Yesterday’s story on the head-on crash with an ambulance (Firegeezer HERE) and a pickup truck that killed a grandfather was a sad story in its own right.  But for me it raised some questions about what was going on with the patient care.  The man’s legs were crushed beneath the dashboard, trapping him in the truck.  He was conscious and seemingly alert with no other apparent injuries, yet he died a few hours later in the hospital.  I’ve got a couple of things to ask about this, so please help me out here.

First of all, this is a classic case for using the shock-trauma pants.  They were designed for just this sort of trauma care.  Naturally, the news reports didn’t mention anything about that, and I wouldn’t really expect them to.  But the outcome of the event is exactly what happens with these things.  The inflatable trousers are ideal for stabilizing extreme leg injuries as well as serving the function of returning the patient’s blood back to his heart and brain.  Like I said, a classic case to use them.

But as I’ve said before, I haven’t peeked inside an ambulance in quite a while and I’m wondering if anybody even carries them anymore?  Have they been “disallowed” and removed from ambulances?  Have they been shoved out of the units to make room for newer devices and expanded equipment inventories?  Perhaps the shock-trauma pants are just not carried on AMR units.  If that’s the case, what a shame.  Let me know if you’re allowed to use them anymore.

The other item that started me thinking is in the newspaper story that we linked to in the posting.  They are reporting that during the extrication, the patient (Hager) pulled out his cellphone and called his family to tell them what was going on, right in the middle of the evolution.  They tell:

Vickory (a relative) said Hager called his wife while he was pinned inside the truck to tell her what had happened.

Vickory and three other family members converged at the scene and watched the rescue operation.

As half a dozen Tampa Fire Rescue workers ripped the top of the truck off and finally broke Hager free, Vickory yelled “He’s out,” and they rushed to see him, following as he was taken to the ambulance.

Welcome to the Wireless Age.  This strikes me as so strange an event.  It got me to thinking of how I would have reacted if I was doing an extrication and the victim whipped out his cellphone and started calling people.  I think my own personal reaction would have been to gently discourage his actions and insist that he not do that.  My justification would be that his fiddling with the phone is a major distraction to the life-saving activities going on around him and the need to keep him in communication with US rather than someone far away.  Priorities, you know.

But having hindsight available to us now, I suspect that some people would claim that the family benefited from the call because they got to see and talk to Gramps, giving him some final moments of pleasure before he passed away.  Knowing what you know now, what do you think you’ll do if you are faced with something similar?

We had better get this equipment checked out now.  I’ve got to get  the coffee started and then in a little while we’ll get together in the day room talk over the best action to take if our patient wants to describe his last moments to the folks back home while we’re working on him.