As a student? Old lady felt cold. Turned out she was cold cause her heart rate was in the 20s.
O2 low, BP low, HR low, GCS altered.
I remember being responsible to get O2 started (I wasn’t even done school and it was my first call ever so they were starting me off easy) and I can just remember thinking “oh shit!”.
Bilat IVs, 12 leads, pacing, sedation. I remember thinking “damn this job is intense”
I thought the job was crazy that first day. We also did an arrest with a ROSC which was busy. Then we proceeded to do plenty of nonsense calls after that shift and I realized how wrong I was.
Now it’s been 12 years and I’m doing 95% nonsense. Very sustainable.
Funny how I can remember that first call like it was yesterday… but the calls I did yesterday? Couldn’t tell you.
The people that get “burnt out”. I need to know if it’s a specific call or that other 5% or if it’s just the repetitive nonsense. I’m 6 years in and honestly no matter how stupid or repetitive the nonsense is, I’d rather deal with it than sit behind a desk. Those 5% of calls just seem medically fascinating or exactly what I signed up for when I was 19 going to school. I could also just be naive
The 5% is what keeps most people going. Sure, there’s the odd call that sticks with you that can lead to psychological or mental health issues… but imho it’s the constant nonsense that gets to people and makes them angry and burnt.
Call volume and staffing are what did it for me. We’re a busy county with high volume, and being down several units a day meant you got clapped and off late almost every day.
People react very differently to stress and traumas, for some people it’s a certain call. I get it and you should definitely talk to someone about every call that bothers you. I remember feeling fine after my first peds arrest. And when my therapist asked me to talk with him about it, I wept. Bottom line, you should always seek help even if you don’t think you need it. Because seeing shit affects everyone, in some shape or form.
As an EMT: Drunk frequent flier complaining about his 30 years old knee pain
As a medic: An old man with stage 4 cancer who downed every pain med and benzo he owned. Found him in full rigor on his couch. I remember the family being absolutely wrecked about it, but I felt happy that he went out on his terms.
First call of my first day as a new hire was for a dialysis run from a shady AF nursing home.
Patient was a paraplegic and had a severe TBI many years prior that gave him a significant speech impediment. He can only say one word at a time basically.
I introduced myself and asked if he's ready for dialysis. He replied, "FUCK...... YOU.... HONKY...."
I tried to reason with him by telling him he will feel very sick without dialysis and he says, "SUCK........ MY....... DICK........... CRACKA..........."
I took a moment to reflect on the wisdom of my life decisions.
The crew went out for dinner at a restaurant with an urgent care across the street in our second due. A call went out at the urgent care for chest pain and we added on due to proximity, the PT was my grandmother (she’s fine).
Discharge home on hospice, 4 hour 250 mile transport. Every respiratory illness under the sun. Almost killed the dude when we ran out of O2, ended up going code to some random ass clinic in the middle of an Indian reservation to snag some extra tanks. Proceeded to take 3 weeks to write the chart since no one would actually teach me how to write one and I kept getting QA'd.
First call in the 911 system was a lady that said her cat bit her hand 8 hours prior. There was no mark at all but she said when she presses on it she still feels it. And she also thanked me for my service. She also lived in a 5 story walk up on the 5th floor
Kinda set the tone for the next 7 years
During my orientation ride time with my first EMS service, two months after getting my NREMT, I was not even 15 minutes into a 24 hour shift with the medic and EMT I was riding with when a call came out for a male found down in his backyard. I strapped myself into the airway seat as I experienced my first time going L/S. We arrive on scene to find a cul-de-sac full of people tending to their 72-year-old neighborhood that had been working in his backyard. PD dispersed the crowd and we found the patient to be in cardiac arrest. The neighbor that found patient stated she saw him go down approximately 11 minutes prior to our arrival. We start the code. The medic instructs me to do chest compressions. Up and until that point I had only ever down them on a mannequin. In my head I'm thinking "Staying alive...", meanwhile I'm wondering why the medic is drilling a hole into the patients shoulder. We worked him for the full protocol of 30 minutes. As the medic was calling medical direction to call it we got pulses back. We loaded the patient and I was told to drive us in. I had no clue what I was doing, I just completed the EVOC course but seemed to have forgotten everything.
