Hello i am new to the forum here and also have only been a emt for three months,i work for a company that takes all of our counties 911 calls,so anyway the other night i worked my first cardiac arrest.And was just wanting some pointers or advice from people with more experience than me.So the run goes something like this first off i will go ahead and point out that the patient died,it was a bad call from the start,dispatch gave us the wrong address,which wasnt thier fault,it was a unknown medical alarm,and the company gave them the wrong numbers we were only a half a block away,secondly we could not get inside the door was locked and the patients sister wich was on scene did not have a key,so she got in touch with miantenance and they brought one,the pateint lives in government housing.So through all of this patient contact was not established until twenty to twenty five minutes after the alarm.When i first saw the pateint the first thought i had was he is dead,we immediatley started working him,we got an et tube in place on first attempt,and i did compressions for ten solid minutes while waiting on back up,[and wow compressions are very tiring]any way back up arrived we laoded him up and transported,the hospital immediatley called time of death,patient was in the proximity of 400-500 pounds and had a signifigant cardiac history,i not upset so much that he died as i am wondering should we have done more to try to get to him,my partner was a seasoned medic and i just followed his lead,but i guess i wonder what cuold we have done,sorry about the sloppy typing this is my first post of any kind any where.
first code
- Thread starter boogie
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Welcome to EMTLife!
It looks like you did everything by the book. With him being 400-500 lbs w/ a 'significant cardiac history' even if you had the right address and access to the patient the outcome possibly could have been the same.
It looks like you did everything by the book. With him being 400-500 lbs w/ a 'significant cardiac history' even if you had the right address and access to the patient the outcome possibly could have been the same.
Thanks for the reply,Iguess i was just wondering should we have been more agressive in getting to the patient[like kicking in the door or something],but you can sit and replay everything a thousand times and always think of something else.I was really hoping my first code would be a sucess.
Frozennoodle
Sir Drinks-a-lot
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I worked in police dispatch for a couple years in a town of about 60,000 residents. I have only seen them access a building like that one time. It was a situation where no with a key could be reached, the patient had a hx of drug use, and it was called in by a third party (the 15yoa daughter was at her boy friend's house couldn't reach her mom and thought she was dead from an OD.) and a person was seen unresponsive on the floor from a window. It still took them ~15 minutes to access the house after exhausting every other option.
It's very tricky legally sometimes to do that depending on what the laws are where you live and that wouldn't have been your decision to make. It would have been that of a supervisor or the medic on the truck, not you, to make that call. Don't hold any guilt over this. There wasn't anything you could have done differently to help this person survive.
By the time thier ticker is so buggered and worn it craps out there is not much that can be done.
Even if you get ROSC the survival rate is very poor, Brown does not know what the five year survival rate from cardiac arrest is but its probably very poor.
Don't worry about it mate
Even if you get ROSC the survival rate is very poor, Brown does not know what the five year survival rate from cardiac arrest is but its probably very poor.
Don't worry about it mate
Frozennoodle
Sir Drinks-a-lot
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That reminds me of a thread I read earlier. From what I read the thread was summarized to basically, "Sometimes the family becomes the patient rather than the victim of the code."
no we dont carry entry tools,and fire only responds with us on mva's.the reason being is we have a very high run volume,and many times as i'm sure you guys know alot of the runs we go on end up not being very emergent at all,but i will say we have a great fire dept,that is very helpful on mva's.