After reading a “what was your biggest EMS screw-up” thread on a message board…
Not really my screw up, but I was there. I was a very young EMT in the late 80s. My partner and I were working a code. It took a while for the medics to get there, so we were on our own for bit. The family was watching our every move and sobbing loudly as we performed the fruitless “CPR and Shock” dance. After we packaged and transported to the hospital, my partner got this awful look on his face.
“Oh hell. I left my jacket and the radio at the house.”
Now, if it was just his jacket, we would have left it there. (Remember, this was in the late 80s and we wore really tacky windbreakers.) However, we had just been issued these spankin’ new radios and the company would have hung us by our gonads if we lost a radio only a week after getting them.
Soooo… back to the house we went, which was now full of sobbing relatives.
“Knock, knock.” Door opens. “Hi, we forgot some stuff here…”
Awkward and uncomfortable.
My partner never lived that down. Every call after that I always asked, “Hey Numbnuts, got the radio?”
Nice. Love a bit of reflection once in a while… Thanks for the gr8 day, M7.xDK
It was winter a few years back, working a 24 with “grumpy medic” GM and I get toned out to a cardiac arrest at about 0200. The call is over 30 miles away, and yes, we are the closest unit. There is snow and fog so (me) drive about 20 MPH. We miss the turnoff and it takes and extra half hour. We walk into the house and the grandson is doing CPR on grandpa. Grandma is sitting on a chair crying.GM walks in, takes one look at out PT and says loudly “he’s dead, lets call this and go back to sleep”. Needless to say, it was all downhill from there.Jane