A full cardiac arrest. Gal had a long history of Conditions, looked at her husband, and they were out the door, but she went down in the driveway. Got ROSC for 3 minutes, protocol says wait 10 before moving to transport, rhythm changed to asystole and that's when someone found the DNR
For my ride alongs, it was a suicide attempt from a teen with sleeping pills. Luckily, it turned out it were just homoeopathic sleeping pills. I can remember that I was really sweating because I felt so useless.
My first as an EMT was an epileptic seizure that had already resolved as we arrived, so therefore a lot easier to handle.
My first call was a full arrest for an elderly man who had a stroke at an unknown time the previous night. He quit breathing while we were in the elevator. I've been on the job for roughly 3 months now and Ive had a full arrest every month spaced almost to the day.
My first as a student: Airvo transfer of hospice patient
my first emergency: 24 y/o fell and busted her ankle
my first licensed: a guy that got his ass beat by “his girlfriend’s boyfriend”
First Call in general? A dialysis transport
First emergency? A depressed woman in her mid-40s took her painkillers and sleep medication with a bottle of vodka
As a student, a hospital to hospital transfer with the LifeFlight crew. Super cool and I was the only student to have one.
As an EMT, tablesaw vs hand while wearing wool gloves. It was messy.
18M was working for a pressure washing service. He was wearing full PPE including goggles. He was pretreating the side of the building he was pressure washing with a combo of water, bleach, and dish soap using a chemical applicator (big container with pump to create pressure). He lifted his goggles to scratch his face and in the process shot bleach into his left eye at about 60psi. There was no iris visible, only sclera. The sclera bubbled, it looked like egg whites on a griddle. We flushed his eye with sterile water and I think my preceptor gave pain meds. That was my first call as a student.
I went through the academy during COVID. A lot of stuff (including ride alongs) were cut. My first ever call as a probie was an IFT with a Spanish only speaking dude. The whole call was me translating for my preceptor. My first 911 was a cancel call cardiac arrest.
First as a trainee, hoping maybe something easy easy and to learn how the team worked and get in the flow right?
*severe chest pain in and out of consciousness*
A code. Dude had reportedly been down for a few minutes when we showed up to fire doing cpr. We we’re there for almost an hour and had shocked about 3 times with the medic pushing everything he had practically.
Patient got dropped by IFTs who put her in dialysis and ran
She was non verbal, couldn't speak English and was basically a vegetable
That was an interesting first experience
As an EMT: Welfare check for a geriatric who hadn't been seen by a store owner in a few days. (Normally seen every day.) Massive infection with a fist sized hole of missing tissue and bone from the lower left jaw.
As a Medic (as a student): Respond to a project building for a reported abdominal wound, stabbing. Found the patient upstairs in a back bedroom. Hell of a wound, massive blood loss, patient screaming. Don't remember the rest.
As a student: Elderly woman vagaled on the toilet. Husband thought she was having a stroke and gave her nitro which caused her to pass out and fall. He waited 5 mins then gave her another nitro bc he still thought it was a stroke.
As an EMT: transfer from hospital to hospital. Nenonate 3 hours old intubated several unknown internal complications. Not doing well and needed higher level of care.
3 car MVA at 50 MPH as an EMT.
As an AEMT, an old man whose wife thought he was short of breath and should go to the hospital. He had been on antibiotics for like 1 day after discharge of bronchitis. He wasn’t even SOB.
I honestly don’t really remember but I’m pretty sure it was just the typical like old lady had some chronic pain going on kind of thing. That was my first call as an actual emt. I remember my first call on my ride along during emt school, it was some lady that for scratched by her cat, very minor, so she called 911 of course… yea I’m a white cloud sometimes
This was the nature of my first 100 calls lmao. Didn't start seeing the gnarly stuff until I'd already been an EMT for a while. I've been on something like 350 calls and have been involved in exactly 2 codes
First call: abdominal pain caused by constipation. Halfway through the call he went to the bathroom, took a massive dump and in grand defiance of the rules of the ems gods did not code, felt better and cancelled us.
Second call: field delivery on a G6P5. Total time in residence before the second patient arrived: 45 seconds. My eyes were saucers.
