Quote:
Originally Posted by Kev
I SAID YOU CAN TICKET THE INDIVIDUAL LATER. No one is trying to avoid responsibility here.
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.
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
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My dad is an MD, and im soon to been one..and i think he's only gotten pulled over a couple times on the way to his office to do a procedure or the hospital. In either case he wasnt given a ticket. Hehe, at first i didnt get what STEMI was but now i do
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