Tell us about your First Call ever and ...

EMT-B student, third-riding with a suburban FD. Mid 50's male had a syncopal episode while working out at the gym, and ended up refusing transport. Nice and boring.
 
Rocketmedic40 said:
Exactly. He had a 1st and 2nd out ALS crew for normal responses. If he needed to go or thought he'd be needed, he'd take his ambulance out and meet them on-scene. Seeing as how my stepmom was also a paramedic, they'd have a crew more often then not, and when needed, they could always have him jump on the other truck or whatever.

With that drowning- well, he's got 4 kids. He hates critical ped calls, but he's good at them. And we were literally halfway there when the call came through.

Rank hath its priviledges.
Click to expand...

So what's the problem with having the set crews run the "good calls"?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
A pretty young lady came to the door and asked to use our phone at home.

When she told her dad her companion had cut her ankle on a barbed wire fence, I grabbed my ammo box kit and ran down, to tie a folded-up sock onto her horses' foreleg with an Ace bandage. I was a new EMT-A (nowadays' EMT-B) and a firefighter.
 
First call as EMT-B student: SOB in a COPD patient
First call as cleared EMT: dialysis run
 
fast65 said:
So what's the problem with having the set crews run the "good calls"?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

He'd respond in addition to them. If it wasn't something really, really time-critical, he'd be able to provide first-response and an extra set of hands. If it was time-critical and he had the assets to transport, he could transport.

In this case, it worked, the kid lived, and I got to see what EMS could be.
 
Rocketmedic40 said:
He'd respond in addition to them. If it wasn't something really, really time-critical, he'd be able to provide first-response and an extra set of hands. If it was time-critical and he had the assets to transport, he could transport.

In this case, it worked, the kid lived, and I got to see what EMS could be.
Click to expand...

Ah, I see.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
First call as an EMT student: Combative psych that her friends called in saying she wanted to kill herself. PD requested priority 1 response because she was out of control.

After kicking the EMT she was slammed to the stretcher by PD and we restrained and transported.

First call as an actual EMT: Chest pain at a church at 8am on a Sunday Morning.

Pt confused, extremely diaphoretic, and vomiting. Normal EKG and vitals. Apparently had this problem for the last few weeks and doctors were in the process of trying to figure out what was wrong with him.

I can roughly remember every call I have been on, or at least remember a face when I see them again. Only been doing it for 8 months though.
 
5 fatility MVA, all victims between 14-16, 3 dead at the scene, 2 flown out died 1 day and 3 days later respectively in ICU.

alcohol and THC found in all but the 14 year old girl.


Totally crushed my fantasy of saving everyone.

Probably has something to do with my inhuman love for major trauma though.
 
First IFT call, Code 2 for nausea / vomiting. First 911 call was a 2 vehicle TC with LOC.
 
Sasha said:
I don't even remember my first call anymore.

Sent from LuLu using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

That's just because you are old :P

But I'm 23 and don't remember my first call anymore either, started as an explorer at 14...
 
The first call I attended as an EMT student/ride along was reported as a fall at a SNF. We got it less than a minute driving out of the station parking lot. We were thinking c-spine so we brought the c-spine equipment with us inside. It was (supposedly) a 54 year old male who had a pseudosyncope. He was in a very narrow hallway, felt light headed, and just slid down to the floor slowly against the wall before 9-1-1 was called. He was very pale and he was slightly tachycardic. He had a history for schizophrenia and recently had a colectomy. I thought it was odd how he told us exactly how long ago he had his colectomy, and looking at my notes, I realized after the call that he said he was 54 years old and that he had his colectomy 54 days ago, hmmmm. I personally think he was older than what he claimed, but I didn't know about face sheets at the time, and I am not sure if the paramedic grabbed one or not. Very white hair, long beard hippi style, he was very tall. I remember his first name too. His abdomen was distended. When palpating his RLQ, it felt rigid, he denied pain at first, but grimaced whenever it was palpated. He denied blood in his stool. He refused treatment from the paramedic, but still wanted to be transported to the hospital. The paramedic I rode with was an instructor for a non EMT class I was taking, and I wanted to do well in front of her so I was extremely nervous, and fumbled with trying to get a pulse and respiration. I recall people saying that taking a blood pressure was the hardest thing to do in an ambulance, but I couldn't get a pulse for my life, and the blood pressure was easy for me to get on this patient. He later admitted that he had a little bit of pain, and the paramedic said "Andrew, what kind of questions should you ask?", and the first thing I thought was "If you don't know, be honest". I told her "I don't know", and then she started asking OPQRST questions. I felt so stupid at the time. After we got the patient onto the bed, the paramedic compared my blood pressure to the NIBP to see if I was close to what it go as a way to check if I was telling her the truth. It was about 10 higher than what I heard. She was telling me how she thinks he was experience shock, probably a leak from the surgery, and I asked her if he is experience shock, how come his blood pressure is higher than normal. She explained to me that at first, it stays around normal or gets a little higher, and that it dropping was a very late sign of shock. I then watched her type up her PCR on a computer before we cleared for our next call.

