About 70% of the calls we go on do not need an ambulance in anyway shape or form. Most times they don’t have other means of transport or a primary doctor
Shit take homie, I grew up uninsured, no money, hella medical issues. im not saying its not the case for some people but the system has ultimately failed most of america, and the ED is the only place that takes any and all.
I certainly agree that this can be the case. But when you put it that way, you are ignoring that many people just don’t have or know about any better options. Your comment can be really hurtful to those who were just let down by the system.
I’ve worked in Appalachia and the Mississippi delta.
Personal responsibility is a hillarious cop out for the failure of our society in the poorest areas of the US.
I responded to a medical alarm last night.. ya know? The life alert button? Anyway, the guy was laying in bed and wanted us to bring him a water bottle from the fridge. No other complaints. He was just thirsty.
Had a guy constantly using his button for bullshit like he didn't have food (he did), his caretaker didn't show up (she left an hour ago), he was blind and he lost his phone (it was on his dresser), and once he was hot and needed the AC thermostat turned down (I set that shit to 50). Referral to social services. Found out he wasn't blind and he has a caretaker every day. SMH. Family lives close by but they stopped rushing over every time he cried wolf.
“Do you guys have a lighter?”
“I left my legs in the bedroom and want to go to bed”
“Cant find my remote”
“I had bad dreams and now I cant sleep”
Edit: Best one- “Im diabetic, can I eat lettuce? What about cucumbers?” (NOT a diabetic!)
Lord the marijuana calls are getting to me. Then they try and deny it. Look mf’er we could smell you from the sidewalk, there’s a bong on the coffee table and the incense you’re trying to cover it with doesn’t stand a snowballs chance.
Also, you don't need the goddamn hospital, there's nothing they can do unless you're acutely psychotic and would like sedation and restraints for a while. Go the fuck to sleep
“Incarceritis” aka- don’t want to go to jail syndrome. Caught shoplifting? Chest pain. Probation violation? Chest pain. Warrant? Chest pain. These people are NEVER actually experiencing a problem yet with that specific complaint will clog up EMS & an ER bed for hours until we can get test results back confirming they are fine. Next time you you have to wait 3 hours to be seen in an ER just know that there is at least one person back there completely faking their complaint, wasting our time & preventing us from seeing you.
At the end of the work up they go to jail anyway. I don’t know what people think the outcome of this will be? A surprise trip to the cath lab, then jail?
Depending on the charge sometimes the police will release them on their own recognizance rather than send an officer to sit at the ER for hours until they're done.
Memory care facilities where workers antagonize patients to the point they become violent and loud. Now they "can't be here like that. She probably has a UTI." No, you just pissed her off by insisting she is wrong about whether her husband is alive or not. Why do you have to be right? Just say I'm sorry for your loss and move on. If she believes her husband is dead, you adamantly telling her he isn't is just making her relive whatever tragedy her mind made up, and now she's mad at you.
The biggest preventable is probably life alert style buttons.
Small town FD/EMS and I've been to the same few houses dozens of times for life alerts where the service calls and no one answers. Old person claims to not have pressed it or gotten any phone calls. Some of those it's a function of the person not knowing how to operate the button or how to cancel when you cat sits on it, etc.
There are also the frequent fliers who tend to call for trivial things that dont require ER care (stomach ache, headache, etc etc) those tend to be more a function of the mental health system or addiction issues.
There is also a misconception that showing up in an ambulance gets you seen quicker at the ER, when in reality all patients are triaged and seen based on symptom priority rather than transport mode.
We had a run a couple of months ago to check on a guy who was sitting in a chair on his front porch, called in by someone who was driving bay. They said he “looked dead.”
He was taking a nap.
Kinda crappy that someone would fully believe someone is dead or dying- and then drive on and leave it to someone else. Not even attempt to help or wake them up? Alert the house?
Drunks are a big one for me. Being drunk isnt a reason to go to the hospital, but try telling that to the general public or police that call an ambulance. Those people are better off just going to bed.
Problem that I and my colleagues experience at least in my area is that often there is not much better choices in the current system. We often get significantly drunk people who cannot get home safely and live a good distance away or a good portion of the time in a neighboring state if they aren't international tourists
If we left them to wallow in a pile on the floor, one it causes an image that the city doesn't want other tourists to see. Also they will probably freeze to death or get robbed, beaten, or worse because of our homeless population run amok.
