As many of our regular readers know, I spend most of my spare time working as a volunteer EMT. The long hours and sacrificed sleep are a small price to pay for the camaraderie, sense of community service and the knowledge that you’re helping people during their worst moments.
Not to mention it satisfies the needs of my inner adrenaline-junkie!
Not knowing what the next call is going to be is both exciting and challenging. Not knowing who or what you’re going to find when you arrive on scene keeps things interesting. From minor toothache to major trauma, you just never know.
It’s not always high drama. Many calls are probably unnecessary and leave us thinking “You called 911 for that?!?” Sometimes we may even toss in the odd silent expletive or two!
But we never say it out loud. We’re trained to accept that it’s an emergency to the patient / family even if we don’t regard it as such. And we accept that sometimes people just don’t know better.
New parents especially, seem to find it difficult to decide whether to take their child to the emergency room in the middle of the night or to wait until morning to see their child’s doctor, or even to recognize that something like crying, in a newborn, is perfectly normal.
Not surprising then that children under 4 account for about 10% of the 115 million emergency room visits a year. Which is why we welcome a recent initiative by ProMedica Toledo Children’s Hospital.
Through a series of interactive videos, doctors and nurses guide parents through several common medical scenarios including ear pain, asthma attack, ankle pain, allergic reaction, laceration, sore throat, abdominal pain and mosquito bites.
In each video, you make the decision to go or not to go to the ER. The expert then explains which choice makes the most sense . Click on the links above to see if you would make the right decisions.
Should this be mandatory viewing for all parents? Let us know what you think.
SRxA's Word on Health 