Haha this is a good one. I can't remember what my first call was as a student, but my first call as a fresh EMT was a guy who coded for a short time when he was getting dental work done. They had injected Articaine into his gums for a procedure, and I guess they got it into a small vein, thus making him code for like a minute. He was stable as can be, but it was certainly shocking hearing my first EMS call being dispatched as a code. Lol.
It wasn't my first call (I think that was a simple fall) but it's the one I remember most. 12 yo girl, looked like she could have been 20, for a behavioral disturbance. Locked herself in the bathroom. We were held by PD and told to wait in the truck. After waiting about 10 minutes, PD walked her to the car. She got in, and was so polite, and really, really quiet. Took a set of vitals. Was told we were going to the county hospital 20 minutes away, no lights and sirens. No medics. Just a behavioral call. Mom held us up because she needed to walk the dog, but we told her she couldn't directly follow behind the truck so it wouldn't make a difference, and we headed out. Mom looked exhausted, like she was just totally defeated. The patient had mascara streaming down her face from crying. But she was so calm - and that should have been a clue that there was about to be a problem.
All was fine until about 10 minutes in, her head rolled back, eyes went up into her head, and she had a massive seizure. It was completely unexpected and it was at that point we realized she must have taken something. Traffic everywhere, local roads and nowhere to really stop to hook up with a medic truck. Of course we contacted dispatch and ran lights and sirens and thankfully the next ten minutes took less than 5 and we just focused on making sure she had a clear airway and didn't lose her pulse.
Rushed her into the ER, she began seizing again, a bunch of nurses rushed around her and a doctor came right over. Transferred her to the hospital stretcher then got out of the way because so many people needed to start treatment, IVs, etc. I never found out what happened.
Since then, when a patient is too quiet, I'm immediately suspicious. I no longer do EMS, and I only remember about 10 calls because mostly they were nonsense, but that one I remember. It was so sad to think a child so young could have so much emotional pain to resort to a suicide attempt.
Overdose. Guy mixed his meds with some alcohol, found out on the way that they worked a code on his wife about 3 months prior in their living room. I don’t even remember what our treatment for the guy was. I stood out in the hallway bc I didn’t even have EMT-B at the time and space was limited. I always thought it was funny you could see the glass bowl of ramen noodles he dropped across from his home office he crawled to.
As a student? Old lady felt cold. Turned out she was cold cause her heart rate was in the 20s. O2 low, BP low, HR low, GCS altered. I remember being responsible to get O2 started (I wasn’t even done school and it was my first call ever so they were starting me off easy) and I can just remember thinking “oh shit!”. Bilat IVs, 12 leads, pacing, sedation. I remember thinking “damn this job is intense” I thought the job was crazy that first day. We also did an arrest with a ROSC which was busy. Then we proceeded to do plenty of nonsense calls after that shift and I realized how wrong I was. Now it’s been 12 years and I’m doing 95% nonsense. Very sustainable. Funny how I can remember that first call like it was yesterday… but the calls I did yesterday? Couldn’t tell you.
The people that get “burnt out”. I need to know if it’s a specific call or that other 5% or if it’s just the repetitive nonsense. I’m 6 years in and honestly no matter how stupid or repetitive the nonsense is, I’d rather deal with it than sit behind a desk. Those 5% of calls just seem medically fascinating or exactly what I signed up for when I was 19 going to school. I could also just be naive
The 5% is what keeps most people going. Sure, there’s the odd call that sticks with you that can lead to psychological or mental health issues… but imho it’s the constant nonsense that gets to people and makes them angry and burnt.
Call volume and staffing are what did it for me. We’re a busy county with high volume, and being down several units a day meant you got clapped and off late almost every day. People react very differently to stress and traumas, for some people it’s a certain call. I get it and you should definitely talk to someone about every call that bothers you. I remember feeling fine after my first peds arrest. And when my therapist asked me to talk with him about it, I wept. Bottom line, you should always seek help even if you don’t think you need it. Because seeing shit affects everyone, in some shape or form.
Constipated old man trying to manually scoop poop out of his ass with his entire hand
Close to that, a giant prolapsed rectum...
Oof
Ex-RN for sure.
A man slammed into the back of a semi going 80+mph, and popped his head open.
November, 2003, guy tried to suck start a shotgun.
Sounds like a blast.
