Is This A Common Practice? Has This Happened To You? If so PLEASE Tell Me...
A friend's wife called us about 5 AM one morning. Her husband was having trouble breathing most of the night and he was getting worse. When we got to their house he was sitting on the bed with his hands on his knees leaning over trying to breath. When I asked how he was doing, he answered in short choppy sentences because he was so short of breath.
He wanted me to give him a ride to the ER in Kingman, but just walking about 10 feet to the kitchen table, he was having problems walking and became very short of breath as he reached the table and sat down.
I told him I wasn't comfortable driving him into Kingman in case he went into respiratory arrest. He said he understood because just getting hit with the cold outside air made it very hard to breath. I called 911 and a while later the LMRFD ambulance showed up.
The EMT and paramedic came in and did their assessment. Then the paramedic did something that really surprised me. He asked the patient if he wanted help getting to his car so someone could drive him into the hospital.
WHAT! Any EMT or paramedic I know would have told the patient they need to go by ambulance, and if they refused they would need to sigh a release saying they were going by private car against medical advice.or AMA.
If an EMT or paramedic allow a patient with a serious medical problem like respiratory distress to refuse to be transported after they have assessed the patient and are aware of the condition. If they don't have the patient sign an AMA release and the patient dies, they can be held libel.
I'm afraid this may be a common problem here in the LMRFD. As I was telling another person that the EMT's wanted to load this guy in a car and have someone drive him to the ER, they said that's what they did to my mom.
This time the LMRFD ambulance crew offered to load a frail elderly lady with a broken hip into her car. REALLY....
In my opinion the EMS personal could he held libel in both cases. All I can say is unprofessional.
Jay, the LMRFD board is wondering why ambulance revenue is down.
ReplyDeleteThis could be another reason, aside from people driving themselves to the hospital because the ambulance takes HOURS to get there.
Also when the Arizona Emergency Medical Services & Trauma System calculates ambulance response times they don't take into account all the times people transport themselves or AMR responds.
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