Safety is Third, Not First, and We All Know It Should Be

It’s about 4:00 a.m. on your first overnight shift of the cycle. You had a busy day running errands, watching your child’s Christmas play, sitting down for dinner with the family before arriving to shift at 7:00 p.m. You’ve had a busy night with back-to-back calls, and haven’t made it back to the station since checking your truck at shift change. You almost make it back to the station when you’re dispatched to yet another call: a reported single motor vehicle crash (MVC) in a rural part of your district. You and your partner are the first unit to arrive on scene of an overturned vehicle on a busy road. Your training kicks in and as you put the ambulance in park, you remember the “Safety First” mantra and ask yourself, “Is this scene safe?” In reality, this scene is anything but “safe.” There’s the ever-present risk of serious injury or death due to being struck by a vehicle while on scene at an MVC. Apparatus positioning, reflective garments, and scene lighting may mitigate this risk; however, impaired drivers, adverse weather conditions, and the location of the emergency continue to be risk factors out of control of emergency responders. Despite this risk and ever-present danger, we continue to provide lifesaving care to people in unsafe environments daily. As you don your reflective traffic vest and size up the scene, you see a single vehicle overturned off the roadway, leaking fluids from the engine compartment. You hear moaning from inside the car ...
Source: JEMS Operations - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Exclusive Articles Operations Source Type: news