More crazy days lately, the past 2 shifts have had some very good calls. I was sent off to another station and ran a car fire, stove fire (out on our arrival), and a car vs. tree collision where the patient damn near amputated his foot in the impact. The next shift I ran a call back in my home territory where a 15 yof (year old female) was shot through-and-through the abdomen by her cousin. That call came out in the late afternoon when the news helicopters were already airborne and in the area. My mom called me later saying she saw our engine on the news. There was also a big bumble-fuck about the local childrens hospital wanting their helicopter to do the transport. They were put on alert by our dispatch center and said they would have a 9 minute ETA. A few minutes later, Radio calls us on the Nextel asking if we want the helicopter, they went airborne and were now 5 minutes away. "Uh, no, tell them thanks but not this time."
A little background will help explain this problem. When the helicopters do the transport, the flight crew usually wants to assess the patient onscene and load them with the rotor blades stopped ("cold load"). This takes valuable time that can not be spared. Any and every patient that is severe enough to need the helicopter does not have the 5-7 minutes to sit there, that's why we, the paramedics and emt's onscene, give them a report in the first place.
I will admit and agree that most lifeflight helicopters are cramped and it looks nearly impossible to get around the patient. I just want to know why they need to shut everything down to reassess the patient when we've already told them everything we could and the patient is packaged and ready to go. If you really need to do another assessment, why can't it be done enroute to the hospital? It may be different elsewhere, but here the only time a helicopter will do a "hot load" is on the interstate, they are afraid if they shut everything down they might not be able to get airborne again.
We don't currently have a protocol for using the choppers, But we've had a few calls lately that have caused the upper brass to look into this problem. While they're at it, it's been said that they will also assign certain locations to be landing zones.
Who knows...maybe it'll help, maybe it won't...at least we can say we tried.
Take care
1 comment:
We had a helicopter-deal on Munday night as well. It was a big cluster-fuck from the beginning. We are having alot of problem here with no one entity to blame. Its mostly influenced by politics between different departments. Dunno if you all have problems like this or not. You would think that because we all do the same job, that all depts would get along but there is alot of really juvenile BS. Its funny how some folks really get along and some are like oil and water. Alot of good things have happened with us procedular-wise just because someone brought it to a captain's or BC's attention. I highly recommend that you go up the ranks with your concerns. YOu may very well be responsible for a written SOG someday and better patient care.
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