Highway 288

An accident and childish prank compromise patient care

 

 

Highway 288

 

 

 

“Station 1, Medic 1100, Ambulance 11A-1. Code 3, Code 3. Highway 288 North access road. 10-50 major.”

“No rest for the weary and famous!” Reggie yelled. “11A-1 enroute.  Come on, let’s roll.”

“Get Rescue and Fire rolling” Kevin ordered. 

The scene was pretty easy to spot. There were clothes and automobile parts scattered over several hundred feet of the pavement. Traffic on the access road had stopped because there was simply no other place to go. 

“Kevin” Reggie began, “Looks like we’re going to need backup.”

“11A-1 on the scene. Roll the two closest units Code 3 for backup. Advise Fire and Rescue to step it up.”

Kevin approached the first vehicle he saw and found no one inside. That wasn’t a good sign. Either the occupants had been ejected or ran away from the scene. The darkness made checking for patients difficult, but the arrival of the Rescue unit and a TV camera’s floodlight helped them find the first victim.

Several feet ahead, he spotted at least two patients on the concrete. Kevin went straight to the first patient and found her to be breathing, but unconscious. She was covered in abrasions, commonly called road rash, almost head to toe. Her face seemed to be the only part of her body spared from the harsh collision with the road. 

Reggie was tending the second patient and fighting furiously to keep him breathing. Blood was strangling him and his effort was shallow. Gurgling sounds emanated deeply from his air passages. Suctioning provided only brief moments of clear breathing. 

Kevin recruited a Rescue medic and had her tend his patient so he could assist Reggie. He quickly placed an endotracheal tube reassessed the patient’s breathing. A degree of success had been achieved at this point, but the patient needed more assistance to keep breathing. Extensive chest injuries complicated the rescue efforts.

With these two patients somewhat stable, the search continued for more. There was some evidence the small truck had three or more occupants. Now would have been a great time for a back up ambulance to show up, but not even a siren could be heard at this point. Kevin knew the tones had sounded. He heard dispatch set them off, but had not heard a unit check in service.

“Check on our backups” Kevin ordered to one of the Rescue Medics. “Load Reggie’s patient on our unit and make sure the female is packaged.”

“Got it” he said. He set about the tasks Kevin has assigned, but hated to tell Kevin no unit ever checked in service for back up.

“Back up never responded” he told Reggie as they were loading the critical patient.

“That ain’t good” Reggie said. “That ain’t good at all. Kevin’s got another patient, and she’s pregnant and critical from what he just reported.”

The patient Reggie referred to had apparently been in the bed of the truck when it flipped. She had been thrown a considerable distance from the truck and slid heavily on her left leg. The long, high speed slide on the concrete had shattered and mangled her left leg completely. To complicate things, she was also 7 months pregnant and bleeding from the vagina. 

Kevin had now lost patience with the status checks on the back up unit. This patient was now the number 1 priority on the transport list. With this small van type ambulance, handling three patients with two medics in the back was impossible; especially considering one could go into labor.

Kevin’s earpiece had nothing but a low buzzing sound as he tried to call once again for more assistance. Either his radio was out or the whole system was down. Either way, the radio was useless.

He grabbed his cell phone from his back pocket and physically made the call to dispatch to get another ambulance rolling. 

Dispatch had informed Kevin there was something wrong with the entire area radio network, but she would try again.

“Then launch the nearest medical helicopter” he ordered. “Repeat, Launch. We have two critical, one serious. One critical 7 months term labor, unconscious, multi trauma.”

The dispatcher almost froze at the console as she furiously began to locate Medic 11A-1’s nearest possible back up.