two years old and seventeen pounds. Dehydrated, not breathing. No one cared. Happens so much in this town, It has become just another part of life.
But, with everything in this world that casts doubt on the existence of all that is good, there is always hope. On the day the shaken baby passed, my friend gave birth to her first child.
Lightning crashes.
Hope still lives.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Sunday, October 7, 2007
A Bad Day, A Lesson Learned
There comes a time in life when you realize that trying to understand the actions of others is an exercise in futility. We spend a lot of time making fun of the stupidity of others. There will be plenty of time for that in the next entry. For now, I would like to turn your attention inward, as we are not immune to ignorance ourselves. To an extent, it is a good thing. It supports humility, keeps the ego in check, and is a great form of entertainment. But, as with most things, there are limits. Yesterday, My partner’s ignorance caused me to fail as a supervisor. I had several opportunities to head off a bad situation. By the time I decided to act on those opportunities, It was too late. I was working at Southside station 2. It was my first time riding with an EMT basic we will call Casey.
Casey means well. She is sweet for the most part, personable, and has been in the field for almost 2 years. EMS has a way of conducting its own quality control. But, some occasionally slip through the cracks.
The 1st call came in at shift change. Respiratory difficulty. She jumps in the driver’s seat, and off we go. Somehow, trying to read her pager while doing 75 down a country road seemed perfectly reasonable to her, especially when I have the CAD sheet with the address and a map in front of me. Running off the road a couple of times did not seem to change her mind about this either, nor did me telling her to slow down and put the pager away.
We pull on to the road the call is on. I ask her to slow down because the house is…..right…..there it goes…. We passed it. She slams on the brakes and throws it in reverse. Glad nothing was behind us because she never even glanced in the mirrors. She pulls into the driveway….. the wrong driveway. Nothing there but a garage. The house is 300ft to the right with its own driveway. She just sits there and stares at the steering wheel waiting for it to tell her what to do. I suggest that she pull into the driveway by the house. She backs up into the road…. Then across the road…. Off the roadway… CRASH!!! Into the ditch. She puts it in drive and guns it. The ambulance doesn’t even twitch. She throws it in reverse. Same response. We are resting on the rear step, and the tires aren’t even touching the ground. The road is completely blocked.
Doc: “We’re stuck”
Casey: “Really?” (she was being serious)
Doc: “I’m going to the house. You stay with the truck.”
As I am walking to the house with the gear, I can still hear the engine gunning. Forward, reverse, forward, reverse….
Doc: “HEY!!! YOU’RE STUCK! YOU’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE!”
Casey: “Really?” (again, she was being serious)
She gets out with her traffic vest on and starts re-routing traffic.
As luck would have it. The patient never wanted EMS called. The family just freaked when he had an asthma attack. He refused transport.
Meanwhile, the Captain brought us another truck, and sent a wrecker to tow us out. The wrecker pulled us right back into the driveway. Traffic cleared. Before I could get in the driver’s seat, Casey gets in and backs up…. Almost running over me…. And back straight back into the ditch. Luckily, this time, She did not back all the way into it. I slowly walked up to the driver’s window, and through gritted teeth told her to get out of the ditch. This wasn’t even one of those “you had to be there” situations. The Chief found no humor in it when it got back to him.
Okay, back to the bat cave. There is a message from station 2 that they need some paperwork faxed to them. They are out of refusal forms, Narratives, and ACR’s, and they can not find the masters. I hand this assignment over to Casey, in the hopes that maybe she will redeem herself slightly. In a perfect world, I would expect this could be done without assistance. This was not to be the case today, for I have somehow offended the personnel Gods.
I walk into the watch room. She is faxing the paperwork… one page at a time. She feeds a page in, dials, waits, feeds the next page in, dials, waits.
Doc: “You can fax more than one page at a time.”
Casey: “Really?” (again, she was being serious) She is now staring at the stack of papers. I can hear crickets chirping.
She feeds a stack of about 50 pages into the fax and hits send. I look at the stack. She is faxing 10 copies of each form. I look at her, and she proudly states they don’t’ have any copies left. I was going to explain that station 2 can make copies, but I just walked away instead.
I am no longer disgusted. I’m just amused.
2nd call comes in. Structure fire. It’s a barn, so we respond non-emergency.
Against my better judgment, I let her drive. It’s non-emergency. What’s the worst that can happen? I should know better by now than to ask that.