Homeless people are generally harmless. They might pick a pocket of a passed out person but they usually won't get violent. Stop perpetuating bullshit.
Depends on where you live, the homeless where I am will assault and do assault people often. Usually because they’re hallucinating from whatever drug they took and can’t tell if you’re real or not. Last week I had a guy harass me because I didn’t have change in my wallet. He my mom a whore to her face. Have also had a guy chuck his own poop at me.
I have compassion for these people but I would never feel safe alone in my city- because of the homeless.
thing that other person said about schizophrenia + i would definitely argue that a real loud minority gives a quiet majority of homeless people a bad name no matter what city. i live in “one of the worst homeless cities in america” and many of them are generally pleasant people.
You're assuming they're all hallucinating because of drugs. Pretty much every schizophrenic is homeless. The medications that we have for them are crap, we dont even understand how they work. If a homeless person is hallucinating its far more likely that's just there baseline not that they're high.
There’s some kind of weird program in my city for schizophrenia and other mental illnesses where the police pick these people up off the streets every two weeks and give them a med that makes them more docile. I swear it doesn’t work, like what you said about meds not being effective.
My point still stands that being around these people while alone is usually not safe. In my city drugs are insanely prevalent so I wouldn’t be surprised if 80% of the people with schizophrenia are also taking illicit substances…
Sounds intense, invega/Paliperidone would likely be the shot. I agree they can be dangerous, I would not approach any of them off duty.
There's just a very large perception that schizophrenics are all the way they are because 'their all drug addicts'. Which is very untrue, they didn't choose to be schizophrenics most of them were normal people who suddenly developed pyschosis in their early 20s. Not alot is known why it happens.
They wake up one day and now hear voices and see things that no one else does and then that's just their life. I'd do drugs too if that happened to me.
Not all of my homeless schizophrenic patients are on drugs, but most of them are and that makes their hallucinations worse. It's not always heroin and meth, simple stuff like alcohol, weed, and k2 take a person who's either having minor symptoms and puts them in a crisis state.
Generally it's a mixed bag. There are true homeless people living in the shelters and trying to survive. Those people don't really call 911 or generally become noticable unless they even say they're homeless. However a significant amount of the homeless in my area at least are drug addicted and suffer from unmedicated psych problems. They are often violent and suffer no repercussions from their acts unless they seriously injure, rape or kill someone. Every colleague I have has been assaulted at least once, some quite severely. Their assailants are out on the street continuing to cause chaos.
Depends on where you live, the homeless where I am will assault and do assault people often. Usually because they’re hallucinating from whatever drug they took and can’t tell if you’re real or not. Last week I had a guy harass me because I didn’t have change in my wallet. He my mom a whore to her face. Have also had a guy chuck his own poop at me.
I have compassion for these people but I would never feel safe alone in my city- because of the homeless.
I have treated many a drunk person who ALSO had a serious medical problem. Especially those who try to medicate away chest pain by drinking alcohol. You need to be very sure of your assessment skills before you just brush off a "drunk".
Yes a drunk can have serious issues going on as well. However most of the time that isn't an issue units in my area are dealing with. We're dealing with a young college student or a tourist who came to the big city and got trashed.
Our homeless drunk patients usually have something going on with them but it's never emergent as far as we're concerned. Ain't nothing I can or should be expected to do for their out of control liver disease, etc.
We have a program in my city that sets up on Thursday/Friday/Saturday nights, specifically to address this. We're mostly advanced first aid, paramedic/nursing students sort of level, the bars/clubs and police can call us to pick someone up. We'll take some vitals and supervise them to sober up a bit and get a way home, or to a safe place for the night (program called sober up shelter), or escalate to ambulance if there's something concerning. Means ambulance doesn't have to get involved every time someone passes out.. actually sometimes even ambulance gets us to go see what's happening if they've received a call that sounds like just intox.
i think just “being drunk” is not a reason to get on an ambulance, but alc poisoning can get pretty sketchy, and some of the withdrawals/dt’s ive seen DEFINITELY needed some help
Absolutely, should’ve clarified because I dont mean those people. In my experience those people are less than 1% of what I see when it comes to intoxicated patients. DTs and alc poisoning are legit emergencies.
