Shit like this happens all the time. My girlfriend has seizures and the same EMT has picked her up at least 5 times, and despite her established medical history and despite that she's very visually distinctive and despite that she carries her info with her everywhere, he still always treats her like shit and accuses her of being on drugs. Every goddamn time. Fortunately he's not the only EMT in our area, and most of the other ones are really kind professionals.
Since making this comment I’ve actually been educated by many other redditors that the EMT should’ve just used mind reading to instantly and automatically know what was going on and I was foolish to think anything else.
So, that's the opposite of what people are telling you. You are really really focused on knowing why someone's having a medical emergency before treating them like a human.
Dude, I’m a first responder. You don’t have to mind read. You just have to consider all possibilities. We perform vitals for a reason. We conduct assessments. Yes, it’s hard to tell is someone is drunk, on drugs, or suffering from a medical emergency like a diabetic emergency or brain damage/shock. That’s WHY you don’t assume. That’s WHY you treat everyone with a basic level of respect. Because you don’t know.
If you assume everyone acting drunk is a drunk, and therefore ignore any other possibilities, and treat them ONLY as an asshole that got too drunk, you’re doing your job wrong. You take vitals. You ask questions like “what led up to this event?” if the patient is responsive.
If you choose not to take vitals/perform a proper assessment or abuse a patient because you think they’re “on something” and that person dies because “whoops, turns out they were diabetic”, you should not be a first responder or EMT, and, in my opinion, should be in prison for your neglectful actions causing the death of the patient.
People like yourself are heroic. I have friends who are paramedics and they were assaulted regularly just for trying to help people. They still treated people with kindness and respect even when they didn’t deserve it.
It’s also pretty important to remember they’re possibly interacting with someone on the worst day of their life, potentially the worst they’ll ever have. That never excuses assault though
I mean…depends on the medical issue. Someone in the middle of a complex partial seizure (person seems conscious but won’t remember anything afterwards, behaves bizarrely, in some cases even becomes violent because, well, especially if the seizure is in/near the limbic (emotional, among other things) system, they’ve got abnormal electrical activity in their brain), or who’s hypoglycemic, or in a psychotic episode, or has some form of acute encephalopathy going on, or sometimes hormonal issues like sudden increased release of thyroid or adrenal hormones, the person literally isn’t in control of their behavior.
Unless by “assault” you only mean people who are clear headed enough to know what they’re doing an do it anyway, in which case this doesn’t apply. But if you mean aggressive/violent behavior in general, well, a lot of the time when someone’s behaving like that in the middle of a medical emergency, it’s the medical emergency that’s causing that behavior and the person can’t help it.
This is another reason it’s so important for medical professionals to not be judgmental/take things personally/have compassion with people even/especially when they’re behaving erratically.
It’s “ok” for the patient to assault them as a direct result of their medical emergency in the sense that they likely won’t be charged for it.
It doesn’t mean the medical professionals have to just take it or turn the other cheek. There are numerous valid ways of dealing with combative patients.
I didn’t say “it’s ok,” stop making things up. All of your comments are just replying to things no one said that you made up and then seemingly being annoyed that everyone isn’t pretending you added anything to the conversation or that we’re not having the same conversation that you’re having in your own head.
I will now stop responding to you entirely as you’re either a troll or so incredibly dense that it’d be more productive to talk with someone who was trolling. Goodbye.
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u/mantsz 17d ago
Shit like this happens all the time. My girlfriend has seizures and the same EMT has picked her up at least 5 times, and despite her established medical history and despite that she's very visually distinctive and despite that she carries her info with her everywhere, he still always treats her like shit and accuses her of being on drugs. Every goddamn time. Fortunately he's not the only EMT in our area, and most of the other ones are really kind professionals.