The call is in one of the most remote areas in the district. She is driving down one of the back roads. We are in the middle of no-where. This area looks like a scene from “Wrong Turn”. If we crash no one will find us for days. She is about as familiar with this road as she is with the brake pedal. She takes a sharp curve in the road and never lets off the gas. We hit the shoulder and almost roll the truck. I yell “Slow down damnit!!”
Casey: “Oh whatever! You were probably in an ambulance accident sometime and you’re just paranoid”
Wrong answer.
We arrive on scene before I can yank her out of the driver’s seat by her throat. I treat one person on scene for smoke inhalation. When I walk back to the truck, I find her giving a statement to a reporter. Needless to say, she is NOT the PIO. This could cause all kinds of hell. Luckily, she did not give the reporter anything she could use.
It is a long, quiet ride back to the station as I try to find a way to remain professional.
We are almost back to the station, stopped at a light, when she rolls the window down and hocks out a huge ball of mucous. Although the look on the face of the old lady in the other car was priceless, that move was the one that usually rings the chief’s phone. To the public, that was pretty much just a ball of snot being shot from a big-ass EMS billboard.
Doc: “Was that necessary?”
Casey: “Oh whatever!”
Doc: “OK, let me tell you how it is. The boss doesn’t come to you with this stuff. He comes to me. I am responsible when you pull this crap. So, If I tell you to slow down, do it. If I tell you not to spit out of the window in public, I don’t want to hear any shit about it.”
Casey: “Oh, like it’s professional for you to say the word, shit?”
Doc: “If you would like to play ‘the word shit suddenly offends me’ game, I’ll play.”
When we get back to the station, she calls the Chief and starts bitching. Chief sends her home.
Her relief is an 18 year old fresh basic. No experience. We ran back-to-back calls for the rest of the shift without any further problems. The 18 year old proved to be one of the better partners I’ve had in a while. Still a bit green, but a natural aptitude for the work. She drove like she had some sense. Her patient care has real potential, and she asks questions.
No one is immune to ignorance, myself included. We all have our moments. But as with most things, there are extremes. If your partner shows signs of chronic ignorance, they may be having a bad day, or it might be a pattern. If you are a crew chief, be careful. There are ways to deal with any situation. I normally just tell people to “suck it up and deal with it” From a management standpoint, I know I need to be more “sensitive”. I should have put a stop to this before she involved the chief. When I finally tried to solve the problem, I should have been more professional about it, no matter how pissed I was. If you are a crew chief having personnel problems, such as a partner who poses a liability, the boss needs to hear it from you first, if nothing else than to keep him in the loop. At best, go to the boss to let him know what has happened, and what steps you have taken to solve the problem. This shows the leadership abilities you were promoted for.
At least for me, I have learned my lesson.
Casey means well. She is sweet for the most part, personable, and has been in the field for almost 2 years. EMS has a way of conducting its own quality control. But, some occasionally slip through the cracks.
The 1st call came in at shift change. Respiratory difficulty. She jumps in the driver’s seat, and off we go. Somehow, trying to read her pager while doing 75 down a country road seemed perfectly reasonable to her, especially when I have the CAD sheet with the address and a map in front of me. Running off the road a couple of times did not seem to change her mind about this either, nor did me telling her to slow down and put the pager away.
We pull on to the road the call is on. I ask her to slow down because the house is…..right…..there it goes…. We passed it. She slams on the brakes and throws it in reverse. Glad nothing was behind us because she never even glanced in the mirrors. She pulls into the driveway….. the wrong driveway. Nothing there but a garage. The house is 300ft to the right with its own driveway. She just sits there and stares at the steering wheel waiting for it to tell her what to do. I suggest that she pull into the driveway by the house. She backs up into the road…. Then across the road…. Off the roadway… CRASH!!! Into the ditch. She puts it in drive and guns it. The ambulance doesn’t even twitch. She throws it in reverse. Same response. We are resting on the rear step, and the tires aren’t even touching the ground. The road is completely blocked.
Doc: “We’re stuck”
Casey: “Really?” (she was being serious)
Doc: “I’m going to the house. You stay with the truck.”
As I am walking to the house with the gear, I can still hear the engine gunning. Forward, reverse, forward, reverse….
Doc: “HEY!!! YOU’RE STUCK! YOU’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE!”
Casey: “Really?” (again, she was being serious)
She gets out with her traffic vest on and starts re-routing traffic.
As luck would have it. The patient never wanted EMS called. The family just freaked when he had an asthma attack. He refused transport.