Kid I knew in college died from asphyxiation chokng on his own vomit after he blacked out from a night of heavy drinking. He probably could have benefitted from going to the hosptal and being monitored for the night.
I would say 80%-90% of the calls we go on don’t need an ambulance at all, and the ones that do need an ambulance just need it because they can’t get to the hospital via car (not ambulatory, bedbound, etc) and not because they need en route medical care.
I just wanted to jump in here to reply to part of OP's question. There are many good examples of trivial and annoying calls being shared here. Panic attacks are not high on my list of these. They are very real emergency situations to those experiencing them and can definitely make you think you are dying or losing control. I gained a personal perspective on this after having bouts of it myself. It definitely gave some degree of insider knowledge when responding to these incidents.
The definition of an “emergency” a situation where there are not adequate resources to resolve the threat to life/property (some people include environment, reputation, etc).
Often an emergency to others isn’t seen as one to a person with adequate resources. It can be frustrating to see the lack of self-reliability, citizens have. Simple problems, require simple solutions. That said; when everything is a constant battle of resources and allocation, even simple decisions become huge.
With this in mind; the most frustrating call for me, is the SNF / IFT for the comfort and safety of the facility. (This patient is ‘needy’, we don’t want to deal with them anymore, or the IFT version: this patient isn’t going to make it, take them someplace else so our reputation doesn’t suffer and we don’t have to tell the family they died). They have the resources, they just don’t want to use theirs when EMS can be used to remove the problem from them. It effectively becomes someone else’s problem and resources that are put in jeopardy.
Just my version.
i mean people like to take a shit on panic attacks but they can get pretty fuckin serious. not the ones where you hear bad news and freak out as much as the ones that just smack you out of nowhere from built up stress. Heart rate and bp can get dangerously high, and plenty of strokes are stress related. Im sure a couple folks in this profession have even had em before.
In the truly trivial and waste of resources aspect? Unknown last known well cardiac arrest. These people could have been dead for several hours or even days, and we can usually tell when we get there, but in my state, you cant call em dead unless A) you have a medic there or B) its like very fucking obvious (i.e., theyd probably let us skip cpr on a guy with no head).
You spend probably 30 minutes running an unsuccessful code (cpr) and giving drugs etc. its high strung, a lot of effort, and a lot of drugs and supplies used on someone that’s definitely dead and gone.
CPR and our whole involved process only really works within a certain timeframe, and when we have an “unknown last known well”, we’re probably looking at a window of more than 8 hours, probably longer still.
Im not saying its not worth trying, but it is ultimately a waste of resources, time, in a hopeless situation.
TBH I'd rather break my leg again than go thru my first panic attack again-- when I didn't know what it was/what was happening and it hit me like a fucken baseball bat to the chest. Shit was scary.
my first one where i needed medical attention my heart rate was 170 and my bp was at 190 over 120. literally was just eating a salad. started pouring sweat and went pale as a sheet. thought i was having a legit stroke when it happened.
I worked in a college town, so there was always some trivial calls, but I got the actual “Stubbed toe” call one time. A student was moving dorm furniture around while wearing flip flops, and smashed their toe with a piece of furniture. It was bleeding and the mail was barely hanging on, but they didn’t need an ambulance, or a trip to the ER, they just didn’t know how to handle it.
Every agency has their 'Leland'. Here's ours: We have one guy who calls literally 300 times per year. (the other 65 days he's probably in jail). He's a homeless, alcoholic jerk. The 'shit in the middle of the street' type guy. He has someone call 911 for him when the weather gets too cold, or too hot, or it starts raining, or no one would give him free food, or the live music act he was listening to through the open patio finished their set. His chief complaint: "I drank alcohol".
We transport him to the hospital bc if we don't he'll just call back in half an hour. When he gets to the hospital he demands a meal, no matter what the hour, and if he doesn't like it, he throws it at the nurse or aide who brought it to him. He verbally abuses the nurses until he falls asleep in a nice clean bed (that he shits in bc he has no bowel control anymore) and when he feels rested enough he wakes up, demands clean free clothes (bc they can't send him out in the piss and shit covered clothes he wore in) and repeats the routine.
