Man dropped by ambulance crew...

i am not defending them, but I'm not crucifying them either.

I've dropped a patient a total of two times. I reported it, but I could see how one would be so afraid of losing their job that they would have kept it quiet if all looked alright.

I am pretty sure the second time I only kept my job because we had requested a lift assist prior to moving the patient and got denied.
 
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You should be crucifying them and anyone else that doesn't self report there mistakes immediately. If they cant be trusted to report a true accident like dropping someone, how in the world can they be trusted to not be covering up other mistakes like med errors etc etc.

If i cant absolutely trust someone, they have no business in this field or on my truck with me. We are supposed to be professionals and held to a higher standard, with that comes the responsibility of owning up to your actions.
 
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I am not going to crucify them, sorry.
 
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"And risk losing your job? I dont know what the economic climate is over in the uk but over here that would be devastating"

Maybe you don't need to be working in this field if your willing to hide mistakes you've made.


"Exactly what i said. They caused the brain bleed, but how would reporting it have changed the fact his brain was bleeding?"

No his brain was still bleeding, but maybe it could have been treated and prolonged this poor mans life to spend more time with his loved ones


"To clarify my point... people state he died because they didnt report it. Thats incorrect, he died because he was dropped. Even if they had reported it he probably would have died regardless."

We are all going to die regardless, but to lose your life because of an error that went unmentioned by the people entrusted with your life, is unthinkable.

Still working IFT? Sure hope so..... I am seriously appalled
 
Did I say I would hide it? Absolutely not. I've pointed out that I have dropped someone twice and reported it.

Can I see why they did? Yes. Fear.

Still working IFT? Of course. Where we have REAL sick people and actually move patients ourselves more often then 911 EMS personnel.
 
I definitely wouldn't crucify them, yeah people make mistakes but I don't know their character so if they did it because they didn't care, they should be thrown out of a moving ambulance, if they did it due to fear, well that's an understandable situation... everyone has their own lines that they would or would not cross... Sasha reported her drops, I also most likely would cant say for sure until I'm in that situation, they didn't...
 
Corky said:
Still working IFT? Sure hope so..... I am seriously appalled
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You're appalled that she can understand where this crew was coming from? I'm not. While I don't support them covering it up, I certainly can understand why they may have done it. I have worked places where management armchair quarterbacks everything, and will throw you under the bus in a heartbeat, if only to make themselves look better. I can see places that would fire you for reporting that, even when you did the best you could to keep it from happening.

Please, get off your high horse and stop making them out to be evil. You can't say what you would have done until you are actually in that situation.
 
I would hate to think that I would put my job ahead of the life of a patient. Yeah, it was wrong to drop the patient, but it sounds as if it had been reported, there would have been a chance to address any potential medical issues the mistake could have caused.

Either way, admit the mistake, or conceal it, it cost the company money in settlement charges.

I could go to another job and say yeah, I made a mistake, but was honest about things and the patient lived.....rather than, "I covered up a mistake and a patient died."
 
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Farmer2DO said:
You're appalled that she can understand where this crew was coming from? I'm not. While I don't support them covering it up, I certainly can understand why they may have done it. I have worked places where management armchair quarterbacks everything, and will throw you under the bus in a heartbeat, if only to make themselves look better. I can see places that would fire you for reporting that, even when you did the best you could to keep it from happening.

Please, get off your high horse and stop making them out to be evil. You can't say what you would have done until you are actually in that situation.
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Not on a high horse and no ( thankfully ) i have never been in a position like this and hope I never am. But how is EMS ever to get out of it's infancy when when its own members themselves dont see this as a critical fail. I am human and understand the job outlook in a lot of places is grim. Still, would never even consider hiding a critical error. We are supposed to be patient advocates and a true patient advocate does not cause harm and not report it.
 
Sasha said:
Did I say I would hide it? Absolutely not. I've pointed out that I have dropped someone twice and reported it.

Can I see why they did? Yes. Fear.

Still working IFT? Of course. Where we have REAL sick people and actually move patients ourselves more often then 911 EMS personnel.
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You make zero sense.

