# What is your worst and best experience as an EMT?



## hatsuo (Mar 29, 2011)

Just what the title is asking...........


----------



## BLS4LYFE (Mar 29, 2011)

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.


----------



## medicRob (Mar 29, 2011)

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.


----------



## Handsome Robb (Mar 29, 2011)

*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.


----------



## the_negro_puppy (Mar 29, 2011)

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.


----------



## Shishkabob (Mar 29, 2011)

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.


----------



## usafmedic45 (Mar 29, 2011)

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


----------



## abckidsmom (Mar 29, 2011)

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



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.


----------



## Anjel (Mar 29, 2011)

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.


----------



## firetender (Mar 29, 2011)

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.


----------



## CAOX3 (Mar 29, 2011)

hatsuo said:


> Just what the title is asking...........



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

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


----------



## lightsandsirens5 (Mar 29, 2011)

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.


----------



## medic417 (Mar 30, 2011)

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.


----------



## 46Young (Mar 30, 2011)

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.


----------



## Sasha (Mar 30, 2011)

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.


----------



## TransportJockey (Mar 30, 2011)

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.


----------



## ZombieEMT (Mar 30, 2011)

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.


----------



## medic417 (Mar 30, 2011)

Sasha said:


> Being IFT I don't get to do many cool life saving calls,



Neither do the 911 posters.  You probably do more good for more people than most 911 medics.


----------



## medicRob (Mar 30, 2011)

medic417 said:


> Neither do the 911 posters.  You probably do more good for more people than most 911 medics.



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.


----------



## orange20medic (Mar 30, 2011)

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


----------



## shfd739 (Mar 30, 2011)

Best- I've had a front row seat to some pretty neat and Interesting calls and events. My office is never indoors and I get to see the seasons change and I get days off during the week. 

Worst- I didn't my act together and played young and dumb for a little too long and now I've paid for it and missed a promotion. I've finally overcome the past though.


----------



## medicRob (Mar 30, 2011)

shfd739 said:


> Worst- I didn't my act together and played young and dumb for a little too long and now I've paid for it and missed a promotion. I've finally overcome the past though.



That's okay, we all have our demons. When I first started in medicine, I was a cocky little runt who thought he knew somethin about medicine and worse, thought he knew more than the others around him. Over time, I learned humility and how to carry myself. They are not mistakes if you learn from them. 

Good luck, buddy!


----------



## shfd739 (Mar 30, 2011)

medicRob said:


> That's okay, we all have our demons. When I first started in medicine, I was a cocky little runt who thought he knew somethin about medicine and worse, thought he knew more than the others around him. Over time, I learned humility and how to carry myself. They are not mistakes if you learn from them.
> 
> Good luck, buddy!



Yep that was me. I was a smart and young medic and I knew it. I played in the gray areas and pushed a few rules. Definitely learned from it along with
having a few patient supervisors that used the screw ups as teaching moments and didn't hammer me for them. 

Now that I'm a back up supervisor I do the same thing with my people and also use my experiences to get them not to also learn the hard way. for the most part it works. It's fun to see a new medic I did that with come back with a smile and thank me for looking out for them.


----------



## Sasha (Mar 31, 2011)

sara22emt said:


> 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



I'd think the worst part would be that a human being was allowed to sit in their own filth like that.


----------



## orange20medic (Mar 31, 2011)

Sasha said:


> I'd think the worst part would be that a human being was allowed to sit in their own filth like that.



Yes... it was very sad. This lady was being taken care of by her 15 year old granddaughter. But she could have and should have called us earlier.


----------



## mycrofft (Apr 1, 2011)

*Worse and worser.*

Worse: Helping treat paediatric emergencies (sutures, LP's, etc.) and the little kids promise they'll be good if we stop it.

Worser: being in charge of field support for 800 cohorts, being told support would be by local asets, then finding out on arrival they had no idea and cannot; total for the five days was thirteen cases of some flulike syndrome, and acute MI who was flow home in a cargo aircraft with partial pressurization and without permission, plus various owies and two positional asphyxias (LOC, not dead). 
COmmander looks at me, sitting there without any resources, and says "What good are YOU?".


----------



## njemtbvol (Apr 1, 2011)

Best- holding the baby boy in my arms after a live birth.
worst- being dispatched on 9/11


----------



## 18G (Apr 1, 2011)

Worst - 2 yo girl fell into swimming pool. In arrest when we got there. Child didn't make it. 

Best - hmmm... not even sure. Can't really recall any specific call to classify as "best".


----------



## usafmedic45 (Apr 1, 2011)

> holding the baby boy in my arms after a live birth.



Speaking as someone who is listed as the "attending physician" on four birth certificates and as one who does not particularly like kids, I've never seen the appeal or why people think it's a wonderful or glorious event.  Witnessing a birth is a lot like watching a St. Bernard come in from a rainstorm via a cat door.  It's a disgusting and unpleasant event.  It still ranks as one of the few things (eye injuries being the other) that makes me nauseous.  I've delivered four babies (including one on my birthday while reeking of deer urine; poor kid wound up named after me) and I've managed to only not throw up after the last one of them.

The only positive thing about witnessing a birth is that you realize that whomever espouses the attitude that women are the weaker sex, obviously never watched a woman push out a baby without the benefit of pain control.  If men were the ones to carry our progeny, we would have gone extinct long ago or- at very least- anesthesia would have been invented a few thousand years earlier.


----------



## bethwx (Apr 1, 2011)

i am a rather new paramedic... a few bad experiences with fatalities however I took part in my first successful resuscitation last week.

There truly is no better feeling than reviving someone


----------



## abckidsmom (Apr 1, 2011)

mycrofft said:


> Worse: Helping treat paediatric emergencies (sutures, LP's, etc.) and the *little kids promise they'll be good if we stop it.*




This is really heartbreaking.  I hate that, too.



> Worser: being in charge of field support for 800 cohorts, being told support would be by local asets, then finding out on arrival they had no idea and cannot; total for the five days was thirteen cases of some flulike syndrome, and acute MI who was flow home in a cargo aircraft with partial pressurization and without permission, plus various owies and two positional asphyxias (LOC, not dead).
> COmmander looks at me, sitting there without any resources, and says "What good are YOU?".



Dang, he needed to get a life, sounds like a ravishing success, all things considered!


----------



## abckidsmom (Apr 1, 2011)

usafmedic45 said:


> Speaking as someone who is listed as the "attending physician" on four birth certificates and as one who does not particularly like kids, I've never seen the appeal or why people think it's a wonderful or glorious event.  Witnessing a birth is a lot like watching a St. Bernard come in from a rainstorm via a cat door.  It's a disgusting and unpleasant event.  It still ranks as one of the few things (eye injuries being the other) that makes me nauseous.  I've delivered four babies (including one on my birthday while reeking of deer urine; poor kid wound up named after me) and I've managed to only not throw up after the last one of them.
> 
> The only positive thing about witnessing a birth is that you realize that whomever espouses the attitude that women are the weaker sex, obviously never watched a woman push out a baby without the benefit of pain control.  If men were the ones to carry our progeny, we would have gone extinct long ago or- at very least- anesthesia would have been invented a few thousand years earlier.



Some people have Mack Trucks, others have fingernail injuries.  I just can't handle fingernail injuries.  Toenails, too.  <shudder>


----------

