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BBFDMedic28

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Why do drug seekers always wait untill 0300 hrs to call 911 and c/o back pain? This is not a one time occurance and it gets really old. They are BSing and everyone knows it but guess what, they want to go to the ER and AMR has a "you call We haul" type policy. They could be courteous and call in the afternoon when we are less likely to be sleeping!
M28
 
Unfortunatly thats part of our job...

-Angela
 
That's usually about the time we get our attention seeking suicide attempts. Mainly from the same callers.
 
No one likes BS calls, yet again ..."Are they there for your job , or are you there for their need?"....

Somewhere in Paramedic school, they told me I would have to make calls at night....

R/r 911
 
BBFDMedic28 said:
They could be courteous and call in the afternoon when we are less likely to be sleeping!
M28
Click to expand...

Are you kidding? Afternoon is prime nap time! :lol:

My favorite late night call came in as a public assist. We were to help the man back into bed. When we got to the house, the man had already been helped back to bed by the nursing assistant that was at the house and he was fumbling with his catheter that needed to be emptied. My partner emptied the catheter and we left. We still laugh about that one. :beerchug:
 
i don't really get irritated with calls yet...i think i'm to new to be phased by it. this thread reminded me of a call we got recently, though. this lady swore up and down that she fell down the stairs and broke every bone in her body. she was crying and carrying on and walked just fine until she got to the ambulance. at that time she fell and couldn't walk. she told us that her dr. was expecting her. i begged my paramedic to let me collar and backboard her, but he wouldn't let me:sad:. it would have been a nice long ride to the hospital that she insisted we go to, too.
 
In the afternoon, they can get meds from their friends, neighbors, local recreational chemical supplier... those people get annoyed with them for calling at 3am, while we are pleasant and professional.
 
I found this on another EMS forum and thought it was appropriate for this topic.

From the book .People Care: Career-Friendly Practices for the Professional Caregivers
By Thom **** & Friends.



..."Physician and medical ethicist Patch Adams was right, Medicine isnt about people's egos or about the sense of power that some might feel standing over someone who's helpless and miserable. It's not about us at all. It's about others, reaching out to us as friends and trusting us to help them as much as we can on the worst days of their lives.

Consequently, there's no such thing as a stupid call. We have all been subjected to a whole dialect of cynical terminology for what our industry calls "stupid calls." We should vigorously protect our right to laugh at some of the stuff we see happen in EMS. But we should probably not get upset when someone calls us in the middle of the night because they're lonely. Anyone who has ever felt truly alone knows what an emergency that can be. Every EMT class should discuss the meaning of EMS in the following way:

The E in EMS stands for Emergency, Not ours, but other people's.

The M in EMS stands for Medical. It doesnt stand for ME and it has nothing to do with more money for fire trucks.

The S in EMS stands for Service. It has nothing to do with self-esteem or any other kind of selfishness.

EMS is not manufacturing. It is the most important people business in history....."
 
So much a part of the territory is in the moment with the patient you do what you were taught. Period. That also means you transport. Then, afterwards you learn you got skunked by a scrote. Then you feel like an idiot. Then you rant. Then you laugh. Then, next time it happens, you do what you were taught...
 
The ride-along I did a few nights back had one of those calls. The medic and EMT-I got the address and just groaned
 
You really have to deal with those type of calls? No surprise just didn't think that would be the first topic I got to read LOL.

On another note my father who works for the Los Angeles Police Department has told me a few about druggies. The funniest I can remember is him telling me about a tweaker (Crystal Methamphetimine user) whom had been up for like 2 weeks or something to that effect and believed the the secret service had asked him to be the driver for the president in his car. Not sure how the whole story went but it was bad...guy went to jail for possesion of 3 grams of meth (any amount is a felony in california) and DUI (Driving Under the influence of meth) so yeah.. funny stuff.
 