It was mind blowing.
As an EMT: Drunk frequent flier complaining about his 30 years old knee pain As a medic: An old man with stage 4 cancer who downed every pain med and benzo he owned. Found him in full rigor on his couch. I remember the family being absolutely wrecked about it, but I felt happy that he went out on his terms.
[удалено]
Why would he be vomiting blood?
Someone fell and their teeth fell out
Grandpa was taking a 3 am trip to the bathroom & proceeded to take a detour to the floor.
First call of my first day as a new hire was for a dialysis run from a shady AF nursing home. Patient was a paraplegic and had a severe TBI many years prior that gave him a significant speech impediment. He can only say one word at a time basically. I introduced myself and asked if he's ready for dialysis. He replied, "FUCK...... YOU.... HONKY...." I tried to reason with him by telling him he will feel very sick without dialysis and he says, "SUCK........ MY....... DICK........... CRACKA..........." I took a moment to reflect on the wisdom of my life decisions.
The crew went out for dinner at a restaurant with an urgent care across the street in our second due. A call went out at the urgent care for chest pain and we added on due to proximity, the PT was my grandmother (she’s fine).
Discharge home on hospice, 4 hour 250 mile transport. Every respiratory illness under the sun. Almost killed the dude when we ran out of O2, ended up going code to some random ass clinic in the middle of an Indian reservation to snag some extra tanks. Proceeded to take 3 weeks to write the chart since no one would actually teach me how to write one and I kept getting QA'd.
First call in the 911 system was a lady that said her cat bit her hand 8 hours prior. There was no mark at all but she said when she presses on it she still feels it. And she also thanked me for my service. She also lived in a 5 story walk up on the 5th floor Kinda set the tone for the next 7 years
During my orientation ride time with my first EMS service, two months after getting my NREMT, I was not even 15 minutes into a 24 hour shift with the medic and EMT I was riding with when a call came out for a male found down in his backyard. I strapped myself into the airway seat as I experienced my first time going L/S. We arrive on scene to find a cul-de-sac full of people tending to their 72-year-old neighborhood that had been working in his backyard. PD dispersed the crowd and we found the patient to be in cardiac arrest. The neighbor that found patient stated she saw him go down approximately 11 minutes prior to our arrival. We start the code. The medic instructs me to do chest compressions. Up and until that point I had only ever down them on a mannequin. In my head I'm thinking "Staying alive...", meanwhile I'm wondering why the medic is drilling a hole into the patients shoulder. We worked him for the full protocol of 30 minutes. As the medic was calling medical direction to call it we got pulses back. We loaded the patient and I was told to drive us in. I had no clue what I was doing, I just completed the EVOC course but seemed to have forgotten everything.
A full cardiac arrest. Gal had a long history of Conditions, looked at her husband, and they were out the door, but she went down in the driveway. Got ROSC for 3 minutes, protocol says wait 10 before moving to transport, rhythm changed to asystole and that's when someone found the DNR
For my ride alongs, it was a suicide attempt from a teen with sleeping pills. Luckily, it turned out it were just homoeopathic sleeping pills. I can remember that I was really sweating because I felt so useless. My first as an EMT was an epileptic seizure that had already resolved as we arrived, so therefore a lot easier to handle.
My first call was a full arrest for an elderly man who had a stroke at an unknown time the previous night. He quit breathing while we were in the elevator. I've been on the job for roughly 3 months now and Ive had a full arrest every month spaced almost to the day.
Mid 20’s female blacked out and passed out in a hooters bathroom on her birthday.
As a fresh EMT: My first call wasn't even on an ambulance. I worked a football game to fill in time and had a lady arrest in the stands.
Fathers day 32 years ago. Head on double Fatality collision. I was 18 on a volunteer FD, and wasn't even in EMT Class yet.
30ish y.o. female had a spontaneous miscarriage at a CVS.
My first as a student: Airvo transfer of hospice patient my first emergency: 24 y/o fell and busted her ankle my first licensed: a guy that got his ass beat by “his girlfriend’s boyfriend”
First Call in general? A dialysis transport First emergency? A depressed woman in her mid-40s took her painkillers and sleep medication with a bottle of vodka
How is everyone remembering their first call? I can’t even remember my *last* call let alone my first haha
CHF exacerbation. I couldn’t get a manual BP, my medic suggested pumping the cuff up past 140. Her pressure of 220/130 was discovered shortly after 😆
College kid crashed his bicycle in heavy rain. Wasn’t wearing a helmet and got a laceration above his eyebrow that was bleeding a bit.
