UTMC

Assume control of the scene after a high speed vehicular rollover because nobody else present is medically trained.

Oooh, nice.
Some of my finer moments include doing sea trials on a very expensive sailing yacht. I think I successfully passed it off as the flu.
Not my finest hour.

I'm just glad we have an EMT on crew who showed up to take over from me until the helicopter arrived.

The driver is way bumming. He's defo got a concussion of some sort, and an elbow FULL of window glass. On the upshot, he's alive, and was not a cripple when we loaded him into the chopper.

The downside is that it's his girlfriend's truck, and it's totaled. Jaws of life totaled.

That's the thing, I'm *NOT* on the job. My medical training consists of a first responder cert, and a lifetime of osmosis from growing up in fire houses with my paramedic mom, and my mom's various EMS/fire boyfriends and husbands.

The job I'm on is pre-event construction for the Burning Man festival. It's early enough in the game that our staff medics aren't here, that's why I was glad to find out that one of our construction guys is also an EMT, and I only had to manage the scene for 10-15 minutes until he showed up.

All day, people have been shaking my hand, thanking me, and telling me what a great job I did in buttoning the scene together and getting everyone into the appropriate actions. One person went so far as to tell me that he enjoyed "watching me at work." The thing is, I don't feel like I did that great a job.
I feel like I took too much of the patient's word on things, without checking them out more thoroughly. "Can you feel your legs? Can you wiggle your fingers/toes?" etc., only I didn't stimulate any of his limbs to verify if he really could. Plus, I never really checked his pupils to judge the extent of his head injury. It was clear that he had a concussion, despite claiming hat he had no loss of memory or consciousness. He knew who/where he was, the day, and all that, so I just moved onto other things, despite him clearly having taken a solid shot to the noggin.
Meh, I dunno. I handled the scene itself very well, it's just that, once the medic took over, it seemed that there were a billion things that I suddenly realized that I'd forgotten to do, or didn't do well enough.

Makes me really want to shift the hero focus onto the other people on the scene who stepped up to help.

There may have been things that you forgot to do, but you seem to know a tad more than the average person there, until the pros showed up. In a situation like that people need someone to keep a cool head, and do something. You did something.

If you are uncomfortable with the hero moniker, you can tell them this recent story of courage.

My brother pulled a hadicapped guy out of a burning house. Never says a peep about it. I know other people that have done similar things, I think reluctance to speak of it is normal because really, its kind of a no-brainer when confronted with a scenario what the right thing to do is, and that is to do your best. No big deal.

WAFS: Was this THIS YEAR? That chopper ride to Reno costs a pretty penny.

First responders get saddled with a ton of responsibility, but hell, anything you can do short of stabbing the injured person is going to be a help to the situation. Even if you were an EMT and gave a full assessment of the patient, the on-duty guys would do their own assessment anyway.

You were a help. That's an important part of dealing with an emergency. I'd buy you a beer any day just for that.

first responders rock.

Sometimes just being the only person not freaking right the fuck out is heroic.

Good for you.

Vitiare wrote:WAFS: Was this THIS YEAR? That chopper ride to Reno costs a pretty penny.

First responders get saddled with a ton of responsibility, but hell, anything you can do short of stabbing the injured person is going to be a help to the situation. Even if you were an EMT and gave a full assessment of the patient, the on-duty guys would do their own assessment anyway.

You were a help. That's an important part of dealing with an emergency. I'd buy you a beer any day just for that.

This happened yesterday (Saturday) at about noon. And yeah, the chopper ride ain't cheap. I recently signed up for (and posted about in the DPW forums, as well as here) a membership with a medevac company that has a reciprocity agreement with Care Flight. In the event that I might be injured, the flight would cost me nothing.

And thanks for the beer!