Monday, January 09, 2006

Response to Stupid Medic Tricks

So like most bloggers, I use my little space as a sort of public online journal. Its a place to ramble on about my life as a medic and a place to show off some of my photographs. I write about the ups and downs of my job, my life. I also encourage people to post comments. Now Today while I was flipping through some old posts that had new comments and I was shocked at one of the comments I received. Now I made a comment to this one in the comments list however I felt I needed to say some more. I normally would ignore such ignorance, but I wanted to show this in all it's arrogant glory. This is a comment from either one of those medics who scare us all, the ones who think they know everything, one who will eventually kill a patient because they refuse to learn from what they do wrong or someone who is not a medic at all and does not truly know what goes on in the back of an ambulance.

Anonymous said...
I think you fucked up big time and your a shit bag medic. Awesome assessment skills! Not! Ya know, some day that PT will be your mother, and I hope she gets someone with ALOT more skill and a little more compassion.

5:42 PM

I posted several weeks ago about a call in which I screwed up. It was a bad call with a sick CHFer. I forgot we had CPAP on the truck and I got flustered. It was a very short transport so I put her on albuterol for her wheezing and encoded the hospital a second too soon before I had all the vital information. So when the hospital kept yelling at me for BPs and asking me if I had any IV assess I got overwhelmed. I should have put the radio down and thought more thoroughly about what I was dealing with. I basically pulled a rookie medic mistake. It was not really a mistake per say, I didn't give say Lidocaine to a heart block or Mag Sulfate to a trauma victim. I just didn't treat my patient completely. Had I had a eight minute transport intead of a two minute transport I would have worked everything out in my head. My hands would have caught up with my brain. Now most medics know what I am talking about, especially the new ones. You're screaming down bumpy roads with your driver throwing you about the back of the box. You're trying to hold on and treat your patient at the same time. A good medic takes that whoops and turns it into a learning experience. Every call when go on is practice for the next patient we encounter. My next CHFer I get I will now reach for the CPAP and Nitro before I reach for the radio.
I never claim to know everything. Nor will I know everything. I will be the first person to admit my mistakes. I will speak to the MD after a bad call and ask what else could I have done to make the call run better. I am forever learning. I speak with my coworkers. I post on my blog to learn from the other medics who read and comment on my blog.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You said it best yourself: A Blog is an open forum for comment... good or bad. I'm proud of you for having the character to leave the unprofessional post standing verbatum. It's really no secret to the rest of us that the annoymous poster needed to belittle you to make himself/herself feel superior. How very sad, pathetic, and unprofessional.
My posts in the past, and henceforth future were/will be annoymous as I don't own a Blog and am not likely to have one anytime soon. Nevertheless, I am not afraid to post my e-mail address in this message. Flame away all you annoymous cowards!

No
nocode54@yahoo.com

Anonymous said...

Your additude of learning from every experience, and asking questions to continue to make yourself better at what you do is inspiring! No one is perfect, no one knows it all, and assuming is "The mother of all f**k ups!" as my instructor likes to say.
Keep up the good work, and wish me luck...
EMT-B Student, Colorado

painter in hiding said...

Good luck to you! Paramedic school, which I assume you're in since you are already a Basic is a hard few months. But it's worth all the pain I promise. I love what I do. So take all the greif in stride, it' will be over soon.

Anonymous said...

Sorry to hear you get muppets leaving muppet messages (sorry, that's english slang: muppet = idiot). it was a short transfer so you made the pt no worse. plus, most of the CHFers have a bronchospasm element to the diff breathing. so you helped that, despite the (slight) rise in HR.