TURF-ing patients

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WuLabsWuTecH

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So I was wondering what TURF actually stands for. I've heard it a lot since starting to work for a FD and it means to try and convince to sign a release/non-transport. Since we billed patients at the private I worked for, I've never heard this term.

I know it came from a book (The House of God?) but can't find anywhere online what TURF stands for!

On a side note, I've also heard SWAG a lot lately too in regards to getting vitals or estimating numbers -- Scientific Wild A** Guess!

Thanks!
-Wu
 
WuLabsWuTecH said:
So I was wondering what TURF actually stands for. I've heard it a lot since starting to work for a FD and it means to try and convince to sign a release/non-transport. Since we billed patients at the private I worked for, I've never heard this term.

I know it came from a book (The House of God?) but can't find anywhere online what TURF stands for!

On a side note, I've also heard SWAG a lot lately too in regards to getting vitals or estimating numbers -- Scientific Wild A** Guess!

Thanks!
-Wu
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In EMS, I was under the impression turf was referring to whenever a medic would delegate a triage to a BLS crew. Does your agency try to solicit refusals?
 
As far as I know, it's not TURF, it's turf, doesn't stand for anything, aka, treat'n'turf. Turf, as in, in sports, the surface you play on. For instance, with known diabetics who let they're blood sugar get too low, if they come around, pretty quickly with an amp of d50, our medics will try to turf them, because, otherwise they'll just get a very expensive ride to the hospital where the hospital will just hand them a sandwich and send them on their way, same thing they could (and should) do for themselves at home. That, and drunks, who SHOULD go to the PD drunk tank....
 
Yes, turfing basically means you're attempting to pwan off your pt to another provider. This can go ALS to BLS, BLS to ALS, private to muni or vice versa. Vital vision is what we referred to as misrepresenting vitals. Not recommended.
 
Some are too lazy to check vitals, and will fabricate #'s. He's 136/84, P76. Maybe a pt is breathing once every 3 seconds, so it's 20/min w/o actually counting. Same for pulse - two beats per second, its 120/min! Some will fake a pulse ox if the pt looks good, but the pulse ox isn't working.
 
I have always understood it from the wording turf as to punt as in football. In the House of God and in real medicine, I have always heard of "buffing and turfing" as in buffing up the chart for it to go to speciality services and turfing it over to another physician or area.

R/r 911
 
Vitals don't require guessing--some medics do it. I take a full set. Some find it weird that I slap on a pulseox and then go feel for the radial artery for 30 seconds (I used to do 15 but I never matched the pulseox). Since I'm on a 3 man crew Medic-Medic-Basic, they usually don't care that I do things by hand as long as they're ready before they want to do interventions (after they take history and such).

Sometime they just don't feel the need the BP if they're just doing O2 and transporting for someone who seems ok, but If i'm there and willing to do it, they'll have me do it.

And yes, some services will try and get the patients to sign a refusal. We don't since we don't bill but all of the neighboring FDs do.
 
Some of our crews use SNR's [pronounced Sner's (Services Not Rendered)]. but as for TURFing, as others have said, it is basically giving a Pt to another service. I also heard it used for a service who turf's their own call to another sector or take a call in their own sector.
 
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