According to the OP it was a private ambulance service, that’s what they do. And Fire Departments are often the providers of emergency medical service, they will have the ambulances and EMTs.
That is a thing they do. I have never been convinced it is appropriate to detail an ambulance for a routine transport, instead of a car or a wheelchair-accessible van.
Yes, I see now it was an FDNY ambulance that responded. Which unfortunately leaves it unclear why the first EMT rode along to the hospital.
The old gentleman was left inside an ambulance, one of the safest places on earth, doing what he presumably does a lot of, sitting down. Unless he got agitated, I can’t see how he was in any danger more than his normal routine. However the little girl was in immediate danger right there.
Quibbles about the school and the teachers and whomever else should have been able to aid are inconsequential, since they weren’t there to aid.
People are using the word “abandon” because that’s the legal term that describes it. When I went through this same training, we were told we could never leave our patient until they arrived in the care of equally qualified to help them (ie the hospital). Every EMT has a protocol SOP from their hospital that covers what they are and aren’t allowed to do. If he thought saving this girl was more important than following his SOP, then as far as I’m concerned he did the right thing.
Unfortunately, this is the world we live in. The 80-year old patient could sue the hospital, and at the end of the day that’s all anyone seems to care about. These stories seem to come up with astonishing regularity. I once read about a security guard who was fired for extinguishing a fire before dialing 911, because his SOP said he was supposed to call 911 first. Apparently his employers cared more about their insurance liability than having their entire goddamned building burn down. I saw another one about a lifeguard that was fired for saving a drowning victim outside of his designated area. Apparently going outside the “zone” his company operated meant he wasn’t covered by their insurance. And we live in a world where people’s insurance premiums are more important than human lives, so until there’s a massive shift in our business culture shit like this will continue to happen.
I’m not sure that an ambulance without an EMT is appreciably safer than being in a minivan.
There was a partner still in the ambulance.
We’re sure about that? There’s a post a bit above mine with a link that says the little girl is now brain dead, and since Mr. Reid decided to treat her, he and his employer are also potentially liable. They wouldn’t have been should Mr. Reid have driven on by without aiding the child and abandoning his own patient.
Can we definitively say that a judge won’t find that Reid’s care was negligent in some way? I’m not sure that we can. While there may be a Good Sam law in NY, I don’t know that it applies to the actions of a trained professional like Mr. Reid.
Shitty situation the whole way around.
I guess there is potential harm to the company, which really sucks. The necessity of the situation should override leave all parties free from liability. No one should feel fettered by our out of control liability when it’s time to save a life.
The other person in the ambulance wasn’t an EMT according to the story. He was a nursing home aide; I’m not sure what level of training that requires. But since the EMT also accompanied the girl to the hospital with the FDNY that means the original patient was away from medical professionals for an extended period of time.
It’s certainly a tough call, and in an emergency I can’t blame him for rushing to the aid of a girl in critical condition. His actions after that (going to the hospital) go beyond a reasonable response.
Or maybe they cared more about the entire building going down with the security guard passed out inside than the security guard playing hero. If the guard follows SOP and calls 911, then the fire department is notified and can send a truck on the way ASAP. By trying to put out the fire himself, there are all kinds of bad scenarios. Maybe the fire is worse than he thought, and it goes out of control while he’s trying to put it out with no firefighters. Maybe he succumbs to heat and smoke, or maybe whatever is burning releases fumes, and he passes out while the fire spreads and no firefighters are on the way.
I think there are really good reasons for wanting a guard to notify FD, PD, or some kind of central office before trying to deal with a potentially dangerous situation on their own. Including the guard’s own safety!
Has it been explained yet why he rode along to the hospital?
No, but only because we have to live in this world with horribly immoral people. The fact that money is even entering into the conversation is just more indication of that.
What he did was the only moral action given the situation. If the law gets in the way of that, the law is bad.
This is why I do not hold the legal professions in high esteem. We shouldn’t even have to worry about some psychopathic judge like this.
(If the girl had actually had a chance at living, his choosing not to help would have made him a murderer.)
My understanding is that EMTs need to stay with the patient until the file can be transferred to a nurse or doctor at the hospital. This is based on when my dad was taken to hospital and the EMT stayed (for an hour or two) until this happened.
And if his own patient in the ambulance died while he was elsewhere (an unlikely occurrence, I agree), would that have made him a murderer as well? He had already established duty of care to that guy.
I would have thought that there were rules about ambulances not stopping mid-route because it might be an attempt to steal their drugs. An ambulance can be a sitting duck. I didn’t think it was possible to hail an emergency vehicle as if they were taxis.
But the FDNY ambulance has its own staff of EMTs, who were specifically instructed to rush to the aid of the girl and take her to the hospital.
The good samaritan guy happened to be there first, and did what was morally right…But after the other professionals arrived, he should have returned to his own ambulance and patient.
So if I’m on the jury—I give him a letter of reprimand, but don’t fire him.
Anyone else read the thread title and start trying to remember the posting habits of EMT and when you last saw EMT show up in a thread, and try to puzzle out who the heck Ambo is and why stopping Ambo is a suspension-worthy infraction, and who the heck changed their username to Choking Girl? Wasn’t that… no wait, that was…
Here is a good write-up on what constitutes abandonment in the context of EMS.
Regardless of anything else, the first EMT screwed up when he rode with the NYFD to the hospital. I cannot think of a single reason why he’d do that. A regular ambulance crew would be perfectly capable of providing continuing treatment en route without extra help.
There is absolutely no way to spin “leaving my patient in an ambulance stopped on the street and riding off in a different vehicle” as anything but abandonment. I’m sure there’s something in the transport company’s employee handbook about not abandoning your truck, to say nothing of a patient contained within. The nursing home aid would then be faced with the option of waiting (probably not in the patient’s best interest), or driving the ambulance themselves (which they may not know how to do, and are certainly not insured for, and may well put their own certification and employment at risk).
Wait, I got the impression from the discussion and the OP’s link that the EMT stopped to treat the girl, then returned to the ambulance after it was all over and continued on his merry way.
Am I to understand that he actually went with the girl to the hospital and left the ambulance there without a professional present except the nursing home aide? Did he tell the aide what he was doing? Did the aide say to go on ahead, I’ll wait for someone?