An interesting thing has happened to our EMS agency twice in the last couple of years. We have to transfer patient care from our EMS agency to another agency in order to get our patient to the hospital. The issue has come up twice with two different agencies operating in our same medical control service area.
In both situation, our medical control physician received our report and we received permission to clear c-spine and to forgo spinal motion restriction. After receiving report from our agency including the report on the physician's orders, these two agencies took responsibility for the patient. Then they immediately provided spinal motion restriction protection stating that they believed the protocols required it in this situation based upon mechanism of injury even though the patient did not want it done. They used the scare tactic or "if we don't, you could be paralyzed for life."
What bothers me is the image that this left with the patient about our agency and our providers as well as the audacity of the transfer agency's violation of our medical control physician's orders. Now, I don't want to bore you with the exact details of these two cases, but doesn't a medical control physician's direct order supercede the protocol? And weren't these two agencies actually in violation of medical control's physician's orders?
In both situation, our medical control physician received our report and we received permission to clear c-spine and to forgo spinal motion restriction. After receiving report from our agency including the report on the physician's orders, these two agencies took responsibility for the patient. Then they immediately provided spinal motion restriction protection stating that they believed the protocols required it in this situation based upon mechanism of injury even though the patient did not want it done. They used the scare tactic or "if we don't, you could be paralyzed for life."
What bothers me is the image that this left with the patient about our agency and our providers as well as the audacity of the transfer agency's violation of our medical control physician's orders. Now, I don't want to bore you with the exact details of these two cases, but doesn't a medical control physician's direct order supercede the protocol? And weren't these two agencies actually in violation of medical control's physician's orders?