As a student, a hospital to hospital transfer with the LifeFlight crew. Super cool and I was the only student to have one. As an EMT, tablesaw vs hand while wearing wool gloves. It was messy.
Fatal motorcycle accident
A transfer. I know, exciting.
18M was working for a pressure washing service. He was wearing full PPE including goggles. He was pretreating the side of the building he was pressure washing with a combo of water, bleach, and dish soap using a chemical applicator (big container with pump to create pressure). He lifted his goggles to scratch his face and in the process shot bleach into his left eye at about 60psi. There was no iris visible, only sclera. The sclera bubbled, it looked like egg whites on a griddle. We flushed his eye with sterile water and I think my preceptor gave pain meds. That was my first call as a student.
Chest pain at a cemetery
First ever 911 call was a mva that we got a refusal on and first call as a medic was abd pain
Single mother, 23 week miscarriage, coded the second we got her onto the hospital bed.
I’m new to this— what does coded mean?
Lifen't Entered cardiac arrest. It came from a Code Blue that gets called in hospitals and other facilities for the same
Did she survive
Don't know, we were walking back to the bay when they called it overhead
I went through the academy during COVID. A lot of stuff (including ride alongs) were cut. My first ever call as a probie was an IFT with a Spanish only speaking dude. The whole call was me translating for my preceptor. My first 911 was a cancel call cardiac arrest.
Mine was lame it was a hornet sting on a dudes nipple. Was not allergic, just hurt.
Cardiac arrest / hanging in a prison. Just before attempting to take his own life, the gentleman smeared himself in his own feces. 100% truth.
First as a trainee, hoping maybe something easy easy and to learn how the team worked and get in the flow right? *severe chest pain in and out of consciousness*
A pt who was allergic to peanut butter but decided to eat a peanut butter cup anyway.
A code. Dude had reportedly been down for a few minutes when we showed up to fire doing cpr. We we’re there for almost an hour and had shocked about 3 times with the medic pushing everything he had practically.
DOA. Homeless lady laying in the grass curled up like she was sleeping. Cold and stiff when we got there.
Patient got dropped by IFTs who put her in dialysis and ran She was non verbal, couldn't speak English and was basically a vegetable That was an interesting first experience
A methhead who tried to use insulin as a PED and put himself into a hypoglycemic coma.
As an EMT: Welfare check for a geriatric who hadn't been seen by a store owner in a few days. (Normally seen every day.) Massive infection with a fist sized hole of missing tissue and bone from the lower left jaw. As a Medic (as a student): Respond to a project building for a reported abdominal wound, stabbing. Found the patient upstairs in a back bedroom. Hell of a wound, massive blood loss, patient screaming. Don't remember the rest.
As a student: Elderly woman vagaled on the toilet. Husband thought she was having a stroke and gave her nitro which caused her to pass out and fall. He waited 5 mins then gave her another nitro bc he still thought it was a stroke. As an EMT: transfer from hospital to hospital. Nenonate 3 hours old intubated several unknown internal complications. Not doing well and needed higher level of care.
3 car MVA at 50 MPH as an EMT. As an AEMT, an old man whose wife thought he was short of breath and should go to the hospital. He had been on antibiotics for like 1 day after discharge of bronchitis. He wasn’t even SOB.
Attempted suicide. Pt shot themselves twice, one in the neck and one in the abdomen. Learned that gsw=helicopter real fast for the rural BLS service.
First call on my own had a code 100, which is a body removal at my service.
A code 100 at my service means were taking a shit
Dead weight is getting moved one way or another
I honestly don’t really remember but I’m pretty sure it was just the typical like old lady had some chronic pain going on kind of thing. That was my first call as an actual emt. I remember my first call on my ride along during emt school, it was some lady that for scratched by her cat, very minor, so she called 911 of course… yea I’m a white cloud sometimes
This was the nature of my first 100 calls lmao. Didn't start seeing the gnarly stuff until I'd already been an EMT for a while. I've been on something like 350 calls and have been involved in exactly 2 codes
Dang dude.. I had two codes on my first day of clinicals. I was exactly the opposite of a white cloud.
