A Further Review of Trauma
So Friday continued on with one more (yes, it's true) motorcycle accident. This one wasn't so bad. On arrival the patient was sort of concious with a GCS of 12 or so, in a lot of pain, had a nasty fractured wrist, but for the most part ok; just a good bell ringing really. This particular victim barely missed launching off a 750 foot cliff, so I guess luck was the order of the day for this one.
As evening came on the aforementioned motorcycle enthusiasts gave up riding (thank God) for drinking (no thanks). The tiny little town I call home offers many renowned drinking establishments and all of them were full to capacity this night. The call came through pretty early, about 11pm or so, and was for a, "Woman down, possibly intoxicated, fell off the bar." Oddly enough, this is not an unusual call for us, particularly at this location.
The bar was totally packed (way beyond fire code occupancy by the way - mental note to self) and it was extremely difficult to make our way to the patient. Enter the ever popular injury for drunken idiots: Traumatic Brain Injury. Unbelievable. She ended up getting intubated and flighted due to her rapidly declining mental status. The more I think about it the more I wonder how ever survived my partying years. I would be interested to hear what became of her. I sometimes get the feeling that drunk people are totally over treated here... but I don't know. There is a lot of reluctance to let drunks "sleep it off" anymore. Maybe a topic for another day.
I think I need to take a little break here and fill ya'll in on information about the fire department I work for. We don't see too many 911 calls (probably about 350 EMS and about 140 fire) per year, but we also don't have a definitive care type hospital. So all these people that we see, at least 75% of them end up going to a hospital a little higher up the billing chain (he he). So, when we transport to the hospital, we usually end up transporting again to the nearest trauma center. That gives a grand total of a little over 500 total EMS calls. So even though our little service doesn't see much of busy day like above, these people all technically get transported twice, so it takes a lot of man power to get these people out of our system and into the next one.
I got a comment about being bored, and sometimes we are. But when it rains it pours. The weekend will conitinue later...
As evening came on the aforementioned motorcycle enthusiasts gave up riding (thank God) for drinking (no thanks). The tiny little town I call home offers many renowned drinking establishments and all of them were full to capacity this night. The call came through pretty early, about 11pm or so, and was for a, "Woman down, possibly intoxicated, fell off the bar." Oddly enough, this is not an unusual call for us, particularly at this location.
The bar was totally packed (way beyond fire code occupancy by the way - mental note to self) and it was extremely difficult to make our way to the patient. Enter the ever popular injury for drunken idiots: Traumatic Brain Injury. Unbelievable. She ended up getting intubated and flighted due to her rapidly declining mental status. The more I think about it the more I wonder how ever survived my partying years. I would be interested to hear what became of her. I sometimes get the feeling that drunk people are totally over treated here... but I don't know. There is a lot of reluctance to let drunks "sleep it off" anymore. Maybe a topic for another day.
I think I need to take a little break here and fill ya'll in on information about the fire department I work for. We don't see too many 911 calls (probably about 350 EMS and about 140 fire) per year, but we also don't have a definitive care type hospital. So all these people that we see, at least 75% of them end up going to a hospital a little higher up the billing chain (he he). So, when we transport to the hospital, we usually end up transporting again to the nearest trauma center. That gives a grand total of a little over 500 total EMS calls. So even though our little service doesn't see much of busy day like above, these people all technically get transported twice, so it takes a lot of man power to get these people out of our system and into the next one.
I got a comment about being bored, and sometimes we are. But when it rains it pours. The weekend will conitinue later...
posted by Slack at 3:50 PM
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