EMS- Don't Shoot the Messenger

     I truly believe that nursing is a profession.  While I may don scrubs and clogs, I don't consider myself any less a professional than a lawyer, physician or scientist.  While nursing has made great strides and advancements in the past thirty years, with more nurses obtaining advance degrees and increased nurse based research, I still find myself cringing at the way some of my co-workers treat others, especially those who provide pre hospital care.

    EMTs and paramedics are not glorified taxi services.  They provide vital pre hospital care and they should be treated as professionals, but as I've heard from several paramedics that is not the case.  They complain, and rightfully so, that they often have a hard time getting a nurse to take report or are met by a nurse who rolls their eyes and throws them a major attitude for bringing in a patient.  

    I frankly appreciate the work these men and women do.  I'm not a fan of cold weather and adverse conditions, these medical professionals are performing intubations and codes without a respiratory therapists, good lighting and controlled environments.  These highly trained professionals are providing a great service to communities and the hospitals they are transporting their patients to.  I for one would prefer an already intubated patient verse an unstable airway rolling into one of my ER beds any day.  So why do EMTPs get so much flack? And why doesn't it stop? 

   In the customer service world that we live in where patient satisfaction has become a method by which hospitals are reimbursed shouldn't we be looking at this issue a bit closer and with more scrutiny?  

  As an ER nurse I get the frustration of being overwhelmed by more patients than you have beds for and when you are delivered an unexpected patient it can be stressful.  Is this really a problem caused by EMS?  It's not. Instead of getting upset with the medics, give them the attention they and your patient deserve and proactively work with your co-workers to identify ways to improve the situation.  

   If you feel like you are always being dumped on chances are you are not the only one.  Talk with your colleagues and identify patient safety issues that exist.  If you are chronically short staffed and it is directly impacting patient safety you owe it to your patients and yourself to document and report incidents.

  In some facilities nursing has a negative codependent relationship with the leadership of the hospital.  The nurses forego lunch breaks on twelve hour shifts because adequate staffing has not been established, yet the nurses, the largest employee group in the hospital have not joined forces with their fellow nurses to stand up for their workers' rights.  Nurses get frustrated, burned out, overwhelmed and patient care suffers.  Often times nurses will say "management knows but they don't do anything about it."  Well if that is true and you have notified management did you do it as a whole, or were there a minority of nurses complaining? 

  While it is easier at times to advocate for your patients than it is for yourself, patient care should not suffer because the nurses have grown indifferent.  EMT units bringing in business/clients/patients should not be shunned because we are having internal administrative issues that have not been proactively dealt with.  It's not an EMS problem it's a bad attitude problem that needs to be readjusted!