EMS Myth: We Can Accidentally “Kidnap” People

You’ve heard the claim before. A well meaning partner or supervisor may have warned you. Or perhaps a field instructor or even an EMT instructor made the dubious claim. It sounded something like this, “We need to be careful about taking people to the hospital against their will. If they have the right to refuse care then we are kidnapping them. These little bits of instruction are often well intentioned. And it remains true that people who have the right to refuse our care should be allowed to make decisions on their own. But I want to make it clear that, while the idea of accidentally kidnapping someone sounds dramatic and meaningful, it’s also completely false. Discard the idea that taking people to the hospital against their will is “kidnapping”. It’s not. I understand that statement will come as a surprise to many of you reading this. The “accidental kidnapping” myth is pretty popular in EMS. In fact, it’s been dropped so often that there are few EMS providers running around who haven’t encountered it at one time or another. Here’s the major problem with the claim, you just can’t accidentally kidnap someone. Kidnapping is a malicious act. The term itself implies malicious intent. To understand better why it’s so improbable that you could ever be formally charged with kidnapping you need to understand the difference between kidnapping and false imprisonment. You also need to be familiar with your local laws regarding the use of fo...
Source: The EMT Spot - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: EMT Source Type: blogs