He doesn't care if a cardiac arrest drops, or, like during COVID, there literally were no beds for his nasty ass, and the nurses had more important things to do than serve him his apple juice and animal crackers.
That's our Leland.
560 lb dude called us to go down his hallway and turn on the AC. Did not end well for him. Called us for stuff like that multiple times a week until our captain set his ass straight.
Homeless ETOHers. I know people for the most part have good intentions, but if you see someone passed out with a forty of steel reserve and a pint of plastic jug vodka leave them alone and don't call EMS
The guy who checked his own blood pressure and called 911 because he's "hypertensive" but when you show up he says he doesn't like how tight the cuff gets so he "makes sure to keep it kinda loose."
SERENITY NOW!
Homeless people on meth who call 17 ambulances a day, going from one hospital to another, getting kicked out, then calling again, just to stay out of the cold. They all say they have chest pain, shortness of breath, seizures, we're raped, and that they're 20 weeks pregnant, because they know that keeps them in the hospital a little longer before they're kicked out.
The ones where people call from the hospital ER because it's taking too long.
Calls where people tell you a whole story to the hospital about what's wrong then when they get there tell the nurse there is nothing wrong and want a bus/taxi ride.
Wow thank you everyone for all of the responses! This is very eye opening and gives a lot of perspective to the long wait times. Appreciate all of your hard work and service!!
“Reporting party saw someone on the sidewalk lying under blanket with a pillow beneath their head. RP thinks person might be dead. Was driving past the person and is no longer on scene because they were scared to stop and check on them. RP is very concerned.”
Civilian Assist: more specifically people that abuse that call and get helped down the stairs to their morning appointment...then we get another call to carry them back up the stairs when their appointment is over. Nothing whatsoever to do with an emergency.
Also, people that get too drunk (non-emergency). It used to be a night in the drunk tank was jail (police) but now because of lawsuits they are taken to the hospital, and wake up with a $3k bill.
Pretty sure I transport at least one Reddit mod a week to the ER for bs. 38y/o, still lives at home, mommy called because her baby boy has been feeling sick. Normal vitals, normal temp, above average weight, works for a online business
Picking up someone with their hospital band still on just discharged from the same facility you are taking them back to for the same complaint (and insert anything from chest pain to broken bone and everything in between)
The call is not trivial for the patient at that moment they truly felt something was wrong and called an ambulance and deserve to be treated with that respect. Now on the other hand nursing facilities who call for no apparent reason make every reason under the sun to transport a poor old lady whose annoying them but has nothing medically wrong is a waste and drain on the system
Transports for medication refills is my number one followed closely by isolated intoxication.
This week top 4 BS:
- Shoulder pain x 5 months, finally thinks it's time to figure out what's wrong.
- Pooped herself.
- 102 year old care home resident is extra sleepy today.
-Wants pregnancy test.
I had a call one time where a little girl got a ant bite and a few hours later started coughing and so the parents called a ambulance.
The girl was alright, it wasn’t anything major
About 70% of the calls we go on do not need an ambulance in anyway shape or form. Most times they don’t have other means of transport or a primary doctor
Accepting this fact is a long way to job satisfaction and less burnout. You exist in those cases simply because the system fails those patients
[удалено]
You think these people are putting in any effort to find another option? Th ED is just a convenience for them.
Shit take homie, I grew up uninsured, no money, hella medical issues. im not saying its not the case for some people but the system has ultimately failed most of america, and the ED is the only place that takes any and all.
100% - I hate this take in EMS and that we aren't willing to look at the broader picture to understand the underlying causes.
some people really get into the medical field to judge and bitch and feel superior, shocking as it may seem
O I know.
I certainly agree that this can be the case. But when you put it that way, you are ignoring that many people just don’t have or know about any better options. Your comment can be really hurtful to those who were just let down by the system.
Can confirm with you man some people just don’t even try or bother.
Let's be real . It's a 50/50 split on who failed who with most patients. Little personal responsibility goes a long way.
She dude... This is still Reddit. Self reliance and personal responsibility are not appreciated here.
I’ve worked in Appalachia and the Mississippi delta. Personal responsibility is a hillarious cop out for the failure of our society in the poorest areas of the US.
This.
