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Do doctors REALLY care?

Iamme

Philosopher
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Joined
Aug 5, 2003
Messages
6,215
If they did..then why don't they hop in the ambulance, to try to save the life of someone who just might not make it to the hospital?! We're talking life and death here. When you're dead, you can't be fixed. It's too late!

Ambulance attendants...even paramedics, aren't doctors. If they were...they'd be doctors!

I would think that in cases where somebody frantically called up 911 and said that they know that the stricken person has , say, irregular heartbeat....wouldn't you want a cardiologist to show up with equipment and available drugs for such a (not all that uncommon) scenario? Or...what if someone sliced their juggler vein. Wouldn't you like to see a surgeon show up?...rather than hope that the paramedics can slow it enough for you to make it to the hospital?

In other walks of life...say that some major refrigeration problems occurred at McDonald's. Do you think that the appliance company who responds to their plea is going to send out an underqualified person to work on it, first? or, do you think that the appliance company is going to tell McDonalds to have their people load it up and bring in the appliance, where they will work on it there?
 
On the other hand there are relatively few doctors and they best serve by being in centralized locations with patients brought to them. That way no time is lost traveling to the scene when it could be spent on another patient. it's a matter of efficiency. The doctors can do the most good for the most people at hospitals and clinics rather than doing a lot of good for a much more limited population by traveling to the scene.
 
Iamme said:

In other walks of life...say that some major refrigeration problems occurred at McDonald's. Do you think that the appliance company who responds to their plea is going to send out an underqualified person to work on it, first? or, do you think that the appliance company is going to tell McDonalds to have their people load it up and bring in the appliance, where they will work on it there?
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Working in a field with lots of high tech equipment, this sometimes happens. The experience of the 'field engineer' may not always be up-to-snuff, and he spends a lot of time on the phone to the guy back at the factory who actually does know what he's doing. That expert may be fielding several such calls from several field engineers a day.
 
It takes several years of training to become a doctor,
whereas it takes several weeks to become an EMT.

It would be nice if there was a doctor on every ambulance, actually doing such a thing is quite impractical.
 
Iamme said:
If they did..then why don't they hop in the ambulance, to try to save the life of someone who just might not make it to the hospital?! We're talking life and death here. When you're dead, you can't be fixed. It's too late!?
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Is this a serious question?

Your first failure is a failure to understand economics. We don't have as many doctors as we have ambulances.

Your second failure is managment. While your doctors are out driving around, people arriving at the hospital will be dying. A doctor sitting in an ambulance driving to the scene of an accident is a doctor that is not doing emergency surgery. Do you think emergency room doctors just sit around waiting for people to show up? Have you ever been to an emergency room? In my town, they're always full of people. The doctors are always working, unlike the EMTs who spend half their time waiting while they get driven to a patient.

Your third mistake is not understanding medicine. What makes you think a doctor in an ambulance could do any more for you than an EMT? The doctor still has to get you back to his hospital so he can use his tools, his assistants, his machines, his blood supply, the huge pharmacy, the xray machines, etc. etc. etc. The EMT is probably as good at stablizing you as most doctors.

I cannot decide if you are actually that clueless, or are merely a troll.
 
As a Paramedic I vote clueless troll:p

So,I will try to answer some misconceptions here.

1. It requires more than " a few weeks" to become a Paramedic. Try 2 years.By the time an individual has reached the Paramedic level, as opposed to EMT, they have had 3 years of college.
2. If you have an irregular heart beat I have the drugs and electricity to fix it. Been there, done that.
3.Much of the specialzed equipment needed for surgery and extensive treatment is non-portable. If it's portable, I have it.
4.There are several countries that do put physicians on Ambulances. The survival rate is comparable to the US. Not better, comparable.The MD's they use are generally just out of medical school and they are gaining experience.
5.As far as "when your dead it's too late". Wrong again, I have had many patients that were 'dead' when I arrived and were alive by the time they got to the hospital.

I would suggest before making broad generalizations on a topic of which you obviously know very little, you would be wise to study the subject and then ask questions.


Boo EMT-P (18 years)

(edited for spelling)
 
I think they start out caring a lot, but the world slowly squashes their goodwill with obnoxious patients, stupid regulations, and frivolous lawsuits.

