OOps moments...

[traumateam1]

I had one yesterday at work!

My partner, the medic, had driven to our call because we had just left a BLS call and were on our way to a chest pain. Well, we were refused, so we climb back into the ambulance, im in the drivers seat, he in the passenger. Im start pushing on the gas pedal and the bambulance wont move, the engine revs and such but it wouldnt drive. Check it, yup, in Drive. Give it some more gas. It starts puttering down the road but there is a definite resistance and hesitation and engine problems so we stop on the side and im sitting there trying to figure out what to do.. My partner is like Here, let me do it. So I get out, he slides into the drivers seat, and then we go driving down the road like nothings wrong.

I forgot to take off the parking break

Haha! Very nice Sasha! B)

 

[aussieemt1980]

We had a whoopsie where the truck got bogged in the middle of the paddock and had to be pulled out....

I told the driver it was too muddy before we went in, and spent the next 20 minutes laughing... guess who had to dig out the back wheels .

I once watched some army nurses respond to an injured person on the base where I was posted, they did not close the back door and did not lock in the stretcher... damn they roll quick down hill. There was no patient on board!

 

[EMTCop86]

I forgot to pull up the wheel chocks on the fire engine once. Never lived that one down. Found one in my locker the next day that had a posted note on it "Don't forget about me"

 

[johnrsemt]

watched a hospital based ambulance (back in Indy); come up on the off ramp, park at the top at the MVC, the EMT got the cot out, let it go, turned and shut the back doors, and chased his cot down the off ramp, through two stop lights.
everyone at the accident was laughing; we ended up passing our cot (private service) over the barrier so that they could transport the pt to the hospital with a fire fighter driving; my partner and I went down and around and picked up their cot and crew member and took it/him to the hospital.

 

[piranah]

ok i got one that i never lived down ......ok just ransported a C/P pt to a trauma 1 center where they have a cath lab...anyho....its a busy hospital...i get back into the truck to finish my report after transfer of care.....filling it out..i stop to get coffee....spill some coffee on me when we get about 5 miles from town...(hospital is about 25 miles away).....we pull o\ver so i can get a towel outta the bac k i open the back and theres no stretcher.....i went "huh....why would he take the stretcher out so i can get a towel"...then i realized my driver forgot to put it back in after cleaning it....(it was job to do all that stuff while the EMT fills the report cuz the drivers are non-EMTs).....well i flipped....then i took the second line truck and he drove back to the facility....lol every dept. around was busting us for months...like " hey bristol dont forget that big thing that holds pts"......lol was a bad day

 

[rjz]

I don't have pictures thank goodness, but....We responded to a rural area of our already rural area. On the way to the call I told my partner that we were goign to have to park the ambualnce ont he road and walk the gurney down the 300 ft long 75 foot elevation drop driveway because there was no way to get down the steep driveway and get back up without gettign stuck. So when we got there I looked down the driveway and said "oh cool they put in little concrete paths that we can drive on." little did I know that the strips were the width of a jeep and not a ford van. So we get down there and of course S.O. and Fire follows us. I then proceed to get stuck jsut like I said I would in teh first place. So we try to pull the ambualcne out with the fire engine and stick that. Then we try to use a POV and stick that. So we call for another rig and transprot the pt. in that. All told we got an ambulance, POV 4X4, fire engine, cop car, tow truck, full size grader, and a second tow truck stuck. All because I thought I could drive on the concrete strips. We finally ahd to cut down three trees and use a backhoe to get everyone out. It was a long long day, and everyone still talks about how not to follow me.

 

[Melanie77]

...

Thats not something i would brag about if i did that. i think the object of being a emt is to save other peoples lives and not kill your own

 

[Scout]

lighten up, i have not read anyting here that has overly endangered someones life, or indeed at all.


And every good EMT i know gets closer to killing themselfs one day at a time. It's like a hobby

 

[rjz]

Huh??!!?

Thats not something i would brag about if i did that. i think the object of being a emt is to save other peoples lives and not kill your own

I don't get it...where did I not save somones life or endanger my own? Mistakes are going to be made in this vocation. You can only learn and then laugh at them.

 

[Buzz]

Didn't happen to me, but rather to my current partner and the guy I replaced.

They had just brought a patient into the ED, did everything they needed to do, got their signatures and left. They're sitting back at post and dispatch gets on the radio: "Uh, do you guys have a stretcher in your rig right now? Because we just got a call from _____ asking if any of our units were missing a Ferno" They both looked back and sure enough it was missing.

 

[Tincanfireman]

The private service I used to work for actually kept tow straps in the units; everyone stuck a truck once in awhile, mostly due to rural nature of the area. In addition, running 6 trips a week (counting out and back as 2 trips) for our dialysis patients on the same patches of grass quickly turned driveways and lawns to quagmires. Let's not even talk about septic tanks!

 

[rjz]

Me too

I had that happen also. we were at the hospital when we were dispatched to another call, I thought my partner had already put the gurney in and he totally forgot about it. We got to the call I did my assessment and then he went to go and get the gurney. He was gone for a long time before coming back with a soft flat and a sad look. It sucked at the time having to provide care while kneeling on the floor. But now we laugh about it all the time, and it is a great training story for the new folks.