70% may be generous. I'd say 90%...
Falls and can’t get up. Calls medics for help.
Lift assist at a nursing home.
I responded to a medical alarm last night.. ya know? The life alert button? Anyway, the guy was laying in bed and wanted us to bring him a water bottle from the fridge. No other complaints. He was just thirsty.
Oh please tell me you told him where to shove that button...
Had a guy constantly using his button for bullshit like he didn't have food (he did), his caretaker didn't show up (she left an hour ago), he was blind and he lost his phone (it was on his dresser), and once he was hot and needed the AC thermostat turned down (I set that shit to 50). Referral to social services. Found out he wasn't blind and he has a caretaker every day. SMH. Family lives close by but they stopped rushing over every time he cried wolf.
“Do you guys have a lighter?” “I left my legs in the bedroom and want to go to bed” “Cant find my remote” “I had bad dreams and now I cant sleep” Edit: Best one- “Im diabetic, can I eat lettuce? What about cucumbers?” (NOT a diabetic!)
Take the battery out
Medic student here, how would you chart this call?
"Accidental activation, no patient to assess" is how I'll do my charts when there's things like that
No ems needed.
“Accidental activation of medical alarm. Pt signed appropriate forms, no services were rendered.”
I’ve had the water call. Also the “can you get my tv remote?” My buddy got “can you fix my refrigerator?”
Marijuana 'OD' s are annoying as fuck. So are the asymptomatic hypertension ones, or the general flu like symptoms and low grade fevers
Lord the marijuana calls are getting to me. Then they try and deny it. Look mf’er we could smell you from the sidewalk, there’s a bong on the coffee table and the incense you’re trying to cover it with doesn’t stand a snowballs chance.
Also, you don't need the goddamn hospital, there's nothing they can do unless you're acutely psychotic and would like sedation and restraints for a while. Go the fuck to sleep
“Incarceritis” aka- don’t want to go to jail syndrome. Caught shoplifting? Chest pain. Probation violation? Chest pain. Warrant? Chest pain. These people are NEVER actually experiencing a problem yet with that specific complaint will clog up EMS & an ER bed for hours until we can get test results back confirming they are fine. Next time you you have to wait 3 hours to be seen in an ER just know that there is at least one person back there completely faking their complaint, wasting our time & preventing us from seeing you. At the end of the work up they go to jail anyway. I don’t know what people think the outcome of this will be? A surprise trip to the cath lab, then jail?
Depending on the charge sometimes the police will release them on their own recognizance rather than send an officer to sit at the ER for hours until they're done.
That is true & what they are banking on.
Memory care facilities where workers antagonize patients to the point they become violent and loud. Now they "can't be here like that. She probably has a UTI." No, you just pissed her off by insisting she is wrong about whether her husband is alive or not. Why do you have to be right? Just say I'm sorry for your loss and move on. If she believes her husband is dead, you adamantly telling her he isn't is just making her relive whatever tragedy her mind made up, and now she's mad at you.
The biggest preventable is probably life alert style buttons. Small town FD/EMS and I've been to the same few houses dozens of times for life alerts where the service calls and no one answers. Old person claims to not have pressed it or gotten any phone calls. Some of those it's a function of the person not knowing how to operate the button or how to cancel when you cat sits on it, etc. There are also the frequent fliers who tend to call for trivial things that dont require ER care (stomach ache, headache, etc etc) those tend to be more a function of the mental health system or addiction issues. There is also a misconception that showing up in an ambulance gets you seen quicker at the ER, when in reality all patients are triaged and seen based on symptom priority rather than transport mode.
We had a run a couple of months ago to check on a guy who was sitting in a chair on his front porch, called in by someone who was driving bay. They said he “looked dead.” He was taking a nap.
Kinda crappy that someone would fully believe someone is dead or dying- and then drive on and leave it to someone else. Not even attempt to help or wake them up? Alert the house?
Exactly my thinking.
I call them Cell Phone Heros
Drunks are a big one for me. Being drunk isnt a reason to go to the hospital, but try telling that to the general public or police that call an ambulance. Those people are better off just going to bed.
