tagged w/ Paramedics
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Words of a young U.S.Army paramedic who is rushing during "Golden Hour" to save the lives of wounded Americans in Afghanistan. Also, my blog is closing in on one million "hits" and the list of "My Followers" is on the lefthand side of the blog. You can become a follower for FREE just by clicking on "follow" at the top of the blog.Words of a young U.S.Army paramedic who is rushing during "Golden Hour" to... more
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Nothing in life is certain, except death and taxes. However, Benjamin Franklin’s famous quote is only partially true if you live in south-west England, after it was revealed yesterday that a man pronounced dead by South Western Ambulance Service paramedics was later found breathing by undertakers.
Paramedics were called to the man’s house after neighbours reported that he had not been seen for four days, and after finding no palpable signs of life left the scene, leaving the police to contact the coroner.
But upon their arrival, the undertakers found the man still breathing and an ambulance was called back to the house to take him for treatment.
The incident, which occurred in November 2008, falls under the category of Serious Untoward Incidents, and was one of 62 such cases recorded in Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset and the Isles of Scilly between 2007 and 2009.
"When you look at these incidents, it works out at roughly less than three per 100,000 call-outs,” said Dr Andy Smith, the service’s medical director.
He added that the service had adopted a culture of openness and employees were encouraged to report any incidents immediately "so we can investigate... and learn lessons".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-11424557Nothing in life is certain, except death and taxes. However, Benjamin Franklin’s... more
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(Feb. 18) -- It took 10 calls to 911 and almost 30 hours for paramedics to reach Curtis Mitchell. But by the time they made it to his Hazelwood, Pa., home, he was dead.
"I sat up here with him, watching him die," Mitchell's longtime girlfriend, Sharon Edge, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "They didn't do their jobs like they were supposed to."
Pittsburgh officials, including Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, apologized to Mitchell's family and have enacted a new policy for responding to emergency calls.
"We should have gotten there," Public Safety Director Michael Huss told members of the local media. "It's that simple."
So why didn't they?
The Pittsburgh area was buried in 2 feet of snow when Mitchell, 50, began calling emergency dispatchers around 2 a.m. on Feb. 6. In his first 911 call, he complained that his "entire stomach was in pain," according to a report by Dr. Ron Roth, medical director for Pittsburgh's Public Safety Department. His symptoms were judged to be non-life-threatening.
After two hours passed without paramedics showing up, Mitchell placed a second call, learning an ambulance was stuck in the snow near a local bridge. He was asked if he could walk four blocks to meet the ambulance, but he said his pain was too severe. The call was canceled.
After another hour and another call from Mitchell, a second ambulance got stuck at the same bridge, its crew unaware that it was the second group to attempt to reach Mitchell, as the call histories were not noted by dispatchers. First-responders again asked Mitchell to come to them, according to Roth's report.
"If he wants a ride to the hospital, he is just going to have to come down to the truck," a medic told the dispatcher.
Mitchell's call was canceled for the second time.
Over the next 10 hours, Mitchell's symptoms intensified along with the number of calls to 911 from across the snowed-in Pittsburgh area. Limited availability became a factor in reaching Mitchell, who eventually was unable to call for help himself. Edge took over, telling dispatchers her boyfriend was suffering shortness of breath after a full day of contacting medics for care.
In a late call, Edge said she "could not get him up" after he took sleep and pain medications. Roth's report said a doctor who spoke with Edge was convinced Mitchell had taken prescribed pills and gone to sleep. Mitchell and Edge had made calls from 11:17 a.m. through 9:15 p.m on Feb. 6.
The final 911 call from the Mitchell home came at 8 a.m. Feb. 7. Edge was screaming; Mitchell was non-responsive and cold. Paramedics finally arrived, but it was too late.
The cause of Mitchell's death has not been determined yet, as toxicology reports are pending, according to the Post-Gazette.
Ravenstahl called the handling of Mitchell's situation "unacceptable," promising that EMS protocol would be changed to take note of a caller's history. He is weighing disciplinary action against the ambulance crew.
There are apologies, but Edge told Pittsburgh's WPXI-TV she can't accept them.
"Someone should be held responsible. The paramedic or the city," she said. "Someone has to be held responsible."
http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/curtis-mitchell-dies-after-10-calls-to-911-over-two-days/19363471?icid=main|main|dl1|link4|http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/curtis-mitchell-dies-after-10-calls-to-911-over-two-days/19363471(Feb. 18) -- It took 10 calls to 911 and almost 30 hours for paramedics to reach... more
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KSirys
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added this
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2 years ago
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Thieves stole an ambulance while paramedics were treating an elderly woman who had collapsed at her home, police said today.
At 10.39 pm yesterday the ambulance was scrambled to the home of an 86-year-old woman suffering chest pains.
While the ambulance was parked outside the address in Edwards Close, Paulsgrove, Portsmouth, Hampshire, said police.
The theft was not discovered until the paramedics left the house with their patient with the intention of taking her to hospital.
The vehicle was found in nearby Chedworth Crescent by police about 10 minutes later, according to police.Thieves stole an ambulance while paramedics were treating an elderly woman who had... more
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44 year old ambulance worker Karl Harris has been charged with misconduct in a public office after he reportedly neglecting a dying man.44 year old ambulance worker Karl Harris has been charged with misconduct in a public... more
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ClareW
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added this
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3 years ago
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A paramedic has been charged with assaulting a seizure patient in an ambulance, fracturing the man's skull and breaking his nose and an eye socket.A paramedic has been charged with assaulting a seizure patient in an ambulance,... more
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NECN/ABC) - Negotiations for a Gaza cease-fire are underway, but peace seems a long way off. Israel halted hostilities briefly for the second straight day to allow in humanitarian aid, but the United Nations called off its aid operation, citing Israeli attacks. Meanwhile to the north, an attack on Israel has ominous implications of a second front.
