"my new hat" by Tigresblanco, used under Creative Commons license.

Last week was a busy one. Lots of work. Several meetings. A few events. My last event came on Thursday night, just when I was starting to wind down and prepare for the final push before the weekend. It was a big social media event and I was helping to coordinate onsite. I had my marketer hat on. Little did I know I’d be swapping it for my EMT hat before night’s end.

As the Q&A session heated up, there was a shout from one of the 160 in attendance. It came from the row of seats behind me. We had a medical emergency on our hands and it was my duty to spring to action. There were no doctors, nurses or medics in the crowd. All eyes were on me and the patient to see what would happen next. I launched into rapid assessment and was quickly relieved to determine it wasn’t what I initially feared. Within a few minutes, the patient was conscious and stabilizing, but my work wasn’t over…we were waiting for local EMS, and the patient—and 159 others—were looking to me and me alone to manage the situation. So, manage it I did. I continued to check her vitals, got a SAMPLE history, and talked and joked with her to keep her calm in an unnerving situation…did I mention she was lying on the floor in the middle of an enormous room of people? To her credit, when she became alert enough, she asked that I kindly ask everyone to refrain from tweeting her episode. I passed it along. Most complied.

I’m not a full-time EMT and I’m not working for a service. Still, as an EMT, you naturally expect to be called on in all kinds of emergencies. But this was my first experience being caught out of context. I wasn’t surrounded by my EMS friends. I wasn’t in a patient care environment. And I had my other hat on. But it reminded me of something I should never forget…in EMS, regardless of what hat we’re wearing, we’re always on.

{ 3 comments }