We arrived at the young lady who had called 911 for her sprained ankle. Most of you could probably agree that, while this is not really a life threatening emergency, there might be certain situations where 911 may be appropriate. For example, an older person with nobody around to help them. Any person with a severely sprained right ankle that would inhibit their ability to operate a motor vehicle safely. Those of you who have seen my occasional rants about abuse of 911 know that is probably not where I’m going with this.
As I stated, we arrived at the young lady who was seated in the passenger seat of a running SUV. She was surrounded by 6 friends/neighbors, one of whom was the owner of the SUV, and whom had offered to take her to the hospital. On assessing our patient, it was clear she had an ankle injury of some kind, and was in some pain. Not the kind of pain where we would need to consider medication for the pain. More of a discomfort, really. Her words, not mine.
When presented with various options to get her ankle evaluated by a doctor, she stated, “I’d rather go with you guys, so I can get seen.” Again, her words, not mine. After clarifying that transport by an ambulance does not guarantee you will be seen or treated any faster (the ER still prioritizes their patients), she still stated that was her wish. During the ensuing transport, she made 4 phone calls on her cellphone, and sent 7 text messages.
Now, for those of you who are thinking,, “So what. You would have been just sitting around, that’s what I pay taxes for (also something I’ve heard from patients), let me paint the picture of the next hour or so in our town.
1) Our truck, we’ll call it Ambulance 1, took our friend to the hospital, and was out of service to the rest of the public for about 90 minutes round trip.
2) During our transport, a child ran into another child, and they bonked heads. This normally would have been our call, but the next closest unit, Medic 2 (a more advanced unit) was disptached.
3) While we were at the hospital, and Medic 2 was running “our” call, a call for Chest Pain with Trouble Breathing was dispatched. Normally, Medic 2 would have been right around the corner, but since they were busy, Ambulance 3 (another unit from our station) and Medic 4 (from the next town over), had to cover the chest pain call. The response time for Medic 3 was 9 minutes, instead of the 2 that Medic 2 would have had.
See where we’re going with this? Sure, sometimes we are waiting for calls. However, please resist the temptation, if you have ANY other means of getting to a physician, to call 911. You can bet that your ankle would have felt a whole lot worse if somebody had died because you took the last ambulance in town out of service, and your neighbor went into Cardiac Arrest, and the 2 minute response time was now 9 or 10 minutes…. which can often mean the difference between life and death. We are not an express lane at the supermarket, and we will take you to the hospital if that’s your wish, but we will probably just take you to the waiting room with all of the other non life-threatening emergencies.
