What is it about EMS personell that nurses/docs dont like?

Jon said:
I understand that it's appropriate to seek the patient's permission before having random folks present for a delivery. I'm Ok with this, but I had one nurse ask a patient "there's a paramedic student who wants to observe the delivery. You don't have to let him - you're allowed to say no". Yup. Said no. As opposed to "this is Jon, he's a paramedic student, and observing on our unit today in case he ever has to deliver a baby in the field". That worked SO much better.
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I don't think that nurse was out of line. A lot of patients feel very uncomfortable saying no to anyone in a white coat, and some don't even understand that it's a real option. Childbirth is stressful enough already, and although your experience is important, the patient comes first. If I were that nurse, I would've combined those statements and tried to make the patient understand that while she could say no, you're not just there for kicks.
 
The pt should always be asked for permission and know they have the option to decline.

But, they need to be made aware that it is something that can't greatly benefit the student.

I never had one say no. It is all in how they are asked. Some nurses do not care about students and will not make an effort to help them. It is part of the problem.
 
Something I learned early: when ever you go in for clinicals: work, don't sit and study. I stocked rooms and carts, stripped and cleaned beds, and remade them. Did it all without being asked; I had nurses coming and finding me for good stuff coming in.
Introduce yourself to the charge nurse, then go and stock the rooms, and go back and introduce yourself to all of the nurses and care techs who just watched you help them by stocking the rooms for/with them. surprising how well it works. I had charge nurses ask my instructors to schedule me when they were working.
 
Also got fed well from it, nurses sharing their food, and buying me food when someone went out.
 
I'm not a P student, but I've always hated taking our 911 pt's to L&D. The nurses are always old, crabby pre-retirees who ALWAYS give us crap for something we're doing/not doing and they're never just nice. A lot of my medic partners had bad experiences in L&D too.
 
04_edge said:
Except for the fact that on arrival i was told that there are med students there till 5 so i probably wont get to do anything till after then. Then when 7 oclock rolled around the midwife students showed up and we were told that we wont be able to assist because it will put too much pressure on them. Even when we went into a room after already asking the family if we could observe their delivery, we were told to leave by a midwife.

As far as the studying, thats what we are told to do by our instructors when in L&D. They check vitals once every 2 hours if i remember correctly, and when there is only one patient in the area you're in, and the 2 nurses working there have their heads buried in the computer surfing the internet, what else am i to do?
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Get in there and talk to the patients. Check with a nurse and see if she can walk you around to the triage area, where the nurse is making the judgment call of whether the patient is truly in labor. The patients will look very different and you'll see people in all stages.

L&D is pretty straightforward with the catching of the baby, the trick is in knowing how much of the labor show is drama and how much is the baby actually coming out. Every laboring woman looks different, but after you've seen a few dozen, you get a feel for how much time she might have.

I also like my students to know what the look on the face of a woman who is crowning looks like, and to have a good idea of what calm looks like for a laboring woman.
 
I was told while in the hospital for preterm issues that could cause miscarriage if not treated that I could say no to the nursing students and that it would be respected. I said "no? I'm a student as well and if I am going to learn it's only through being permitted to observe. Get them in here. Involve them in the process and pick their brains. It's the only way they are going to learn". Perhaps it was the wrong move. The students wouldn't leave me alone after that. LOL
 
usafmedic45 said:
-Lack of education/knowledge
-Undeserved sense of entitlement/superiority
-Lack of respect
-Lack of awareness of place/importance in the world
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Yep, add to this that paramedics define themselves by their skill set as opposed to education, and there you have it.
 
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Jon said:
I understand that it's appropriate to seek the patient's permission before having random folks present for a delivery. I'm Ok with this, but I had one nurse ask a patient "there's a paramedic student who wants to observe the delivery. You don't have to let him - you're allowed to say no". Yup. Said no. As opposed to "this is Jon, he's a paramedic student, and observing on our unit today in case he ever has to deliver a baby in the field". That worked SO much better.
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Giving birth is a special day in a woman's life and they should not feel obligated to share it with just anybody and everybody. Many women and their husbands would like the moment to be special and private with only the necessary people in the room. Some hospitals attract patients to their birthing centers by advertising "their day" and not all the medical and nursing students' day. Even for high risk deliveries the NICU team will attempt to blend with the wall until the moment they are needed.