A volley of rockets launched from Lebanon hit the northern Israeli city of Nahariyah, injuring two people and setting the entire region on edge.
The operation in the south continued and so did another cease-fire. At noon, Israel announced another three-hour stop in the fighting to allow food in and the sick to be treated.
The International Committee of the Red Cross says in one home it found four children next to their dead mothers. The children had been there so long that they were too weak to stand on their own.
After an ambulance driver was shot today, nearly two dozen paramedics have been killed in Gaza in the last two weeks.
Israeli officials are once again discussing whether to expand the operation in Gaza, go deeper into the cities, or look for a way out.
ABC's Miguel Marquez reports from Jerusalem.NECN/ABC) - Negotiations for a Gaza cease-fire are underway, but peace seems a long... more
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Can you believe this??
This is the first picture of the disabled man allegedly left to die by paramedics who thought he was not worth saving.
The two ambulancemen who reached Barry Baker and found him unconscious are said to have been caught on tape discussing not bothering to revive him.
When Barry Baker dialled 999 to say he thought he was having a heart attack, ambulance controllers kept him on the phone as they ordered paramedics to use their blue lights get to him as quickly as possible.
But 59-year-old Mr Baker, who was disabled and lived alone, collapsed unconscious while talking on the phone, leaving the line open to the control centre as he lay on the floor.
Minutes later astonished dispatch centre staff heard their crew enter the house, apparently making disparaging comments about the state of the home.
A police source, who asked not to be named, said the ambulancemen were then heard over the phone discussing Mr Baker and allegedly saying 'words to the effect that he was not worth saving'.Can you believe this??
This is the first picture of the disabled man allegedly left... more
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Clive Greedy, a paramedic who was sacked after he ate celery as a patient lay dying has been suspended for six months by a health professionals body.
Favourite quote: “At one point John Jones took my attention away from the monitor by gesturing with a prawn he had taken from the colander in the sink. He said, does anyone want a prawn?” Mr Claydon told the hearing. He said he then saw the prawn on the dying man’s chin.
And this: "I then heard Clive Greedy saying nice celery,”Clive Greedy, a paramedic who was sacked after he ate celery as a patient lay dying... more
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"Saving the living has always been the No. 1 priority for a New York City ambulance crew. But a select group of paramedics may soon have a different task altogether: saving the dead. The city is considering creating a special ambulance whose crew would rush to collect the newly deceased and preserve the body so that the organs might be taken for transplant.
The "rapid-organ-recovery ambulance," still in the early planning stages, could raise a host of ethical questions and strike some families as ghoulish. But top medical officials in the Fire Department and Bellevue Hospital say it has the potential to save hundreds of lives.
Generally in the U.S., only people who die at hospitals are used as organ donors, because doctors are on hand with life-support machinery and other equipment to preserve the organs and remove them before they spoil. Surgeons have only a few critical hours before kidneys, livers and other body parts suffer damage that renders them unusable.
Dr. Lewis Goldfrank, the director of emergency medicine at Bellevue, said the ambulance project could spark an "amazing transformation" by substantially increasing the pool of donors. The system would be one of the first of its kind in the U.S., although similar ambulances have operated successfully in parts of Europe, he said.
The transplant ambulance would turn up at the scene of a death mere minutes after regular paramedics ceased efforts to resuscitate a patient. The team would begin work almost immediately, administering drugs and performing chest compressions intended to keep the organs viable.
Sometimes, those steps would be taken before getting approval from a relative and without knowledge of the departed's wishes regarding organ donation.
Any organ removals would be done at the hospital only. And no organs would be removed without getting the family's express consent.
But experts in medical and legal ethics said they still see potential for trouble.
"Starting this process without knowing whether the decedent wanted to be a donor could be a problem," said Maxwell Mehlman, director of the Law-Medicine Center at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
Distraught relatives could be unnerved by the site of a transplant team arriving so soon after a death. Some might have a religious objection to organ donation, and be enraged to learn that a body had been moved and injected with fluids.
Other families might also - rightly or wrongly - question whether the paramedics curtailed their lifesaving efforts because a patient had valuable organs.
"A lot of people don't trust the medical system to begin with, and in the city, you have additional class and race issues to deal with," said Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. "I could very easily see a family saying, 'If it was a white, rich person, that person would have been saved. But instead you've sent the meat wagon.'"
Doctors working on developing a pilot program say they realize the sensitivity of the issue and are building precautions into the system, which would start with just one ambulance."
By David B Caruso
Associated Press Writer
"Saving the living has always been the No. 1 priority for a New York City... more
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Britny
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added this
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3 years ago
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A 14 year old boy was taken to a hospital in critical condition after suffering a heart attack while playing baseball. The boy has had heart trouble in the past.
It happened during a Little League baseball game in Boise Idaho.
Paramedic says bystanders gave the boy CPR until medical help arrived. They most likely saved this boys life.
The boy's name is not being relased and his condition is not known at this time.A 14 year old boy was taken to a hospital in critical condition after suffering a... more
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