FDNY EMS Crew Acts Heroic Under Fire

Would you stop?

  • Yes

    Votes: 2 16.7%

  • No

    Votes: 10 83.3%

  • Don't know

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    12
  • Poll closed .
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VentMedic

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This seems to be a very debated news article.

http://www.jems.com/news_and_articles/articles/FDNY_EMS_Crew_Acts_Heroic_Under_Fire.html

FDNY EMS Crew Acts Heroic Under Fire
A.J. Heightman, Editor-in-Chief, JEMS, Steven Morelli, Deputy Chief, Division 5, FDNY EMS
July 12, 2007
On Saturday, June 7, a Fire Department of New York (FDNY) ambulance crew, operating as paramedic unit 57V3, stopped to assist a driver involved in a motor vehicle collision they encountered while transporting another patient to a hospital. They ended up having to seek cover when threatened with a weapon by the vehicle’s driver. This same crew, minutes after being threatened by the gun-wielding driver, reversed their course and treated the perpetrator after he sustained mortal gunshot wounds in a gun battle with police. What follows is an accounting of the incident.

At about 2 p.m., , the ambulance was transporting a 9-month-old female with seizures to Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn,. While proceeding south on Albany Avenue, the crew encountered a car that had just struck a lamppost. The driver appeared to be injured and possibly trapped.

http://www.jems.com/news_and_articles/articles/FDNY_EMS_Crew_Acts_Heroic_Under_Fire.html
 
and their Northeastern University paramedic student observer, Duncan Regonini began to emerge from the rear doors of the ambulance.
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That's me in a year lol
 
The private service I work for has a couple of former FDNY units (including the one I'm driving today). It has a bullet hole, too...lol
 
My view on this is NO, I would not stop.

For all of the years I worked EMS, we were not to stop if we had a patient on board. Our obligation was to that patient. Granted it did not look good to see an ambulance drive by an accident scene, but we did have the policy to back up our actions. If we stopped and something happened to the patient due to the delay in transport, then we violated our own policy and would not have anything in our defense.

FDNY EMS may have a policy that if flagged down and a stable patient in the back, they stop.

I do not consider a 9 mth old with seizures either past or present, as "stable" until further tests are done at a hospital by a physician. This is even with a "field diagnosis" of febrile seizures.

Once you make physical contact with the other patient, you are then obligated to stay with them. This will delay transport of the child.

I would call it in and continue on to the hospital with the 9 mth old.
 
would NOT have stopped. 9 year old girl was more important.
 
The few times that I've stopped for an incident not in our service area, it never helped the situation, and only led to being stuck on scene for a long time and endless paperwork.

Not only are we not allowed to stop, but once a patient is in the back, the EMT with the patient is not allowed to leave the pt compartment without the patient. It is the driver's responsibility to hop out and take care of anything, or else the patient is toted around with the crew.

In EMS I learned to resist my urge to jump calls and stop for every little crash. Instead I'd call it in on my cell phone.
 
Stopping to add another patient with a patient already on board would be a delay in care. I would not stop either but I would get on the phone with Dispatch and the Paramedic superviser to have a another unit dispatched ASAP.
 
This kinda sounds a little like what happend to my friends boyfreirnds dad...lol...he was in an atv accident and being transfered to another hospital and while the ambulance was driving through a gren light another car ran a red clipped them and hit another car...they got on the radio, gave the discription and plate number and the guy was caught...all without stopping...
 
I'd have to look over the FDNY ops guide, I'm sure there's a policy, but the book is bigger than any textbook I own. As for what most people here do, they stop. One tech stays with the original patient, and the other assists until another unit arrives (usually not much more than 5 minutes).

I'm one of the few that won't stop. Yeah, it does look bad to the non-understanding general public... but that's not my immediate concern during the moment. I will call the situation into dispatch. I've always been a proponent that communication is the key backbone to everything else in the EMS system.

As EMTs, we are trained in triage however. So, if I am transporting a patient for an itchy mosquito bite, and I am flagged for someone unconscious in the middle of the street... I may make a decision to stop and assist until relieved. There have also been several times where we don't have a choice because the general crowd (mob is more appropriate) at the scene will just jump in front of the ambulance waving their arms. Your only choices are stopping to help, running them over, or inciting a riot.

There is so much I am doing right now that I don't have time to look up the case, but a legal professional gave a good lecture on this. There was an incident where an ambulance was responding to a chest-pain call (no patient on board). They stopped to assist a patient with a fracture. They splinted the patient, explained to bystanders how to properly maintain stabilization and traction of the injury, called for a second unit, then got back in the ambulance and continued responding to the original call.

Now, that would never fly where I work, but it was determined that the crew acted appropriately. Their actions were not considered abandonment since proper "triage" states that the chest-pain was more likely to need their immediate assistance, the bystanders were willing and capable of providing "general first aid support", and there was no reasonable expectation of this patient requiring "life supportive care".

I'm not necessarily agreeing... I'm just offering the information I was taught.
 
If the patient is STABLE (and remember, in some cases 911=TAXI), and it is reasonable to stop - then you should stop and render aid unless state law and/or department policy state otherwise.

Given the circumstances AS PRESENTED BY JEMS, it sounds like the EMS crew made the correct decisions.... both in stopping, and then seeking COVER instead of the concealment of the ambulance box (DTEMS, you reading this?). Further, the driver rendering aid to the shooting "victim" also sounds appropriate.

I will say this... I wouldn't have wanted to document that call... it must have taken hours... and think of the poor QA guys!
 
Jon said:
If the patient is STABLE (and remember, in some cases 911=TAXI), and it is reasonable to stop - then you should stop and render aid unless state law and/or department policy state otherwise.

Given the circumstances AS PRESENTED BY JEMS, it sounds like the EMS crew made the correct decisions.... both in stopping, and then seeking COVER instead of the concealment of the ambulance box (DTEMS, you reading this?). Further, the driver rendering aid to the shooting "victim" also sounds appropriate.

I will say this... I wouldn't have wanted to document that call... it must have taken hours... and think of the poor QA guys!
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Being a former NYC Medic (Now transplanted to the south), I can honestly say that the majority of prehospital care professionals will stop, more so if their patient is stable and has a minor condition (single fx, mosquito bite, beaten up, etc.). Now I don't remember if FDNY has a policy for necessity to stop no matter what, but if the girl wasn't seizing anymore (remember your breakthrough seizures folks...people will call even though they are a part of the patient's life), then they did the right thing by stopping. Otherwise, they should have kept truckin' on, and called it in.

On a side note, one of the medics from one of the subsequent responding units was in my Medic class (Franer Genois, 37W2), and the Conditions supervisor is known to me as well. A dangerous situation to be sure, but a great job all around.
 
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