I don't blame them one bit for giving in and not caring anymore about the unappreciative fools they sacrificed so much for.
 
Iamme said:
I would think that in cases where somebody frantically called up 911 and said that they know that the stricken person has , say, irregular heartbeat....wouldn't you want a cardiologist to show up with equipment and available drugs for such a (not all that uncommon) scenario?
Click to expand...
Let me take this opportunity to put in a promotion for automated external defibrillators (AEDs). You are seeing these devices more and more at health clubs, airports, sporting venues, and the like. These devices can be used by persons with minimal training to address some very serious heart conditions, such as ventricular fibrillation, within a matter of minutes. AEDs save lives. If you ever have an opportunity to learn how to use one, take that opportunity. (I did.) It doesn't take long to learn.
 
Iamme said:
If they did..then why don't they hop in the ambulance, to try to save the life of someone who just might not make it to the hospital?! We're talking life and death here. When you're dead, you can't be fixed. It's too late!

Ambulance attendants...even paramedics, aren't doctors. If they were...they'd be doctors!

I would think that in cases where somebody frantically called up 911 and said that they know that the stricken person has , say, irregular heartbeat....wouldn't you want a cardiologist to show up with equipment and available drugs for such a (not all that uncommon) scenario? Or...what if someone sliced their juggler vein. Wouldn't you like to see a surgeon show up?...rather than hope that the paramedics can slow it enough for you to make it to the hospital?

In other walks of life...say that some major refrigeration problems occurred at McDonald's. Do you think that the appliance company who responds to their plea is going to send out an underqualified person to work on it, first? or, do you think that the appliance company is going to tell McDonalds to have their people load it up and bring in the appliance, where they will work on it there?
Click to expand...

Are you serious? Yes would like a heart specialist to show up if I ever had a heart attack just as I would like an engineer from the company that made my car show up to repair it if it ever broke down. And neither one is going to happen for the exact same reason, it just isn't practical. It isn't a bad relflection on the doctors, it is a reflection on the fact that there are a lot more people getting sick or hurt than there are doctors.

I see the relationship of Paramedics/EMTs to Doctors as similar to that of a Technician to an Engineer. I used to work as a Non-Destructive Test Technician. I worked with engineers and in my narrow area of training I was probably as knowledgable as the engineer, if not more so. However the Engineer had much broader training than I had and could do many more things competantly.Likewise, a Paramedic might not have the training to treat a chronic illness or to diagnose a brain tumor, like a doctor could, but in the area that they ARE trained for, getting the patient tothe hospital alive, they are probably just as well trained as a doctor and there is little that a doctor could do that they couldn't. In fact they are probably better at it simply due to the fact that it is what the do every day.
 
Re: Re: Do doctors REALLY care?

Brown said:
Let me take this opportunity to put in a promotion for automated external defibrillators (AEDs). You are seeing these devices more and more at health clubs, airports, sporting venues, and the like. These devices can be used by persons with minimal training to address some very serious heart conditions, such as ventricular fibrillation, within a matter of minutes. AEDs save lives. If you ever have an opportunity to learn how to use one, take that opportunity. (I did.) It doesn't take long to learn.
Click to expand...

Plus they're great for practical jokes on unsuspecting "friends".
 
Re: Re: Re: Do doctors REALLY care?

Agammamon said:
Plus they're great for practical jokes on unsuspecting "friends".
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This makes me think of Doug and Bob McKenzie (Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis) in "Stange Brew," in which they give each other electroshock therapy... for fun! That scene was one of the great yucks in the movie.

Almost as funny was the defibrillation scene in "Eraser," in which a well-meaning emergency care worker inadvertently defibrillates Johnny C (Robert Pastorelli), and he offers to return the favor.

In reality, some AEDs have safety features to prevent the use of the device for practical joking purposes.
 
well, I was told the portable ones won't work if you aren't having a heart attack. You can't shock a person who isn't having a heart attack.