While trying to get a job as an EMT, I started volunteering at concerts (Rock Medicine). A security guard gave us a little bit of trouble returning from Starbucks to get back into the concert since all of us didn't have badges including me (usually they were a "Medical Staff" t-shirt, or one with a Rock Medicine logo on it, and then badges either with a Rock Med logo on it, or from another concert that requires passes for anyone that attends). After we got back in, we didn't get too far before the radio said "Rockmed, we need you in the smoking section." We went back to find a young male sitting on the ground and security directing us towards him. I was very confused about what was going on, and not very involved. Another girl who just got hired with an ambulance company took lead, and she asked him AO questions. She then asked him what did he take. He denied taking anything. She kept asking him over and over saying that she isn't a cop, she's there to help him. She asked for a penlight, and she checked his pupils, she said they were dialated and she knows he took something, that she's there to help, and then she was pretty dramatic and said that he could die. He started crying asking "Am I gonna die?" and admitted that he had some alcohol and smoked a little bit of weed, but nothing more. The team lead (there was like five of us) told me to get vital signs. We don't carry blood pressure cuffs so the only thing I could get was pulse and respirations. I was nervous just like ride along, and I was able to feel a pulse, but it was so fast I reported it as "It's too fast for me to count". He smirked, did it, and reported something like 180, or maybe higher (I cannot remember the exact number right now). I recall talking about this in EMTLife chat, and people were saying he probably counted wrong/it's unlikely. We got a wheel chair for him, pushed him back to the clinic, and he slept for awhile before he went back to enjoying the concert.

After several months of volunteering at concerts, I finally got a job as an EMT for an interfacility transport company. We were picking up a patient from an MRI, and he wasn't able to walk. He got an MRI because he got into a fight with his wife, his wife used a baseball bat on his back, and the MRI showed that he had a lumbar fracture. It was a very short transport, most transports in the area I was working in at the time are very short (like 0.1-0.4 miles). I didn't talk to him much, I didn't do much with him. What I remember more than about that patient was the conversation I had with my FTO about my favorite thing about working at my previous job (she asked) which was learning Spanish, and she said she's never gotten a Spanish-only speaker or never gotten one without somebody who can translate for her during transport. After that first call, every single patient I got was a Spanish-only speaker without a translator, and she said she was pretty impressed with that, but I remember struggling with getting nurses to sign, copying stuff from the chart (I didn't know where to find medications, allergies, history, ad she kept having to show me where since it was a little different for each facility). I forgot to grab things like the facesheet, forgot signatures, struggled to lift the gurney, struggled to transfer the patient to/from the bed and gurney, got lost in the hospitals, struggled to do lung sounds and get two sets of vital signs since the transports were so short, struggled to fill out the PCRs, took a long time to write very basic narratives. It was very hot so I was sweating a lot too (probably would've been sweating a lot even if it was ice cold though). I was very paranoid too since I had a (probably fake, but didn't know at the time) gun pointed at me at my previous job less than a couple of days before my first day working as an EMT, and we were driving around a city known for it's high violence and crimes (Oakland, CA).
 
Last edited by a moderator:
First call as a civilian(for lack of a better term) rider: Woman that was choked by her husband.

First call as a Basic student: Haven't got a clue.

First call as a Medic student: Girl "accidently" shot by her boyfriend with a .22 cal.
 
medic417 said:
How come every time this topic comes up everyones first call is something major? With 95% of all EMS calls being either complete BS or barely qualifying as an emergency how is it everyone gets one of the 5% real emergencies? Or is what people post the earliest call they can recall?

My first was if I recall correctly a bp check that did not want to call to hospital.
Click to expand...

LOL. My first call was a 05:00 fistula that wouldn't stop bleeding and needed to go across the street to the hospital. My FTO's partner ran most of the call because I didn't know where to grab the patient to help them stand. Oh, what a difference a year makes.
 
medic417 said:
How come every time this topic comes up everyones first call is something major? With 95% of all EMS calls being either complete BS or barely qualifying as an emergency how is it everyone gets one of the 5% real emergencies? Or is what people post the earliest call they can recall?.
Click to expand...


Lucky/unlucky depending on point of veiw.

Definately my first was the MVA.

I looked like a retard doing CPR on the first victim I made it to until the Lt. pointed out the exposed brain matter.
 
if you were an EMT-B or EMT-P student
Click to expand...

Just out of curiosity, how does one make it to being a paramedic student in the US without ever having seen a patient?
 
My first call was a "person behind closed doors"
The person was missing by relatives, so boil alerted rescue services.
After the opening of the door turned out that the victim was already dead two months ... The sight was not so nice
Accordingly, it smelled strongly ...:mellow:

After the mission I had a nasty sweet taste on the tongue. So then I have a big bar of chocolate eaten to get rid of the smell and nasty taste...:wacko:
 
Rettsani said:
My first call was a "person behind closed doors"
The person was missing by relatives, so boil alerted rescue services.
After the opening of the door turned out that the victim was already dead two months ... The sight was not so nice
Accordingly, it smelled strongly ...:mellow:

After the mission I had a nasty sweet taste on the tongue. So then I have a big bar of chocolate eaten to get rid of the smell and nasty taste...:wacko:
Click to expand...

I had good Code 4 (Dead Patient) while doing a ride along this past summer. 54 Year old Woman dead in her apartment for 2 weeks during 105 degree temps. I could smell it as we entered the building and the Patient was on the 4th floor. Lets just say she had already soaked into her Carpet. I was smelling it the next day over 24 hours after the call.
 
My first code three drive:

Shortness of breath in SAC HQ. I drove onto glazed ice , a gentle turn with reverse banking (banked the wrong way), spun out at about 20 mph, stalled in front of pedestrians with lights still going.
My crewchief, who had been urging me to go faster, said "Think you was goin' fast enough?". Run was just mild asthma due to entering warm building from very cold exterior.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top