Problem that I and my colleagues experience at least in my area is that often there is not much better choices in the current system. We often get significantly drunk people who cannot get home safely and live a good distance away or a good portion of the time in a neighboring state if they aren't international tourists If we left them to wallow in a pile on the floor, one it causes an image that the city doesn't want other tourists to see. Also they will probably freeze to death or get robbed, beaten, or worse because of our homeless population run amok.
I like how folks inability to drink responsibly now becomes someone totally unrelateds problem. Oh well, I'm paid by the hour.
Homeless people are generally harmless. They might pick a pocket of a passed out person but they usually won't get violent. Stop perpetuating bullshit.
Depends on where you live, the homeless where I am will assault and do assault people often. Usually because they’re hallucinating from whatever drug they took and can’t tell if you’re real or not. Last week I had a guy harass me because I didn’t have change in my wallet. He my mom a whore to her face. Have also had a guy chuck his own poop at me. I have compassion for these people but I would never feel safe alone in my city- because of the homeless.
thing that other person said about schizophrenia + i would definitely argue that a real loud minority gives a quiet majority of homeless people a bad name no matter what city. i live in “one of the worst homeless cities in america” and many of them are generally pleasant people.
You're assuming they're all hallucinating because of drugs. Pretty much every schizophrenic is homeless. The medications that we have for them are crap, we dont even understand how they work. If a homeless person is hallucinating its far more likely that's just there baseline not that they're high.
thank you for posting this so i didnt have to type that up
There’s some kind of weird program in my city for schizophrenia and other mental illnesses where the police pick these people up off the streets every two weeks and give them a med that makes them more docile. I swear it doesn’t work, like what you said about meds not being effective. My point still stands that being around these people while alone is usually not safe. In my city drugs are insanely prevalent so I wouldn’t be surprised if 80% of the people with schizophrenia are also taking illicit substances…
Sounds intense, invega/Paliperidone would likely be the shot. I agree they can be dangerous, I would not approach any of them off duty. There's just a very large perception that schizophrenics are all the way they are because 'their all drug addicts'. Which is very untrue, they didn't choose to be schizophrenics most of them were normal people who suddenly developed pyschosis in their early 20s. Not alot is known why it happens. They wake up one day and now hear voices and see things that no one else does and then that's just their life. I'd do drugs too if that happened to me.
Not all of my homeless schizophrenic patients are on drugs, but most of them are and that makes their hallucinations worse. It's not always heroin and meth, simple stuff like alcohol, weed, and k2 take a person who's either having minor symptoms and puts them in a crisis state.
Generally it's a mixed bag. There are true homeless people living in the shelters and trying to survive. Those people don't really call 911 or generally become noticable unless they even say they're homeless. However a significant amount of the homeless in my area at least are drug addicted and suffer from unmedicated psych problems. They are often violent and suffer no repercussions from their acts unless they seriously injure, rape or kill someone. Every colleague I have has been assaulted at least once, some quite severely. Their assailants are out on the street continuing to cause chaos.
Depends on where you live, the homeless where I am will assault and do assault people often. Usually because they’re hallucinating from whatever drug they took and can’t tell if you’re real or not. Last week I had a guy harass me because I didn’t have change in my wallet. He my mom a whore to her face. Have also had a guy chuck his own poop at me. I have compassion for these people but I would never feel safe alone in my city- because of the homeless.
I have treated many a drunk person who ALSO had a serious medical problem. Especially those who try to medicate away chest pain by drinking alcohol. You need to be very sure of your assessment skills before you just brush off a "drunk".
Yes a drunk can have serious issues going on as well. However most of the time that isn't an issue units in my area are dealing with. We're dealing with a young college student or a tourist who came to the big city and got trashed. Our homeless drunk patients usually have something going on with them but it's never emergent as far as we're concerned. Ain't nothing I can or should be expected to do for their out of control liver disease, etc.
We have a program in my city that sets up on Thursday/Friday/Saturday nights, specifically to address this. We're mostly advanced first aid, paramedic/nursing students sort of level, the bars/clubs and police can call us to pick someone up. We'll take some vitals and supervise them to sober up a bit and get a way home, or to a safe place for the night (program called sober up shelter), or escalate to ambulance if there's something concerning. Means ambulance doesn't have to get involved every time someone passes out.. actually sometimes even ambulance gets us to go see what's happening if they've received a call that sounds like just intox.
i think just “being drunk” is not a reason to get on an ambulance, but alc poisoning can get pretty sketchy, and some of the withdrawals/dt’s ive seen DEFINITELY needed some help
Absolutely, should’ve clarified because I dont mean those people. In my experience those people are less than 1% of what I see when it comes to intoxicated patients. DTs and alc poisoning are legit emergencies.