When I was living the europe I saw a girl hit by a car (happens a lot). The ambulance pulled up, and they had to wait for a doctor to arrive by car. They said that in cases that required an MD he would come out before transporting. but the ambulance guys didn't have the same training as EMTs. In fact they didn't seem to know how to do much other than drive real fast. Pool Boy and I were applying pressure to stop bleeding, and checking vitals. The hard part was that the girl hurt only spoke French, but the ambulance guys spoke only Flemish and English, so Pool Boy had to act as go between. When the doctor arrived he was upset that we weren't wearing latex gloves (the ambulance guys were having a smoke). The ambulance guys said they had run out and hadn't restocked. It would have been funny, but it made me glad for EMTs!
 
kittynh said:
well, I was told the portable ones won't work if you aren't having a heart attack. You can't shock a person who isn't having a heart attack.
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Basically, there are all sorts of defibrillators. A police officer might have an AED in his unit, while an emergency medical response team generally would have a more full-featured defibrillator. The "A" in "AED" means "automated," so there isn't very much discretion given to the operator. A more full-featured defibrillator, by contrast, gives the operator some discretion about operation.

There are a few different brands of AEDs, but in general, when you open the AED, the machine instructs you what to do. It also includes several pictures to show you where to place the electrodes on the patient's body.

The AED uses these electrodes to measure the patient's heart rate and rhythm. Only if the patient has a "shockable rhythm" does the AED begin charging for delivery of a defibrillation shock. If the patient does not have a shockable rhythm, the AED will not charge.

The charging is pretty similar to what you see in the movies (such as "The Abyss"). There's a period during which the defibrillator has to "charge" in order to deliver a shock. (Basically, the battery powering the defibrillator can only deliver so much energy at a time, so a charging circuit charges [i.e., transfers energy from the battery to] a bank of capacitors, which can deliver a lot of energy very quickly. A typical defibrillation shock is 200-300 joules.) Once the charging is completed, everybody needs to stand clear. Some AEDs actually instruct everyone to stand clear, then the AED administers the shock. Other AEDs tell the operator to make sure everyone is clear, and instruct the operator to press a big red button to administer the shock.

The bottom line is that there are safeguards against using AEDs for practical jokes.
 
Re: Re: Do doctors REALLY care?

Yahzi said:
I cannot decide if you are actually that clueless, or are merely a troll.
Click to expand...

Boo said:
As a Paramedic I vote clueless troll:p
Click to expand...

Whoa whoa whoa, think pleasant thoughts, perhaps of adorable kittens, and calm down.

Yeah, I believe this was a legitimate rant (obviously a bit mal-informed one), I dont believe this was an attempt at trolling. I've read many of lamme's other threads and posts, he doesnt come off as a troll in the least. As far as I'm concerned, this was merely an "Oops, my bad" on lamme's part.
 
Semi-automated defibrillators read a rhythm. It will only deliver a shock for the right rhythm. It is the person using it that must first decide if it is needed i.e. chest pain, not breathing, no pulse, etc.
You can apply it to anyone.

The defibrillators used by Paramedics and in hospitals can be used to shock any heart rhythm. The Paramedic or MD can use it to check a rhythm, monitor the heart and is trained when to use it. It has greater flexibilty, there are other times when shock maybe necessary but that is relatively rare compared to cardiac arrest.


FYI - heart attack - lack of oxygen to heart muscle, muscles dies, patient has chest pain, when enough muscle dies, heart stops working.
Cardiac arrest - heart stops working, no pulse, no breathing. That's when AED's are used.

The term heart attack get's confused at times and is often used in place of cardiac arrest. Semantics, I know, but it can make a big difference when describing an event or understanding what is happening.

Not everyone that has a heart attack has cardiac arrest and not everyone that has cardiac arrest has had a heart attack.


Boo( soon to be an EMS instuctor, can you tell....lol)
 
Boo said:
Semi-automated defibrillators read a rhythm. It will only deliver a shock for the right rhythm. It is the person using it that must first decide if it is needed i.e. chest pain, not breathing, no pulse, etc.
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Also, most AEDs have a "leads-off" feature. The machine can "tell" when the electrodes are attached to a person and when they are not. The AED will assess the rhythm only if the electrodes are properly attached. And it will shock the patient only if the rhythm is "shockable."

The AED is NOT intended to replace CPR. Citizens should take a course to learn how to administer CPR, and how to use an AED.
 
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