Routine

When I first started in EMS I remembered everything that happened, every patient's name, face, details of the life and home. Now here I am at the end of the day, struggling to remember the calls I just did.

There is a tedium to the job. The calls I did today didn't challenge me at all -- I went through them on autopilot, eyeballing the patient, feeling their forehead and pulse, putting them in a johnny, listening to their lungs, getting the patient on the stretcher, asking the neccessary questions of people on the scene, getting them in the back of the ambulance, taking their blood pressure, telling my partner to head for the hospital non-priority, putting in an IV line, drawing blood, putting them on the cardiac monitor all while continuing to assess them and get the history, writing the run form as I talk, labeling the bloods with the patient's name and time of draw plus my initials, cleaning up the wrappers, neating up the back, writing the triage form for the hospital, making the radio patch, switching from the onboard back to the portable o2, getting everything done so when we hit the hospital, I'm ready to jump out, wheel the patient in, hand the triage slip to the nurse, get assigned a room, find a bed for the room, get the patient over, find them a pillow or use bath blankets as a makeshift pillow, hand the bloods to the nurse, give her the report, say good bye to the patient, call and get times, drop off the run form, wash my hands, make a little small talk with the people I see everyday, grab something to drink, then get back in the ambulance and do it all over again.

The benefit of the tedium -- of the regular, the ordinary -- is you get in the routine so that when you have the call where you have to hurry, you are so conditioned to get everything done that you can actually maybe make a difference.

Here's the calls I did today (after consulting my run forms):

An Alzheimer's patient with a bruised hip, who babbled all the way to the hospital. The hospital gave her a cocktail of drugs not for her pain, which she didn't have, but to shut her up.

A woman with COPD coughing up green phlegm and running a low grade fever.A man coughing up green phlegm running a low grade fever. The guy's wife wanted us to wait there with them at the hospital until he was seen so we could take them back. No.

And a lady with gross hematuria, who the doctor thought might also be having an MI based on her ECG, which showed a slight ST depression. She was having no symptoms other than an episode of chest pressure the previous day. I asked for a copy of the old MI. They had to go find it. Looked the same. The doctor wanted a cardiologist paged stat as soon as we got to the hospital. I dutifully relayed the message to the triage nurse. We'll let the ER doctor make the call on the that she said.

They had patients up and down the hallways. Some very sick people, others not so sick.I punched out and will back tomorrow.