Ambulance pickup - the hospital parking lot?

[aricbcool]

I know it's Canada, but from a procedural/safety standpoint, does this make any sense?

http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/natio...ath050602.html

A Kelowna man who drove an unconscious man to the parking lot of his local hospital couldn't believe his ears when medical staff told him to call 911 and wait for an ambulance.

Ralph Vogel and his wife had been letting a homeless man sleep in their motor home, but became alarmed when they couldn't wake him Wednesday morning.

So Vogel powered up the motor home and drove the man to the Kelowna General Hospital.

He ran inside and told medical staff that a man was either dying or dead in his motor home.

When staff told him to call 911 and wait for an ambulance, he told them that the man was just outside in the parking lot. He was still told to call 911.

By the time the ambulance arrived, it was much too late. The man had already been dead for several hours.

The hospital now admits that staff made a mistake by refusing to treat the man in the parking lot, just in case there was a chance he could still be saved.

This isn't the first time Kelowna General Hospital staff have refused to treat someone just outside their doors. Three years ago, a woman who collapsed just metres away from the emergency room doors also had to wait for an ambulance.

Alison Paine of the Interior Health Authority says policy changes have been made since that embarrassing incident. But she said the policy's conditions for helping someone in need of emergency care were not fulfilled in this case.

"It is not only [hospital] policy, but Interior Health policy, that if somebody is in need of emergency care in the parking lot, that we go out and help them," Paine said.

"But obviously something has gone wrong here."

[Roguish Lawyer]

And here I was expecting intel on ambulance locations . . . LMAO

[Doc]

It doesn't make any sense to me either. I'll bet there are issues here that we don't know about.

I couldn't imagine not busting my ass to help anyone in trouble.

Doc

[smokfire]

This exact scenario happens to my station several times a year. We will be dipatched to a patient who fell walking into the E.R. As ridiculous as it sounds, hospitals are often not willing to let their personnel operate outside their scope of practice to discourage lawsuits for that exact reason. Doctors and nurses, to my knowledge, are not trained on how to properly C-Collar and backboard a patient. If a lawyer can prove to a jury that a separate injury or a worsening of the original injury was caused by negligence of a doctor or nurse by operating outside their scope of practice, even in good faith, the hospital could face a multi-million dollar lawsuit. They are often not willing to take that risk. Anyone with $40 and some spare time can file a lawsuit.


smokfire


IMHO the doctors and nurses needs to remember why they are medical professionals and take some risk in this situation. When someone needs help and you are a trained professional, you help them. Watching someone die and taking no action is not an option.

[jasonglh]

Wow. I cannot fathom the thought process involved here.

The RN's in ER here are required to take ATLS (Advanced Trauma Life Support) which is pretty much based on prehospital care. They are certainly qualified to collar and board a patient in a parking lot. I can't count the times working in the ER as an EMT how many times we went out under the canopy to help someone out of a car or off the concrete. Our EMS here is actually in the hospital parking lot not 50 yards from the ER but would not be called for that I dont think.


I have responded to a 911 call from the payphone in the ER waiting room. The patient didnt get the narcotics she wanted for her sore foot and wanted to be taken by ambulance to another ER. We took her only because the ER Doc threatened to shoot us if we didnt take her somewhere. A few hours later an AMR ambulance shows up and drops her off under our canopy where she calls someone to come pick her up. The other ER gave her Ibuprofin as well. 2 ER visits, 3 ambulance runs later and all she had to show for it was 2 scripts for 800mg Motrin.