Open Airways: Stories from the back of the ambulance
Defining Moment
Tom Reynolds
EMT Tom Reynolds of the UCLA campus ambulance service talks about “listening to your gut” when making decisions about patient care. He tells the story of one patient he decided to transport to the nearest hospital rather than to the family’s chosen facility. When they got to the ER, he learned he had made the right choice, as the patient was having an MI and was going into renal failure.
During his next shift he asked the nurse how the patient had fared. “He says, ‘Well, she coded right after you guys left … we ended up reviving her’ … I immediately thought that had I not made that decision, she probably would have coded on me in the back of the ambulance.” Tom recalls this as the first time he was able to make a decision that created a better outcome for the patient.
Open Airways is a project to capture an oral history for the benefit of the EMS Community. EMS responders share some of the most meaningful cases of their careers, sometimes with humor and always with compassion. We hope that they will help us improve your practice and inspire a new generation of caregivers.
This series is produced by FISDAP with the support of EMSResponder.com. Listen to the latest features here and look for the series archive at openairways.net.
To share your most meaningful case and the lesson it taught you, call FISDAP Open Airways at 1.651.314.7424