We have a lady that loves to fake seizures. Over the past 2 1/2 years she averages one 911 call every 2 months. When I first stared to run on her, a sternum rub during her seizure activity would produce a "Hey, that hurts" response from her. After awhile, during her seizure activity, her hands would be clasped across her chest, protecting her sternum, so we would ask a question such as "[Name], are you cold and do you want a blanket?" She would stop her "seizure" and say "No, I'm fine".

Now what caused her to start faking seizures was the fact that she would, sometimes go into real seizure activity. After 10-12 calls of crying wolf, EMTs can get complacent. Some would start with the jokes and such during the response to her 911 call. We would warn people that this might be the real deal, but it always would end up being BS.

Until one day she was found in active seizure and the 911 call was placed. She would come in and out of seizure activity all the way to the ER. The one thing I remember most was during one postictal session, she was responsive enough to say "I'm sorry". We all knew what she meant, that she was sorry for all the "other" times.

Since that day, the calls to her residence have dropped dramatically. We are a volunteer service and respond from our homes. When a call comes in at 0300 for a "cut finger" or "Back pain", I try and remember the above patient. It's hard to always respond with a smile, but we must try and respond with professionalism.

I've been doing this for 10+ years now. I just passed my Intermediate. At 49 years of age, I just wish I had found EMS earlier in life. I envy those that can do this job full time, it takes a special person. I know the pay isn't great, when was the last time you read about the lastest millionaire paramedic? But EMS is like the teaching profession, where would we be without them?

OK, enough of my rant, I got to get back to work! Be safe all!
 
Ridryder911 said:
The E in EMS stands for Emergency, Not ours, but other people's.

The M in EMS stands for Medical. It doesnt stand for ME and it has nothing to do with more money for fire trucks.

The S in EMS stands for Service. It has nothing to do with self-esteem or any other kind of selfishness.

EMS is not manufacturing. It is the most important people business in history.
Click to expand...

Beautiful!

It's just a circle that I feel can be avoided. New EMT's learn it from being around their preceptors and so on. Whenever I'm with EMT's or soon-to-be EMT's that are newer than I am I try to have fun with it. *tones go out* "401 to Medic 25, Spring Hill Duty Crew, respond to 22 Main ST for a party with a stomach ache. Time now is 02:55." I jump right up and am like "Alright! Let's go!" I try to get new trainees motivated to do the jobs. They're obviously not in this field for the paycheck; almost everybody is here for the sole underlying reason: we want to help people.

Yes, if you ask anybody not in EMS "imagine getting woken up at 3am from sleeping for a stomach ache." They could answer this in two ways "..you get to sleep, eat food, be on the computer, shop, and watch TV at your job?" or "That must be annoying." This is EMS. People are having fewer and fewer doctors these days as well as it's the whole American mentality of everything has to be immediate results of faster and stronger.
 
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Nobody likes to get up at 0200 for a bs call, but we asked for this job or we would not be here. Many things lead up to these calls anything from mental problems, loneliness, fear, and drug seeking behavior. Just remember no matter how many times a patient has cried wolf the next time you think a call is BS it may turn out to be OS!!!! You never know until you are on scene.
 
The only true BS calls are when a nursing home calls their friendly little neighborhood BLS service instead of calling 911. Sorry hotlips, I get the fact that the "patient very sick" but I "don't take patient now" I call for paramedics now.
 
yea, sorry, but you can't do anything about that, it's part of our job and you have to do it ina professional manner and always treat the pt. nicly no matter what they called you for..trust me, my EMS district has 3 nursing homes and a lot of trailer parks that are dominated by the elderly and drug addicted (I'm not saying all trailer parks are like this, I just happen to have the district that has them) and we get BS 0300 calls all the time, eventually you get used to it...
 
I was starting to get fed up with BS calls till one woke me up-literally and figuratively. We got called at 0330 for a "sick person" way out in the boondocks. Every call I'd ever run out that way was BS, so I didn't expect much. We get on scene to find a woman with terminal melanoma who was in agony because she was too nauseous to keep her pain meds down. Needless to say, I felt like a jerk for judging the pt before I even got to her house.
 
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