EMT Paramedic Stories

Everyone has seen the various uniforms and scrubs that EMTs and other healthcare workers wear. Many hospitals no longer require their nurses to wear the old fashioned white uniforms and white hats these days, and most allow all of their employees wear clothes called “Scrubs.” If you do not know what scrubs and nurses uniforms look like, then here is a great website that sells them.
The same thing goes for EMTs and Paramedics. Most places have a standard uniform that their employees wear. Some places have their employees in somewhat formal attire, dark slacks and dress shirts, while others are a little more laid back and let their employees wear cargo or tech, pants and T-shirts. We were lucky enough to be allowed to wear the more comfortable of the two, and standard uniform was T-shirts and cargo pants.

While working a run one evening, my partner and I got somewhat dirty. Well, we got a lot dirty. The run was a car over an embankment and into a small creek. Both of us ended up covered in mud from head to toe, and neither were fit to go out on another run until we had cleaned up a bit.

I had enough experience to know that a person should ALWAYS bring a spare uniform with them to work at an ambulance service. However, my partner was not so lucky. She had not brought one, and was now having to find something to wear while her uniform was being washed.

The folks at the local hospital were kind enough to lend her some scrubs. Scrubs are very comfortable, and will fit almost anyone. Many of the EMTs and Paramedics I worked with often wore scrubs to sleep in at night while on station.

This just happened to be my partner’s very unlucky day. Shortly after putting on her scrubs and getting her work clothes in the wash, we got called on another run. It was to take someone from our local hospital to a large hospital about 50 miles away.

The transfer went smooth and uneventful, until after we dropped off our patient at the larger hospital. While looking for linens to make up our cot, one of the emergency room doctors walked up to my partner, and asked her to come with him. Not sure what he wanted, my partner looked at me, and I shrugged and nodded, then she went away with him.

I was getting a little impatient of waiting, so I went on out to the truck with our cot. I waited for about 30 minutes, and finally my partner comes walking out the door. She got in the truck, and I could tell something was wrong. When I asked her about it, she told me the funniest thing I had heard in ages.

Remember, I told you my partner was inexperienced? Well, apparently the doctor had seen her in her scrubs and mistakenly thought she was one of the nurses from the emergency room. He led her to a room to assist him, and my partner, not knowing any better, thought she had to do what the doctor was asking.

A rather large (over 400lbs) middle aged man lay on the table. His trip to the emergency room was brought on because he had been unable to have any bowel movements for a week or so. The doctor was about to perform a procedure to help relieve him of his problem. The reason he needed a nurse to assist was because someone had to help hold the man’s butt open for him to do his work. Yep, my partner had just spent half an hour in a room holding a patient’s cheeks apart, so a doctor could do a procedure on him.

My partner began telling me this story, and I almost fell out of the truck. Being so new, she didn’t know, nor did she have the courage to simply tell the doctor that she did not work at the hospital, until after the event. She just assumed he just have known, and she went along with it because she that, that was what she was supposed to do. It is a run that she never lived down, and she learned her lesson about not having spare uniforms.

While working with my best friend and partner one night, we were dispatched to a small farm house in the country. The owner was a middle aged lady, and was calling to report a confused old man at her house. Since the man did not pose any danger to the woman, they sent an ambulance to check out the situation.

Upon our arrival, we found a man to be about 70-80 years old sitting on the front porch. As we approached the man, the scared resident of the home stepped outside, and told use the man had been found in her living room sitting in a recliner watching television.

The man was a small framed man, and obviously didn’t have a mean bone in his body. He was simply confused and thought he was at his own home.

Trying to convince the man became a bit of a problem. Obviously we didn’t want to get him very upset, and he really did think he was at his home. No matter what we did, he would just clutch his cigar box and tell us he was home and we should leave.

Eventually we convinced the man to get into our ambulance and to allow us to check him out. Once inside, we tried to find some identification, but he had none. As I mentioned earlier, he was holding a cigar box. He was reluctant to open it for us, but he did after we begged him long enough. We were hoping he had his ID inside. What we found was much more than just ID.

The box contained his expired driver’s license, along with about 15,000 in cash. This man appeared to be carrying his life savings with him, and he was lost.

After a couple of hours, an officer found the man’s car parked on a back country road about 3 miles away. The man must have walked from there after he ran out of gas. Why he chose this house is about to be discovered.

Shortly after finding the man’s car, the police were able to track down the man’s wife. She lived about 75 miles away, and had been searching for her husband all day. When told where she could pick him up, she informed the officer that the man had indeed gone home. This old farm house in the country had been the couple’s home for 50 years, and only moved to “The big city” about 5 years ago, so they could be close to their children.

We took the old man to the hospital, and there we met up with his wife. The ER doc had determined that the man had suffered a mild stroke, and it resulted in memory loss. This old man had forgotten the last 25 years of his life, and truly thought he had gone to work and back home.

All of us will eventually require a little help. Some of us will grow old and maybe even become confused enough in our old age to forget who we are. I truly think that a person should live there lives NOW. After spending so many years in medicine I have learned that nothing in life is guaranteed. We may grow old gracefully and watch our grandkids grow up, or we may never see retirement or even worse, we may become confused of our surroundings and simply forget all of our history. Live you life now, and enjoy what you have. You just never know.