What is your worst and best experience as an EMT?

hatsuo

hatsuo

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Just what the title is asking...........
 
Don't know what constitutes as a 'best experience', but I'd put getting out of ems up there with working a shift and running no calls.
 
Best:

Any time I can get a patient to the appropriate professionals to render definitive and life-saving care while preserving valuable function in the process successfully.

Worst:

Baby dipped in boiling water for crying.
 
*Redacted*-JT

Best - Skier vs. Tree. Intercranial bleed and multiple cervical fxs. Called me the other day. No nuero deficits.

Worst.

My little girl at the beginning of the season. Poor tyke.
 
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Worst- Telling a family member that their loved one is dead.


Best- When someone genuinely thanks you for helping them, when you were able to make a difference.
 
Worst- Telling a family there is nothing more you can do for their dead family member.


Best- Any time I can tangibly help a patient truly in need.
 
Some of the Worst- Baby burned with an iron for having colic, my best friend dying in front of me or delivering babies.
One of the Best- The guy who was gored by a bull and a couple weeks later returned to the station with aforementioned bull in several coolers as a way of thanking those who treated him. LOL
 
usafmedic45 said:
Some of the Worst- Baby burned with an iron for having colic, my best friend dying in front of me or delivering babies.
One of the Best- The guy who was gored by a bull and a couple weeks later returned to the station with aforementioned bull in several coolers as a way of thanking those who treated him. LOL
Click to expand...

That's a great best! Gotta love it.

Worst: We had an idiot who left pipe bombs around in various places in our county once. A pizza hut employee was coming into work one rainy morning, picked up the flashlight she found in the parking lot, and had her life changed forever.

The kids and the old people who have no one to take care of them are hard to leave, knowing that the system doesn't really have their backs.

Best: There are so many. I love when what I do makes a strong positive difference in people's days. Whether I'm cleaning them up when they've been incontinent, or I help them find the right help for their problems, or I do some major life-saving intervention...they all lead to the same great feeling of accomplishment.
 
Worst:

The old lady begging me and crying asking me not to let them take her other leg. She had one recently amputated and the other was hurting.

That and an Upper and Lower GI bleed. That I got to clean up.

Best:

Any call where I feel like we actually did something for that patient. Even if it was just to hold her hand and keep them calm until we get where we are going.
 
BEST: Arriving to the scene too late only to find a woman in her 20's sitting on the kitchen floor, naked in a puddle of blood clutching her newborn in her arms and exclaiming like a Beatific loony bird: "Sorry, couldn't wait, had to do it all by myself!" Kid was fine. We cleaned house before we transported.

WORST: Arriving to the scene too late. A fire. After it was out had to remove the body of a trapped elderly woman from the house. Until her, I used the expression "Crispy Critters" in jest. Not after! Charred to charcoal, head to toe, when we log rolled her to get her in to a body bag she "split" right up the middle, longitudinally, revealing boiling, steaming pink flesh.

That's just off the top of my head. I had plenty others to match from the world of the weird.
 
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hatsuo said:
Just what the title is asking...........
Click to expand...

Best: Tons, some heroic :), most not so much.

Bad: Trust me you dont want to know, and I dont want to remember.
 
Worst:

The absolute worst thing overall is the general inhumanity of human beings. Dichotomous, eh?

Call wise, having an 11 month old die on me on scene on a completely preventable MVA where the at fault driver was too drunk to know what he did.


Best:

Hmmmm.....tough choice. No one call in particular I suppose. Probably one of the most rewarding parts in EMS is when people you have cared for stop by the station to thank you for what you have done. So often we have no idea how our pts turn out in the end, when someone who was crushed in a vehicle stops by to thank you that they still have a pair of legs, that is pretty cool. Granted, the surgeon and the trauma team actually saved them, but I still feel like I have a part.
 
Worst: Waking up realizing I have to go on duty.

Best: Waking up realizing I am now off duty.

I do my best to forget all that occurs in between.
 
Worst: Witnessing various graphic cases of child abuse - burns, slamming a baby against the wall, a child that had been kicked across the room then beat with a chair until the chair broke, etc. (You asked)

Best: Making it home after a mandated busy 48 hour shift without getting killed by falling asleep at the wheel. There were several occasions where I was driving and had no idea how long I had zoned out for. Five seconds, a minute or two? At that service you had to be awake when the crew came on. Sleeping in was prohibited. A "pass on book" would have sufficed.

I take that back. Best: Driving away from the station after my last shift with that dept, having resigned to work where I am now.
 
My worst, transporting the sweetest schizophrenic homeless guy you will ever meet two hours to the only nursing home that would accept him. Why had he been in the hospital? Someone thought it was funny to set him on fire while he slept on a bench. He was so excited passing through Ocala and seeing the horses in the fields.

I have numerous best calls. They're best for different reasons. Being IFT I don't get to do many cool life saving calls, but I have the chance to influence someone's life positively every single shift, whether it's holding the dementia patient's hand or handing a hospice patient's family a tissue while they cried and telling them about how wonderful the facility we are taking there mom to is.
 
My worst calls are really anything bad involving pedis. I don't like those calls at all.
My best... I've got a few, but the one that stands out in my mind was my first field delivery :) Healthy baby girl, and I've seen her around town here a few times since she was born.
 
I have only been doing this for about 8 months but I would say my best and worst call was actually the same call, a maternity case. I was scared out of my mind and more nervous then I ever had been in my life. I felt like the world was spinning and could barely concentrate. When we had this beautiful baby boy in our arms afterward, it was probably the best experience of my life. I was so proud of myself and it felt honorable.
 
Sasha said:
Being IFT I don't get to do many cool life saving calls,
Click to expand...

Neither do the 911 posters. You probably do more good for more people than most 911 medics.
 
medic417 said:
Neither do the 911 posters. You probably do more good for more people than most 911 medics.
Click to expand...

For once, I must say that I agree with you.

The majority of individuals have the wrong idea about what EMS does. They think we are what they see on TV, they do not realize that the majority of our transports are Dialysis transfers, Doctors Appointments, inter-facility transfers, etc.
 
Hmmm lets see...

Worst- getting a call for incontinence. Show up on scene to a lady who hasn't left her hospital bed in over two weeks. The white sheet was drenched in urine and covered in feces. The worst part about this all was that my 3 male partners wouldn't share the vicks!!
2nd Worst- smelling C-Diff for the first time. Nasty stuff.

Best- 6 yo little girl who couldn't breath. She was wide awake but had this horrible loud crowing noise when she breathed. Nobody could figure out what was wrong with her. All I could do was hold her hand while the medics tried to help her. When it came time to fly her, she pointed to me and cried that I couldn't go with her. Come to find out, she had severe epiglottitis and is perfectly healthy today :)
 
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