Quote:
Originally Posted by immiketoo
No, actually its another case of people not accepting responsibility for their actions. And, your analogy sucks. Basically, you are saying that my mom could only be saved by one single doctor in the world that I happened to stop. In 16 years of law enforcement, I have had once case of a doctor truly being on call and speeding to the hospital. I let him go, told him to be careful.
And police cannot escort anyone to the hospital or anywhere else for that matter. Apparently you have based your opinion of what cops can do on the movies. You probably think we actually dip our fingers in cocaine to test it and indiscriminately shoot people right before the end of shift and go home too.
Stop trying to avoid the issue of responsibility.
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I SAID YOU CAN TICKET THE INDIVIDUAL LATER. No one is trying to avoid responsibility here.
If you don't believe that there's only one physician or surgeon who is qualified enough to do certain emergency procedures, I can tell you that you are being EXTREMELY naive. As medicine gets more and more specialized, there are procedures that not everyone feels comfortable doing.
I'm just speaking the way I see it here in Seattle. We have attendings, fellows, and residents who cover multiple hospitals at night. It is not uncommon that people will be shuttling back and forth the VA / UWMC / Children's / Harborview. Our interventional radiologists cover both UWMC and HMC at night. If there is a bleed requiring embolization, they'll be the one driving their own car between the hospitals. If you think that hypothetical situation doesn't exist in real life, think again. Even a lowly intern like me had the pleasure of finishing a helping out a surgical case at Harborview and have to rush back to UWMC so that I can be on time for morning rounds. I speak from experience, my own experience. There are jerks that pull the badge or pager out to avoid responsibility, but there are true emergencies that got ruined by obvious power trip. Without further information, it would be tough to determine the situation.
As far as escorting goes, I don't know which jurisdiction you work for, but here in Seattle, UWPD, WSP and SPD have been instructed to in case in medical emergencies provide transport for the medical personnel to the hospital, especially if they were stuck in Husky game traffic.
You are more than welcomed to sit on your moral high horse.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jaypod
I can't believe you've done this (to quote the OT)
I think you will read this some day and realize how arrogant this sounds. I generally respect and appreciate the posts you have on this forum but this is just stupid. Not your best work.
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If you think this doesn't happen, think again. Not every hospital has attending staff or even housestaff on call at night. If someone presented with a case like that, attending surgeons or radiologists will have to be called in from home for the case.
Let's use a less extreme sample. Instead of an aneurysm, your loved one developed sub-sternal chest pain. He / she was taken to the nearest ER, and ECG showed an STEMI (heart attack in lay people's terms). He / she needs to be taken to the cath lab to get an angiogram done and possible balloon / stent placement. National standard for door-to-ballon time is less than 90 minutes. This has been shown to improve survival rate. By the time the attending cardiologist is paged, he / she usually only have less than an hour to get into the hospital for the catheterization. How do you feel if you loved one did not get the balloon / stent in the 90 minutes and suffered permanent damage to heart? The officer has the discretion to do what he thinks is the best in that situation, but simply calling every MD claiming that they have an emergency as being irresponsible is stupid