They drop a guy on his head - he dies 5 days later from his HEAD INJURY, one that went undiagnosed BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T TELL ANYONE. And somehow you "understand" why they did what they did? Are you kidding me?

This is actually a criminal act, a homicide. Getting fired may be the least of their problems.
 
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EMS 101 for those of you that did not bother to actually learn anything in school.

Four distinct elements are necessary to prove medical negligence:

A duty to act and/or standard of care exists

There has been a failure to conform to that duty or standard of care.

A link exists showing the failure caused injury to the complaining party.

There has been an actual loss or injury which can be measured for compensation in monetary damages (3).


No, it is absolutely not understandable that they did this, and as jwk pointed out, this is beyond an ethics issue it is a legal issue.
 
jwk said:
You make zero sense.

They drop a guy on his head - he dies 5 days later from his HEAD INJURY, one that went undiagnosed BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T TELL ANYONE. And somehow you "understand" why they did what they did? Are you kidding me?

This is actually a criminal act, a homicide. Getting fired may be the least of their problems.
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Technically not homicide (no intent), but possibly manslaughter, especially with the lack of seeking assistance for the victim after the "crime."
 
I can understand why they wouldn't report it when the patient appeared UNINJURED. Do they have a CT scan? No. Were they foolish? Yes.

Have you been in that position at all? It sucks. It is SCARY to think that not only have you hurt your patient, but you may now be unemployed because of it.

Do I condone not reporting? No. Have I ever injured a patient and not reported it? No. Can I understand WHY they may have not reported it? YES. Was it right? NO.

That doesn't mean I am going to crucify them.
 
Corky said:
EMS 101 for those of you that did not bother to actually learn anything in school.
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So now you're insulting our intelligence because we don't agree with you, and think that maybe we can understand how someone would be scared and make a bad decision?

Sasha said:
I can understand why they wouldn't report it when the patient appeared UNINJURED. Do they have a CT scan? No. Were they foolish? Yes.

Have you been in that position at all? It sucks. It is SCARY to think that not only have you hurt your patient, but you may now be unemployed because of it.

Do I condone not reporting? No. Have I ever injured a patient and not reported it? No. Can I understand WHY they may have not reported it? YES. Was it right? NO.

That doesn't mean I am going to crucify them.
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Sasha has it right.

Perhaps what we should be looking at is a system that has people worried for their jobs with self reporting. The airline industry and nursing do it far better than us. QA in many places is punative. EMS personnel shouldn't have to worry about getting fired for every potential mistake they make, but in many places they do.
 
Farmer2DO said:
Perhaps what we should be looking at is a system that has people worried for their jobs with self reporting. The airline industry and nursing do it far better than us. QA in many places is punative. EMS personnel shouldn't have to worry about getting fired for every potential mistake they make, but in many places they do.
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This is absolutely right. I just can't get all the way to "seeing why they did it."

My 4 yo lies about childish stuff he does, or doesn't tell me about the puddle of shampoo in the bathroom until I find it myself. I consider it one of my most important tasks to parent that out of him and teach him the value of personal responsibilty. If we even *look* like we condone this lack of responsibility, we are condoning it. If we allow people to entertain the thought of not telling someone when something goes wrong, we're leading them astray.

There is a gray area, your supervisor doesn't want to hear about you accidentally wasting money because you dropped an IV catheter or stepped on the ET tube before you used them, but they do want to hear about you dropping the monitor. Either item is less valuable than a person, who gets evaluated every. single. time. you drop them, whether they look injured or not.

I hate that there are companies that would fire a person for an honest mistake, but if you go dropping people more than is reasonable (and twice pushes it, honestly, but I get your scenario completely, Sasha), maybe you shouldn't be making your living carrying people around.
 
abckidsmom, I agree with almost everything you say. And please understand, I'm not condoning it, in any way, shape or form. Some family lost someone very dear to them, and probably sooner than anticipated, in a way that may have been preventable. I'm not minimizing that. I'm just not going to jump on the bandwagon and crucify these people. I think we all agree they used terrible judgement; no argument there. But I think the system that may have influenced that bad judgement is also flawed.
 
abckidsmom said:
This is absolutely right. I just can't get all the way to "seeing why they did it."

