Teach Providers to Appreciate the Small Parts of the Job

When the public thinks or hears about firefighting, what typically comes to mind are all the big jobs: multi-alarm fires, extrications, hazardous materials mitigations, collapsed structure and confined space rescues—the kinds of calls we worry about but also somewhat ironically look forward to. This all looks a little different on the medical side. Although many of the things we encounter in suppression can certainly be dramatic and critically important, there are many more opportunities to save or change the course of a life on the EMS end of things. That’s not to belittle or to trivialize the importance of fire suppression, but it does point to the reality of what we see and do every day. But many patients would probably be just fine if they could catch a cab to the clinic or to their doctor’s office, whether on the same day or maybe even a day or two later. Sometimes, though, many of these lowpriority calls aren’t what they appear to be. Very often, for instance, we get called out on “lift-assists,” where patients seem to have trouble transferring from the bed to the wheelchair or have somehow ended up on the floor. These calls are so frequent and so repetitive in some systems that first-responders and EMS providers simply pick these people back up and put them into their beds or wheelchairs. They don’t always do a full patient assessment or vital signs or an ECG, let alone complete a refusal of care. But sometimes the real reason these patients can’t get u...
Source: JEMS Administration and Leadership - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Leadership & Professionalism Columns Source Type: news