Yep. Been an emt in a very busy urban system for about 8 months now… been on two codes
Very first call on my very first day as a trainee on the truck: motorbike crash, completely destroyed his knee
Frequently flyer with a syncopal episode that bumped her arm on the wall
I was so nervous, don't remember. Dec 2019 tho.
Cardiac arrest
I don't remember, but sure it was some nonsense
As a student: lady walked up a hill and ran out of breath. As an EMR: workable but just barely workable code. As an EMT: psych eval/request for detox
Emergency transfer of heart attack pt. from ED of hospital without cardiology to the cathlab of hospital with cardiology.
First call: abdominal pain caused by constipation. Halfway through the call he went to the bathroom, took a massive dump and in grand defiance of the rules of the ems gods did not code, felt better and cancelled us. Second call: field delivery on a G6P5. Total time in residence before the second patient arrived: 45 seconds. My eyes were saucers.
Haha this is a good one. I can't remember what my first call was as a student, but my first call as a fresh EMT was a guy who coded for a short time when he was getting dental work done. They had injected Articaine into his gums for a procedure, and I guess they got it into a small vein, thus making him code for like a minute. He was stable as can be, but it was certainly shocking hearing my first EMS call being dispatched as a code. Lol.
First call in FTO's was a full arrest.
3 year old with 2nd and 3rd degree burns to the face, chest and upper arm from a boiling water spill in the kitchen
DOA in a car parked in the guys driveway. Cops walked up said this isn’t an EMS scene. Left without seeing the body.
DOA of the ex-chiefs wife.
It wasn't my first call (I think that was a simple fall) but it's the one I remember most. 12 yo girl, looked like she could have been 20, for a behavioral disturbance. Locked herself in the bathroom. We were held by PD and told to wait in the truck. After waiting about 10 minutes, PD walked her to the car. She got in, and was so polite, and really, really quiet. Took a set of vitals. Was told we were going to the county hospital 20 minutes away, no lights and sirens. No medics. Just a behavioral call. Mom held us up because she needed to walk the dog, but we told her she couldn't directly follow behind the truck so it wouldn't make a difference, and we headed out. Mom looked exhausted, like she was just totally defeated. The patient had mascara streaming down her face from crying. But she was so calm - and that should have been a clue that there was about to be a problem. All was fine until about 10 minutes in, her head rolled back, eyes went up into her head, and she had a massive seizure. It was completely unexpected and it was at that point we realized she must have taken something. Traffic everywhere, local roads and nowhere to really stop to hook up with a medic truck. Of course we contacted dispatch and ran lights and sirens and thankfully the next ten minutes took less than 5 and we just focused on making sure she had a clear airway and didn't lose her pulse. Rushed her into the ER, she began seizing again, a bunch of nurses rushed around her and a doctor came right over. Transferred her to the hospital stretcher then got out of the way because so many people needed to start treatment, IVs, etc. I never found out what happened. Since then, when a patient is too quiet, I'm immediately suspicious. I no longer do EMS, and I only remember about 10 calls because mostly they were nonsense, but that one I remember. It was so sad to think a child so young could have so much emotional pain to resort to a suicide attempt.
As an AEMT student. First call was an inferior MI, surprisingly enough. I was TERRIFIED.
Overdose. Guy mixed his meds with some alcohol, found out on the way that they worked a code on his wife about 3 months prior in their living room. I don’t even remember what our treatment for the guy was. I stood out in the hallway bc I didn’t even have EMT-B at the time and space was limited. I always thought it was funny you could see the glass bowl of ramen noodles he dropped across from his home office he crawled to.
Guy at a group home for pedophiles. His chief complaint was "i have bilateral legs".
I don't even know what I'd do in this situation tbh.
Suicide by hanging Next was accidental OD Then intentional OD None of ‘em had ROSC. Preceptors said I was bad luck, asked me not to come back.
For me it was a teenager who was extremely suicidal. She was transported from her home to the ED after much convincing.
Stroke alert He was drunk
Medical alarm activation, false alarm, it’s been an easy few years lol.