What is the most "saves" you are aware of? Postman has 3

How many "saves" for you and the most prehospital you are aware of?

  • Total voters
    16
Smash said:
400+ would be somewhat difficult to believe if you are considering a 'save' as discharge to home neurologically intact. If you take it as 'oh look we got a pulse back' then, 400+ is still an awful lot of codes! Survival from prehospital cardiac arrest generally seems to be about 5% across the board. For bystander witnesses cardiac arrest with a presenting rhythm of VT/VF my service had a survival to discharge rate of just under 30%. Even then there is no way that me or any of my colleagues have had 400 "saves"

Oh, and I prefer to think of them as 'prolongations' as opposed to 'saves'!
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LOL. I hear you. As good as I am I provide no permanent healing. :P
 
Maybe someone who works in the emergency room or cardiac unit with a lot of "witnessed" arrests. But you have to assume a save means the minimum since most saves can't be tracked really well.


But until there's an explanation, assume that stat is an outlier and ignore it.
 
AnthonyM83 said:
But you have to assume a save means the minimum since most saves can't be tracked really well.
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Stats should be able to be tracked fairly easily and accurately with the Utstein Template for reporting cardaica arrests.

I say 'should' but obviosly this isn't always the case. Electronic reporting certainly makes life easier, particularly if it can be intergrated into the wider health care systems in hospital and outpatients/specialist services.
 
Smash said:
Stats should be able to be tracked fairly easily and accurately with the Utstein Template for reporting cardaica arrests.

I say 'should' but obviosly this isn't always the case. Electronic reporting certainly makes life easier, particularly if it can be intergrated into the wider health care systems in hospital and outpatients/specialist services.
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My jaw will drop the day my EMT company I worked for puts money into patient care stuff rather than financial stuff. :(
 
Saving Who from What?

I used to speak in terms of "clean saves" where I got there and the person was dead and I got them to the hospital and they were alive. I rarely depressed myself by looking much beyond one more day, choosing instead to savor the illusion that I was the one who done it!

But such things are not avoided for too long and the time came when, since saves like that were the rarest of all, what I had to start looking at was the collateral damage I sensed I was able to help prevent from happening.

That took many forms ranging from giving a family time to be with a loved one who passed at home (expected) before calling in the Sheriff according to protocol to refusing to move a spinal injured man from the receiving ER to a VA hospital 100 miles away because I did not feel comfortable with the patient's stability; it turned in to an all-night battle involving everyone at the hospital to the ER Doc on duty up to the Chief Administrator.

It took me a while, but I learned that doing a good job in this business is not about saves. At least that's not where the real satisfaction lives. Doing a good job is about doing what you can, in the best way you can to be responsive to and responsible for human beings in distress.

Sometimes someone really gets spun in a new direction because you were there, and it may have had nothing to do with the training you got or the tools you were given.

We are more than our saves!
 
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firetender said:
We are more than our saves!
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Amen!!!!!!!!

Now I work rural so I see the same nurses and doctors. Heck they call with updates on patients so I guess I do tend to get more follow up information than many in the city it seems. I just got w/o asking an update on a patient from 2 months ago. Only reason they stayed in my mind is the doctor ignored my field diagnosis and almost cost the patient their life before finding out it was what I said and actually much worse.

OK w/o complete details I got pissed off when a ( by their claim I have found no proof ) former New York Paramedic came up after I had fought a losing battle with death and claimed more than 400 ROSC to limited or no deficit discharge during their less than 10 years with them. I thought maybe I misunderstood and said wow 40 way to go. They said no over 400 and that number can be verified by the department as they keep stats. Well I told them sorry don't buy it. Later they told others the same thing so it was not just my bad hearing. In contacting people I know in New York none of them have ever seen or heard of anyone with that many saves.

Well what about anyone here prehospital ever save over 400 ( or know of anyone )by the definition of ROSC and discharge still functionable?
 
A guy I used to work with had maybe a couple of dozen, but he was a major magnet. I could work shift after shift and see no patients that actually needed an ambulance, and he could count on 6 drug boxes a shift.

Me, I count 3. In 15 years, combined rural and urban, with 8 years of that on intermittent maternity leave. And one was a BLS choking save, which was fantastic for the kid, but some medics don't consider that. He was pulseless when we arrived, but we just focused on getting his airway cleared and within 2 minutes he was breathing again, and was a normal toddler when we got him to the er.

Never even got him on the monitor until he was starting to breathe and we realized we didn't have a sat monitor on.

That was a true save...the kid is 11 now, and when I watch him play baseball, I'm so thankful for the opportunity to do this job.
 
I agree a save is ROSC to discharge neuro intact or close to it.

I voted 8-12, there may be a few more or less....

I omitted all the patients I ushered from the gates of darkness.... before they went pulseless...:)
 
HEck, my fist summer I had three saves and about 11 assists.

I was a dock hand, life guard and first-aider at 7,000 feet in the San Bernardino mountains.

After about thirty-five years as a nurse doing primary care/man downs, a foot ball team/cheer squad first aider, ambulance tech and military ff and med tech, many; but only one code ever resulted in the patient leaving the hospital in better shape than she had been in before we were called...much better, in fact.
 
i've worked about 25 codes and i don't even remember if any of those people were ever discharged. Heck i even worked with them more than one day. But you rarely see a patient discharged home from the ICU and you NEVER see the nurses you send them down to as their care is stepped down.

Got plenty of ROSC, but don't know jack about outcomes.
 
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