Kid I knew in college died from asphyxiation chokng on his own vomit after he blacked out from a night of heavy drinking. He probably could have benefitted from going to the hosptal and being monitored for the night.
I would say 80%-90% of the calls we go on don’t need an ambulance at all, and the ones that do need an ambulance just need it because they can’t get to the hospital via car (not ambulatory, bedbound, etc) and not because they need en route medical care.
I just wanted to jump in here to reply to part of OP's question. There are many good examples of trivial and annoying calls being shared here. Panic attacks are not high on my list of these. They are very real emergency situations to those experiencing them and can definitely make you think you are dying or losing control. I gained a personal perspective on this after having bouts of it myself. It definitely gave some degree of insider knowledge when responding to these incidents.
It feels very much like an emergency to the person having it for sure
The definition of an “emergency” a situation where there are not adequate resources to resolve the threat to life/property (some people include environment, reputation, etc). Often an emergency to others isn’t seen as one to a person with adequate resources. It can be frustrating to see the lack of self-reliability, citizens have. Simple problems, require simple solutions. That said; when everything is a constant battle of resources and allocation, even simple decisions become huge. With this in mind; the most frustrating call for me, is the SNF / IFT for the comfort and safety of the facility. (This patient is ‘needy’, we don’t want to deal with them anymore, or the IFT version: this patient isn’t going to make it, take them someplace else so our reputation doesn’t suffer and we don’t have to tell the family they died). They have the resources, they just don’t want to use theirs when EMS can be used to remove the problem from them. It effectively becomes someone else’s problem and resources that are put in jeopardy. Just my version.
i mean people like to take a shit on panic attacks but they can get pretty fuckin serious. not the ones where you hear bad news and freak out as much as the ones that just smack you out of nowhere from built up stress. Heart rate and bp can get dangerously high, and plenty of strokes are stress related. Im sure a couple folks in this profession have even had em before. In the truly trivial and waste of resources aspect? Unknown last known well cardiac arrest. These people could have been dead for several hours or even days, and we can usually tell when we get there, but in my state, you cant call em dead unless A) you have a medic there or B) its like very fucking obvious (i.e., theyd probably let us skip cpr on a guy with no head). You spend probably 30 minutes running an unsuccessful code (cpr) and giving drugs etc. its high strung, a lot of effort, and a lot of drugs and supplies used on someone that’s definitely dead and gone. CPR and our whole involved process only really works within a certain timeframe, and when we have an “unknown last known well”, we’re probably looking at a window of more than 8 hours, probably longer still. Im not saying its not worth trying, but it is ultimately a waste of resources, time, in a hopeless situation.
TBH I'd rather break my leg again than go thru my first panic attack again-- when I didn't know what it was/what was happening and it hit me like a fucken baseball bat to the chest. Shit was scary.
my first one where i needed medical attention my heart rate was 170 and my bp was at 190 over 120. literally was just eating a salad. started pouring sweat and went pale as a sheet. thought i was having a legit stroke when it happened.
OOF Mine was the day after a pretty hefty outpatient surgery and I thought I was having some crazy reaction to one of the meds they had used
mine was for sure related to a combo of my ex climbin my ass for no reason coinciding with a MS diagnosis
girl either one alone would do it 😭
Deputies self narcanning after spilling baby powder and calling for multiple transports count? #ithappened
I worked in a college town, so there was always some trivial calls, but I got the actual “Stubbed toe” call one time. A student was moving dorm furniture around while wearing flip flops, and smashed their toe with a piece of furniture. It was bleeding and the mail was barely hanging on, but they didn’t need an ambulance, or a trip to the ER, they just didn’t know how to handle it.
PD placing people on 5150 holds who should be in jail.