Just like intubations, there are not that many hospitals that even allow Paramedic students in L&D or the NICU. Bad experiences with previous students who were poorly prepared by their schools have left a lingering effect on the way they are perceived. With other professions such as nursing, there is usually a clinical instructor with them to stop bad behavior or to deal with it immediately. With Paramedic students, they usually show up with just a piece of paper stating they are supposed to be in the ED that day with a place for someone's signature. They then come and go as they please without without anything or anyone to guide them through what they are expected to do for the day. You can't always blame the hospital staff for not knowing what to do with them if the school hasn't made advance arrangements and prepared the students for what the day might be like.
 
04_edge said:
I had the worst experience of my life tonight with nurses. I was doing a rotation in the labor a delivery department at a hospital...

It started when i was sent to an area that literally had 1 patient, when there are 7-ish areas with a whole lot more in each. I ended up sitting there studying for a while when i overheard a nurse talking to a midwife saying that such and such is starting to get "pushy" but the way she said it sounded like it was still going to be a little bit. The nurse ended up asking me to sit there and answer the phone if anyone called. Not 5 minutes later they erased the PT's name on the board and wrote "baby." I then asked them about it and sure enough the pt had delivered and no one decided to tell me about it.

I ended up bagging my stuff up and leaving to another area without saying anything.

There we (me and a classmate) were told that there are going to be midwife students there so we wont be able to assist because it will "put to much pressure on them(the Midwife student)". Ended up talking to a family and asked if it was ok if we could observe their delivery, they said yes. When the time came we went into the room, only to have the midwife ask us if we can leave until she delivers.

I don't get it? It was blatantly obvious today that none of the nurses wanted us there. Ive never had that happen before, i mean theres been a couple here and there, but this was basically an entire area of the hospital.

Any ideas?
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I've met a lot of doctors and nurses, RNs, LPNs, etc..who are SUPER anti Medic...again, we are only the people who sugar coat what they don't see before we get there. We have a crude sense of humor, lack of respect for doctors and whoever else for this reason, and we are best friends with cops...and we can call them on their bluff when the Lab tech borrowed the doctor's coat and screwed up on a PT.

They don't like us because we have more brains, and we didn't specialize.

don't worry, when they grow up, they'll be paramedics some day :rolleyes:
 
MiniEMTP said:
I've met a lot of doctors and nurses, RNs, LPNs, etc..who are SUPER anti Medic...again, we are only the people who sugar coat what they don't see before we get there. We have a crude sense of humor, lack of respect for doctors and whoever else for this reason, and we are best friends with cops...and we can call them on their bluff when the Lab tech borrowed the doctor's coat and screwed up on a PT.

They don't like us because we have more brains, and we didn't specialize.

don't worry, when they grow up, they'll be paramedics some day :rolleyes:
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Unless I'm missing sarcasm, people like you prove the point of why medics are disliked perfectly...
 
usalsfyre said:
Unless I'm missing sarcasm, people like you prove the point of why medics are disliked perfectly...
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i couldn't even follow the line of thought from one sentence to another...
 
Jon said:
I've had good and bad L&D experiences. As a young male, it seems the staff on the unit reacts negatively to the mere presence of a Y-chromosome in their midst.

I understand that it's appropriate to seek the patient's permission before having random folks present for a delivery. I'm Ok with this, but I had one nurse ask a patient "there's a paramedic student who wants to observe the delivery. You don't have to let him - you're allowed to say no". Yup. Said no. As opposed to "this is Jon, he's a paramedic student, and observing on our unit today in case he ever has to deliver a baby in the field". That worked SO much better.
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In my shifts in L&D, with multiple vaginal births and c-sections, I only had 1 patient decline me being in there, and it was because she was Muslim and they would only allow the doctor and one nurse, both female, in.


Everyone else was more than willing to let me, and a nursing student, come and watch and participate.



I guess I got lucky going to good hospitals where my school cultivated relationships. I only had one nurse disrespect me, and she got promptly put in her place by the doctor who had asked me to do the very thing she got angry about.
 
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