911 Update
Quiet day at the ambulance service – just 56 runs during my 5am-5pm shift. We snagged only five of them.
- Call #1 was for an elderly man who fell out of bed at the nursing home. Had significant skin tears on both arms. Has been taking Prednisone for a while which makes a person susceptible to such injury.
- Call #2 was a lady who fell at another nursing home. She had left hip pain but no obvious fracture. Patient has a history of frequent falls.
- Call #3 was for a “one down” which usually turns out to be someone passed out in a drunken stupor. The police beat us to the scene and cancelled us as we arrived.
- Call #4 was an auto accident in a suburban community. Car was T-boned by an SUV at an intersection. The auto had very heavy damage to front passenger door. The car’s driver was complaining of right chest pain. Both drivers insisted that they had the green light when the accident occurred. Patient was taken to the hospital but will do just fine.
- Call #5 was a middle age male with chest pain with no other symptoms. He had a normal looking 12 Lead EKG and pain not relieved by nitro. Did not appear to be cardiac in origin.
All patients were transported to area hospitals. Kind of a hum-drum day.
You seem to do a fair number of nursing home runs. This was a dimension of paramedic work I was unaware of. I guess I always assumed that nursing homes had nurses or a doctor on call to handle most of the kinds of things you describe.
Margaret
28 Feb 09 at 11:11 pm
If a nursing home patient becomes acutely ill or if a patient’s chronic condition(s)change a 911 call is made and the paramedics respond. Some of the time we merely provide transport. Most of the time we initiate treatments. Nursing home staff just aren’t trained or staffed to deal with acute situations.
Duke
1 Mar 09 at 4:50 pm
THe majority of nursing homes today are understaffed.
Many are only aides.
I had an elderly neighbor who was in a nursing home near by recovering from knee replacement surgery.
She was having chest pain and no one was answering her light,. it took 20 minutes before someone came and by then she was panicked. An Ambulance was called and she was taken to North Memorial.
She has suffered a mild heart attack.
She said the staff that was working the night shift was not very fluent in English, though I don’t think that was the problem she does.
She refused to go back there.
If there were funds to cover a Murse Practitioner, I think you would make less trips to nursing homes.
GiGi
3 Mar 09 at 6:33 am
Your neighbor’s experience is not an uncommon one. A couple of weeks ago we were called to a nursing home where a patient had been complaining of chest pain for several hours. He was having a heart attack as well. Nursing home reimbursements are so small that these facilities have a hard time paying enough to attract the kind of staff they really need.
Duke
3 Mar 09 at 7:22 pm
As a side note, the Iowa House has passed a bill that would allow the name of the Department of Elder Affairs to the Department of Aging – DOA.
Cody
5 Mar 09 at 5:45 am