(this true EMS story relates to the author and a volunteer ambulance company of which he is a member is not necessarily in any chronological order) Time frame, approximate 1990.
Most days my ambulance corps has set crews and each has a crew chief. The crew chief is usually the member with the highest EMT certification. I was not on duty the day of the following call, however, since I am a first responder, I respond whenever I am available, on call or not. Once on scene, I stabilize a patient until the rig arrives and then pass the patient over to the crew. I stay with the crew, to the hospital if I am needed.
It was a Saturday afternoon, about 2pm. I was enjoying the bright summer day, mowing my lawn and fixing up the front yard. My pager went off announcing a motor vehicle accident with the driver ejected from car. The Saturday crew was just coming out of the hospital after answering a call previously. I ran to quickly clean up and jump in my car to respond. I arrived at the scene after the ambulance but decided to see if I could help out anyway. I was needed.
My certification is EMT Basic. Has been for the past 22 years, and on this day I was working with what was then called, AEMT’s, (4 of them) which are Advanced EMT’s able to start IV’s, give medications, defibrillate manually, etc. Today AEMT is equated as EMT-CC. What I saw upon arrived scared the hell out of me. Our patient looked to be an 18 or 19 year old male, obviously ejected from his car after hitting a tree on the side of a service road for the interstate expressway that runs through our district. He was supine (face up) on the street with his head half on and half off the curb. He was unconscious.
In EMS, the rule is BLS (basic life support) before ALS (advanced life support). Our problem was to perform our ABC’s then immobilize this patient, properly, before doing much else. We did. It was not easy considering his position in which we found him as well as his obviously injured neck and other injuries. We moved him while stabilizing his head and neck, placed a cervical collar on him and then placed him on a long backboard for transport. Still unconscious enroute to the hospital, we assisted the patients breathing using a BVM (bag-valve mask) and our AEMT’s started their IV, then intubated the patient so our BVM assist was more efficient.
We retrieved the patients identification from his wallet and were stunned to see he was the son of one of our founding members of the corps. The time format in which this call occurred was before the advent of the cell phone, so notification of next of kin had to wait until we arrived at the hospital.
Our patient was taken into the trauma room upon arrival and the trauma team went right to work. While many EMS workers complain about care some patients get in the hospital, we had nothing but praise for the manner in which our patient was treated this day.
Not long after we completed the call (actually several days later) we learned, in a thank you note from the patients’ mother, that he had sustained a broken neck in the accident. The surgeon who worked on him said that if it weren’t for the extremely good care we gave him in the field, packaging him perfectly, he might have ended up a paraplegic. He wore a hallo device for several months until his injuries healed and walked out of the hospital on his own.
Today, the young man we assisted that bright summer day is alive and well, married, and living in Virginia. This is one of those calls where everything turned out well because we trained for it in advance. Putting our training and skills to work in the field and having an outcome such as this, is what makes working (even volunteering) so rewarding.