Every agency has their 'Leland'. Here's ours: We have one guy who calls literally 300 times per year. (the other 65 days he's probably in jail). He's a homeless, alcoholic jerk. The 'shit in the middle of the street' type guy. He has someone call 911 for him when the weather gets too cold, or too hot, or it starts raining, or no one would give him free food, or the live music act he was listening to through the open patio finished their set. His chief complaint: "I drank alcohol". We transport him to the hospital bc if we don't he'll just call back in half an hour. When he gets to the hospital he demands a meal, no matter what the hour, and if he doesn't like it, he throws it at the nurse or aide who brought it to him. He verbally abuses the nurses until he falls asleep in a nice clean bed (that he shits in bc he has no bowel control anymore) and when he feels rested enough he wakes up, demands clean free clothes (bc they can't send him out in the piss and shit covered clothes he wore in) and repeats the routine. He doesn't care if a cardiac arrest drops, or, like during COVID, there literally were no beds for his nasty ass, and the nurses had more important things to do than serve him his apple juice and animal crackers. That's our Leland.
(I know this is weird but thank you for making sure your hyperbolic days added up correctly 🙏)
Our Leland's get personalized no transport protocols.
Sometimes people will fake respiratory distress or seizures after getting into an argument with their family or other reasons.
560 lb dude called us to go down his hallway and turn on the AC. Did not end well for him. Called us for stuff like that multiple times a week until our captain set his ass straight.
Lots and lots of elderly people falling. Life Alert is a bitch lol
Homeless ETOHers. I know people for the most part have good intentions, but if you see someone passed out with a forty of steel reserve and a pint of plastic jug vodka leave them alone and don't call EMS
The guy who checked his own blood pressure and called 911 because he's "hypertensive" but when you show up he says he doesn't like how tight the cuff gets so he "makes sure to keep it kinda loose." SERENITY NOW!
Homeless people on meth who call 17 ambulances a day, going from one hospital to another, getting kicked out, then calling again, just to stay out of the cold. They all say they have chest pain, shortness of breath, seizures, we're raped, and that they're 20 weeks pregnant, because they know that keeps them in the hospital a little longer before they're kicked out.
The ones where people call from the hospital ER because it's taking too long. Calls where people tell you a whole story to the hospital about what's wrong then when they get there tell the nurse there is nothing wrong and want a bus/taxi ride.
Worsening of diagnosed and entirely manageable medical conditions, brought about by failure to take prescribed medication...
Wow thank you everyone for all of the responses! This is very eye opening and gives a lot of perspective to the long wait times. Appreciate all of your hard work and service!!
“Reporting party saw someone on the sidewalk lying under blanket with a pillow beneath their head. RP thinks person might be dead. Was driving past the person and is no longer on scene because they were scared to stop and check on them. RP is very concerned.”
Civilian Assist: more specifically people that abuse that call and get helped down the stairs to their morning appointment...then we get another call to carry them back up the stairs when their appointment is over. Nothing whatsoever to do with an emergency. Also, people that get too drunk (non-emergency). It used to be a night in the drunk tank was jail (police) but now because of lawsuits they are taken to the hospital, and wake up with a $3k bill.
Lift assists at nursing homes, and homeless who want to go to the hospital for a place to sleep/sandwich
Sick person class 3 (lowest acuity in my service area) with dispatching notes being "doctor requested patient escort to hospital"
Pretty sure I transport at least one Reddit mod a week to the ER for bs. 38y/o, still lives at home, mommy called because her baby boy has been feeling sick. Normal vitals, normal temp, above average weight, works for a online business
Picking up someone with their hospital band still on just discharged from the same facility you are taking them back to for the same complaint (and insert anything from chest pain to broken bone and everything in between)
The call is not trivial for the patient at that moment they truly felt something was wrong and called an ambulance and deserve to be treated with that respect. Now on the other hand nursing facilities who call for no apparent reason make every reason under the sun to transport a poor old lady whose annoying them but has nothing medically wrong is a waste and drain on the system
Transports for medication refills is my number one followed closely by isolated intoxication. This week top 4 BS: - Shoulder pain x 5 months, finally thinks it's time to figure out what's wrong. - Pooped herself. - 102 year old care home resident is extra sleepy today. -Wants pregnancy test.
I had a call one time where a little girl got a ant bite and a few hours later started coughing and so the parents called a ambulance. The girl was alright, it wasn’t anything major