But if you have a car and have someone to drive you, then come by that conveyance instead of calling 911 and having an ambulance pick you up thinking that you’ll get seen quicker if you are brought in through the back door.
This is the problem we are facing in my small-town hospital. People have seen the news about the “Flu-Outbreak” (being called “wide-spread” now in Georgia), and at the smallest sign of snot or a sniffle, they panic. We understand this, and we treat our patients on a triage-basis. And we treat them with respect as well as with medication.
However, somewhere along the line people have gotten it into their heads that if they call 911 and order an ambulance to bring them to the hospital, they can circumvent triage, get seen quicker and go back home.
That ain’t the way it works people and we’re going to send your ass to triage to be evaluated and wait your turn like everyone else who’s pouring snot all over the floor. (Some of them are us, and we wait too!).
What’s happening is that our EMT’s are on the road picking up these people and it’s causing their response time for other, more life-threatening calls to be compromised, and that is something that has to stop. The message has to be gotten out that when one calls an ambulance, those EMT’s are bound to respond, and if they get there and see a family of four waiting to pile into their truck with just sniffles and a car in the garage or carport, they are going to be majorly pissed, because those guys are our first response life-line in the field, and we in the ER depend on them just as our/their patients do.
Not the way I wanted to celebrate my anniversary post, but I mean DAMN!
Quasi
PS: Thanks for my surprise present, Ultra-Secret Santa Baby-Doll!
Obviously they don’t have the flu, the feeling rotten part comes from watching Ricky Lake. If I’m off of work, I would rather have my privates pressed against a bench grinder than watching Ms Lake.
Hrm. Canadian or U.S. bill, by that standard I’ve never had the flu. (That bought with food poisoning sure passes that test though).
I understand this year’s flu to be worse that usual… for the elderly or very young (always the worst hit) I can see hospitalization perhaps being required - but for anyone else… what treatment is there actually available? If all you had to treat was a middle-aged guy with the sniffles, what can possibly be done?
I work for the ambulance service, and I know what a huge pain in the ass it is. I actually work on the non-emergency side, booking patients who needs ferrying to and from outpatient appointments and discharges and such. I have the right to question whether or not patients really need transport and to turn them down if I don’t think they do.
It’s amazing what some people will try to get away with. We get patients who claim they need an ambulance because their car has broken down. Or because they don’t like getting the bus. Or their partner will be out shopping and can’t take them in. I try to give people the benefit of a doubt but I’m much more cynical than I used to be.
Perhaps they’ve seen too many medical dramas. What always happens there is that someone thinks it’d be quicker to go in a car than call an abulance. Then they get stuck in traffic, drive dangerously, die en route, or the driver goes into labour…
But yes, the world seems divided into people who would never call an ambulance because someone else is bound to need it more, and people who feel they deserve an ambulance whether they’re ill or not.
Years ago, my mother answered her door to find an EMS crew with stretcher waiting to haul her off to the hospital in an ambulance. She was, of course, rather baffled.
Then my grandmother called to see if they’d arrived—Grandmom had gotten a call which she thought was my mother having a terrible asthma attack and had called 911. Turns out Grandmom had just gotten an obscene phone call . . .
Yes, but if you’re in the UK you would also need to go to the trouble of getting the bill chaged into Pounds or Euros. And that seems like entirely too much work.
Interestingly, the sicker I am, the more inclined I am to do incredibly stupid things.
That is to say, with a temperature over a hundred and pneumonia, I am more likely to walk five miles into town in a snowstorm… wearing a T-Shirt and jeans… than leave the book that just came in at the store for tomorrow.
Well I am just getting over the death flu, and all I can say is holy shit!
It was just last week I was bitching about people making it such a big deal, and then BOOM. As I was having fevered visions in my room, I was like, “so this is why people are dying”. I’m perfectly healthy 30 year old, and I was down and out for a week. Sickest I’ve ever been I think.
I’m of the opinion that if you can walk and/or are not profusely bleeding, you don’t need to go to the ER. You don’t need an ambulance unless you’re so bad off you need the EMTs to keep you from dying enroute.
This seems logical, but does not appear to apply to car accidents. If you’re in an accident, no matter how fine you think you are, they want you in the ambulance. I can’t tell you how many people I know who’ve had the argument with the EMTs-- “Let us just take you in to get checked out”, no matter how many times you profess to be fine.
When I was in an accident a few months ago, they rushed me to the ER as a trauma II based on the extreme damage to my car (so the EMT explained to the doctors when asked). While riding over (sirens blaring) the EMTs were discussing cutting me out of my clothes, which is apparently procedure. I’m strapped down, fully awake and feeling FINE, begging them not to do so. I was wearing my favorite jeans. The ER team was not ammused when I was rolled in, smiling up at them and faintly annoyed at the neck brace chafing my chin.
I was, of course, billed as a trauma II, and they did all the scans and tests anyway. Almost $10,000 in hospital and ambulance bills to pronounce me possesing of a sprained back (which hurt like a bitch and took forever to heal, but I don’t think qualifies as trauma). But I did, in fact, get to skip triage.
It was just such a flu that got me started on taking the shots every year, about six or seven years ago. Of course this year’s shot doesn’t cover this year’s version, but oh well, what do I expect, perfection? At least it seems to be done with Colorado. crosses fingers
I suppose I should make a tangential connection to the OP: I’m not a bit surprised that someone in the grip of a flu like this would call an ambulance. Sniffles? Let 'em walk.
Welcome back, Quasimodem - and congratulations on your 3,000th post!
Being married to a fireman/paramedic, I’ve heard many stories about people who decide at exactly 3:03 am that they must go (via ambulance) to the hospital - for that nagging back pain they’ve been experiencing for the past week.
Save 911 for the real emergencies, people!