My 4 yo lies about childish stuff he does, or doesn't tell me about the puddle of shampoo in the bathroom until I find it myself. I consider it one of my most important tasks to parent that out of him and teach him the value of personal responsibilty. If we even *look* like we condone this lack of responsibility, we are condoning it. If we allow people to entertain the thought of not telling someone when something goes wrong, we're leading them astray.

There is a gray area, your supervisor doesn't want to hear about you accidentally wasting money because you dropped an IV catheter or stepped on the ET tube before you used them, but they do want to hear about you dropping the monitor. Either item is less valuable than a person, who gets evaluated every. single. time. you drop them, whether they look injured or not.

I hate that there are companies that would fire a person for an honest mistake, but if you go dropping people more than is reasonable (and twice pushes it, honestly, but I get your scenario completely, Sasha), maybe you shouldn't be making your living carrying people around.
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Just so you know, i didn't drop either one because I can't lift.

The first one, we had to carry down a hall into bed. My foot got caught up in the stretcher straps (we lowered it to be safer, ha!) and I tripped, dropping the patient while tripping. The patient had a skin tear between his toes but otherwise was okay. We reported it, cleaned up his skin tear, dressed it, and got a good talking to after writing an incident report.

The second one, we had asked for a lift assist but were denied. We decided to two point the patient into the truck, and neither one of us made sure the bar had caught on the hook. We picked up the stretcher, pulled it back to clear the immobile step and the stretcher kept going and flipped on top of the patient. We backboarded her and took her to the ER (VERY difficult, they still wouldn't send us help and like I said, she was not a small woman.) I tried to give her an ice pack for pain and swelling and it exploded when I squeezed it. I was so upset by the end of the call I went out to the ambulance bay and cried.

The ONLY reason I believe I wasn't fired on the second one was because we asked for a lift assist prior to the incident for that patient. That one we wrote an incident report, talked to a company lawyer, and had to show them exactly what happened.
 
Sasha said:
Just so you know, i didn't drop either one because I can't lift.

The first one, we had to carry down a hall into bed. My foot got caught up in the stretcher straps (we lowered it to be safer, ha!) and I tripped, dropping the patient while tripping. The patient had a skin tear between his toes but otherwise was okay. We reported it, cleaned up his skin tear, dressed it, and got a good talking to after writing an incident report.

The second one, we had asked for a lift assist but were denied. We decided to two point the patient into the truck, and neither one of us made sure the bar had caught on the hook. We picked up the stretcher, pulled it back to clear the immobile step and the stretcher kept going and flipped on top of the patient. We backboarded her and took her to the ER (VERY difficult, they still wouldn't send us help and like I said, she was not a small woman.) I tried to give her an ice pack for pain and swelling and it exploded when I squeezed it. I was so upset by the end of the call I went out to the ambulance bay and cried.

The ONLY reason I believe I wasn't fired on the second one was because we asked for a lift assist prior to the incident for that patient. That one we wrote an incident report, talked to a company lawyer, and had to show them exactly what happened.
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I can't criticize. The only patient I dropped was a contracted, demented 80 lb lady who was coming home to her pregnant daughter (watching on the porch) after her bilateral AKA. I turned to shut the doors on the truck without confirming that my partner had her hands on the stretcher. It rolled down the slope of the street and dumped the patient out on the glass-strewn sidewalk (She only was in one seat belt because she was about 22 inches head to toe with her contractures). It was a total nightmare, and I cried all night about it. I get you, I do.

If the system encourages people not to report, it should be fixed, and it really can be. Just so you know, if I was the boss, the only one that would catch my disciplinary attention would be the second one. Tripping is way different than not checking to make sure that bar is hooked.
 
Farmer2DO said:
abckidsmom, I agree with almost everything you say. And please understand, I'm not condoning it, in any way, shape or form. Some family lost someone very dear to them, and probably sooner than anticipated, in a way that may have been preventable. I'm not minimizing that. I'm just not going to jump on the bandwagon and crucify these people. I think we all agree they used terrible judgement; no argument there. But I think the system that may have influenced that bad judgement is also flawed.
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Proactive QA is such an elusive thing. I wish we could know the whole story.
 
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