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To: fireman15

I can’t speak to your experience but for years I worked with paramedics in contact with a doctor or nurse and can’t remember a single experience of a patient being lied to, you’ve made a very broad statement.


9 posted on 02/02/2010 6:04:09 PM PST by jazusamo (But there really is no free lunch, except in the world of political rhetoric,.: Thomas Sowell)
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To: jazusamo
You are right. I have made a broad statement. I didn't say they all lie. I did say that they all exaggerate which is a statement which is unfair to a few doctors and nurses that I have known. But I will give a typical example, the type of thing that happens on a daily basis, the names have been changed to protect the innocent:

We show up at a motor vehicle accident. A young lady has rear ended another vehicle. Her airbag didn't deploy, there is no visible damage to either vehicle, but she is a woman who has her seat adjusted so that her chest is only a couple of inches from the steering wheel. She is complaining of chest pain. She has no other complaints or visible injuries.

She doesn't want to be transported because she has no health insurance and cannot afford the $1000 ride. Our fire department protocol demands that we advise her to be transported by ambulance because of the mechanism of injury... she was in a car accident. Further complicating things is her complaint of chest pain. This is something we take very seriously. The paramedic on-scene starts telling her that she must be transported because even though her neck doesn't hurt, it still could be broken and she could be walking around tomorrow and become paralyzed. She is still not buying that, so to let her go we have to get her to sign a release of responsibility. For that we have to get a base station doctor's approval.

We get on the phone with the base station doctor. We tell him she doesn't want to go. He wants to talk to her. He parrots something else the paramedics have been telling her. That chest pain she is feeling might not just be from her breasts hitting the steering wheel. She might have damaged her heart. She could die from one of the big vessels being torn loose and suddenly rupturing, or she might have bruised her heart and that could cause some sort of arrhythmia which could cause her heart to go into fibrillation or just stop beating all together. So we with the doctor successfully scare her into taking an ambulance ride to the hospital. We put her head in a C-collar, and tape and strap her to a backboard. Of course she gets triaged at the hospital and ends up spending two or three hours strapped to that very uncomfortable board. They finally X-ray her and send her on her way with a $1000 bill from the ambulance company and a $1400 bill from the hospital.

What were the chances that this person really had a broken neck? I'd guess around ten million to one. What are the chances that she had actually damaged her heart? Probably the same ten million to one. Did the doctor and paramedic lie to the young lady to get her to comply with protocol? There is no question about that. Did they lie? You might have to analyze each word in a court of law to satisfy some people, but in many cases in my view they cross the line from exaggerating to lying fairly early on if the patient looks like they are not going to cooperate.

19 posted on 02/03/2010 12:08:27 PM PST by fireman15 (Check your facts before making ignorant statements.)
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