Meanwhile, the Captain brought us another truck, and sent a wrecker to tow us out. The wrecker pulled us right back into the driveway. Traffic cleared. Before I could get in the driver’s seat, Casey gets in and backs up…. Almost running over me…. And back straight back into the ditch. Luckily, this time, She did not back all the way into it. I slowly walked up to the driver’s window, and through gritted teeth told her to get out of the ditch. This wasn’t even one of those “you had to be there” situations. The Chief found no humor in it when it got back to him.
Okay, back to the bat cave. There is a message from station 2 that they need some paperwork faxed to them. They are out of refusal forms, Narratives, and ACR’s, and they can not find the masters. I hand this assignment over to Casey, in the hopes that maybe she will redeem herself slightly. In a perfect world, I would expect this could be done without assistance. This was not to be the case today, for I have somehow offended the personnel Gods.
I walk into the watch room. She is faxing the paperwork… one page at a time. She feeds a page in, dials, waits, feeds the next page in, dials, waits.
Doc: “You can fax more than one page at a time.”
Casey: “Really?” (again, she was being serious) She is now staring at the stack of papers. I can hear crickets chirping.
She feeds a stack of about 50 pages into the fax and hits send. I look at the stack. She is faxing 10 copies of each form. I look at her, and she proudly states they don’t’ have any copies left. I was going to explain that station 2 can make copies, but I just walked away instead.
I am no longer disgusted. I’m just amused.
2nd call comes in. Structure fire. It’s a barn, so we respond non-emergency.
Against my better judgment, I let her drive. It’s non-emergency. What’s the worst that can happen? I should know better by now than to ask that.
The call is in one of the most remote areas in the district. She is driving down one of the back roads. We are in the middle of no-where. This area looks like a scene from “Wrong Turn”. If we crash no one will find us for days. She is about as familiar with this road as she is with the brake pedal. She takes a sharp curve in the road and never lets off the gas. We hit the shoulder and almost roll the truck. I yell “Slow down damnit!!”
Casey: “Oh whatever! You were probably in an ambulance accident sometime and you’re just paranoid”
Wrong answer.
We arrive on scene before I can yank her out of the driver’s seat by her throat. I treat one person on scene for smoke inhalation. When I walk back to the truck, I find her giving a statement to a reporter. Needless to say, she is NOT the PIO. This could cause all kinds of hell. Luckily, she did not give the reporter anything she could use.
It is a long, quiet ride back to the station as I try to find a way to remain professional.
We are almost back to the station, stopped at a light, when she rolls the window down and hocks out a huge ball of mucous. Although the look on the face of the old lady in the other car was priceless, that move was the one that usually rings the chief’s phone. To the public, that was pretty much just a ball of snot being shot from a big-ass EMS billboard.
Doc: “Was that necessary?”
Casey: “Oh whatever!”
Doc: “OK, let me tell you how it is. The boss doesn’t come to you with this stuff. He comes to me. I am responsible when you pull this crap. So, If I tell you to slow down, do it. If I tell you not to spit out of the window in public, I don’t want to hear any shit about it.”
Casey: “Oh, like it’s professional for you to say the word, shit?”
Doc: “If you would like to play ‘the word shit suddenly offends me’ game, I’ll play.”
When we get back to the station, she calls the Chief and starts bitching. Chief sends her home.
Her relief is an 18 year old fresh basic. No experience. We ran back-to-back calls for the rest of the shift without any further problems. The 18 year old proved to be one of the better partners I’ve had in a while. Still a bit green, but a natural aptitude for the work. She drove like she had some sense. Her patient care has real potential, and she asks questions.
No one is immune to ignorance, myself included. We all have our moments. But as with most things, there are extremes. If your partner shows signs of chronic ignorance, they may be having a bad day, or it might be a pattern. If you are a crew chief, be careful. There are ways to deal with any situation. I normally just tell people to “suck it up and deal with it” From a management standpoint, I know I need to be more “sensitive”. I should have put a stop to this before she involved the chief. When I finally tried to solve the problem, I should have been more professional about it, no matter how pissed I was. If you are a crew chief having personnel problems, such as a partner who poses a liability, the boss needs to hear it from you first, if nothing else than to keep him in the loop. At best, go to the boss to let him know what has happened, and what steps you have taken to solve the problem. This shows the leadership abilities you were promoted for.
At least for me, I have learned my lesson.
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