True Story…
The dispatch information was updated before we had even rolled our rig out onto the pad. Eye injury, no serious symptoms. Jodie shut down the lights and I informed dispatch that we’d be responding non-emergent.
Up stairs and inside the small two bedroom apartment, Samantha, our patient, was waiting on the couch, holding a hot compress to her swollen right eyelid. Mom worked calmly in the kitchen finishing diner for her other two children. Alan, Samantha’s father sat on the edge of his seat next to his daughter in a state of barely containable anxiety.
He had recently arrived home from work and his wife had informed him of the apparent infection in Samantha’s right eye. One look and he was on the phone to us. Now he breathed rapidly as he fumbled through a list of questions. What caused it? Could it damage her vision? Could she lose her eye? Could she go blind?
I cleared the engine to go back in service and sat down next to him. Over the next ten minutes we both explained what pink-eye was and how to take care of it. We talked about hot-compresses and how contagious the bacteria was going to be. We reviewed the typical course for such and infection. How to prevent it in the other kids. How likely it was that one of them already had it. And we discussed his plan for morning. (It involved asking a neighbor to drive them to a near-by clinic.)
Alan called 911 for pink-eye. And…(This part is bound to be controversial, depending on what kind of system you work in.) I never offered to take him to the emergency room. And he never asked.
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A Guest Post By Jim Hoffman
“The EMS Professional,” “The Paramedic Mentor,” Today’s guest author, Jim Hoffman has more nicknames than a retiring prizefighter and he’s earned 
every one of them. From the streets of The Big Apple to New Jersey and now the secluded mountains of upstate New York, Jim has been a paramedic for the better part of two decades.
In his down time, Jim runs EMS-Safety.com, a one stop shop for low cost EMS training resources. He’s also part of the team behind The EMS Boot Camp series. After a little cajoling I talked Jim into letting me post his Handover contribution as a guest post. So this is me, stealing all of Jim’s literary goodness for you. (Thank me later.)
And now Jim:
As an EMT in a large EMS system I found myself becoming burnt and indifferent to the patients I was responding to and treating; all too often being annoyed at the calls that obviously just didn’t require an ambulance and more often didn’t even require a doctor.
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Still struggling with the good EMT thing. I’m glad to be at your service. Grab a pen and answer these
questions for yourself.
- What’s your internal bias toward dealing with patients and their challenges? When patients have needs that don’t meet with your expectations how do you tend to react? Could you do that better? How?
- What’s it like to be your partner? How do people feel about you after they’ve run calls with you? Is that by your design?
- How do you handle it when you fail? When you have a bad call or things don’t go right? Are you willing to be fallible before your peers and own your mistakes? If you really felt that you were good at what you do, what would be the ideal way to address these inevitable errors?
- What is your tolerance for learning. Are you still in an active learning process or have you stagnated in your growth since you entered the field. What did you learn today?
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I get a bunch of E-mails from people just starting their EMT education who want advice on how to excel in their programs. “How should I prepare? What books do you recommend?” The questions vary but their is always the familiar flavor of enthusiasm and the same basic question, “How do I do this well?”
Success in this field is fairly predictable. Use the right recipe and you’ll get there. I think the hierarchy of EMS success looks like this:
1.) Attitude
2.) Motivation
3.) Tolerance for repetition
4.) Goal orientation
5.) Strategy and tactics
6.) Performance
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It strange to think that it’s been almost 20 years since the first time I did CPR. I still remember it so vividly. How the time flies.
I was fortunate to have good mentors and teachers in my early days in EMS. One of them was Phil Rigardo. As an EMT student, Phil had invited me to come do a few ride-along’s with him. I owe a lot to Phil. He was one of the first major influences I had in EMS and he framed the job in a fun and exciting way. I’ve managed to carry that initial frame (EMS is fun) for most of my career.
I had been riding with Phil for a few shifts when we got dispatched to a cardiac arrest. This was the first really sick person I had ever seen Phil treat. My first chance to see him in action. That was a big deal to me.
The engine crew arrived before us and the three man crew had been working for a few minutes prior to our arrival. I remember the narrow staircase that lead up to the crowded upstairs apartment. Clothes and furniture and bags and the stuff of crowded people living crowded lives filled the place. Three firefighters were crammed in to a bedroom made for one doing CPR on the bed. The Captain was speaking in a raised voice and stress was evident across his forehead. Our patient filled the bed and bounced with each compression.
Phil walked in and did something I never expected.
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Sometimes it’s all just a matter of what you focus on.
My children like to play a game called “I Spy” while we’re driving around in the car. You probably remember the game as well. One person selects a random object. Something you’re sure the other folks in the car won’t guess. Then you let everyone know what color it is.
“I spy, with my little eye, something … blue.”
And the guessing game begins. There are different strategies to keeping the guessing game going. You can select a common colored item and try to hide your object in the sea of white, blue or gray items. You can also pick something more obscure and force your guessers to use their powers of observation.
I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon when we chose the second option. It’s trickier than it apperas. “I spy something purple.” This one should be easy. There’s just not that much purple to pick from. Find the purple thing … win. Next player.
Purple … purple. “Uh, the insigina on the radio?”
“Nope.”
“Huummm. Mommys hair clip?”
“Nope.”
“The digital readout on the thermometer? Your sister’s swim goggles? The letters on my t-shirt?”
“No, No and nooooo.”
Wait, where did all this purple stuff come from? This one was supposed to be a gimmie.
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