Lessons learn after midnight as an Emergency Responder in Chicago
Three lessons you learn after midnight as an emergency responder
Chicago is home to over 4,500 uniformed firefighters and paramedics, according to the city’s Bureau of Operations. They serve the city’s 2.7 million residents and the 28 million people who pass through its two airports every year. Altogether, Chicago’s emergency responders receive more than 500,000 emergency assistance calls per year.
Every 911 call is different, and every call brings with it a unique lesson – some are hard to hear, some are distressing, and others are just plain ridiculous. Today, we’re focusing on three very different lessons that Chicago’s paramedics have learned while responding to emergency calls between the hours of 10 pm and 7 am.
We’ll start with a lesson that can at times be really tough to bear: In most scenarios, the emergency responders who are first on the scene never find out what eventually happens to those they help.
A Chicago paramedic shared an example of this. He and his colleague responded to a 911 call where they found a patient sitting on the floor, conscious and alert but a little disorientated. They sat him down on their medical bed and started running through a number of checks, including several EKGs, while also hooking him up to an IV drip.
The patient failed the fingernails to touch survey that the paramedics carried out as part of the stroke assessment. They also noticed a partial droop to the left-hand side of his face when he smiled. They took him to hospital, and the man was immediately admitted into the CT… and that was the last that the emergency responders saw of him. While they can hope that things ended well for him, they will never know for sure.
Perhaps the hardest lesson to learn is that you can’t save every patient. One paramedic recalls a 911 call he received when he had just started out as an emergency responder. The Then-23-year-old was called to help a man in an elevator who seemed to be having a heart attack. Paramedics and firefighters attended and found the man unconscious, with no heart rate and no respiration. They administered epinephrine and atropine and started CPR.
In the middle of treating the patient, a resident ran up shouting, “I’m a doctor, I’m a doctor, what can I do to help?” The young paramedic was surprised at the instant response of “Nothing” from his colleagues. However (and here’s a bonus lesson for you), it turns out that seasoned emergency responders develop an eye for doctors who can actually help in such a situation – doctors with emergency room or trauma training who know what’s needed in an emergency situation such as a cardiac arrest.
The paramedics continued to administer CPR all the way to the hospital and did manage to get a heart rate going before they arrived, but couldn’t sustain it, despite five shots of epinephrine and two of atropine. They did all they could, but this was one patient who they simply could not save.
After that rather sombre lesson, we’ll leave you with one that is rather more bizarre – but equally valuable: Never put yourself in a situation where a criminal or group of criminals have a reason to come after you!
There’s definitely a dark side to being an emergency responder at night, and we’re not talking about the lack of daylight. The same young paramedic who did his best to help the man who had a heart attack in an elevator recalls responding to a 911 call in the middle of the night when a 16-yaer-old girl had been shot.
The girl had been shot twice – once in the head and once in the chest. After assessing the scene and the patient (no pulse, no respiration), they prepared to give her CPR. As part of this, they removed her shoes in order to put on a pair of MAST pants (‘medical anti-shock trousers’ that designed to push blood from the lower extremities to the heart).
What the young paramedic wasn’t expecting was for a roll of $20 and $50 bills to pop out of each shoe as he took them off. He looked at his older and more experienced partner in surprise. The partner advised to get the MAST pants on and then replace the shoes, with the rolls of bills inside them. The pair started CPR, provided as much IV fluid as possible and took the young woman to hospital.
At the hospital trauma centre, the paramedics ran through the report of the patient’s condition and detailed the actions they had taken, as per usual. They then watched as the hospital team removed the patient’s shoes and discovered the rolls of bills. Later, the young paramedic asked his partner why they had returned the money to the shoes. His colleague pointed out the value of having a witness – or preferably a whole room full of them – when it comes to finding someone else’s ill-gotten gains, and the peace of mind that comes with knowing that nobody is going to come looking for you later to find out what happened to their money!
So there we have it – three very diverse experiences leading to three very different lessons. When emergency responders answer a 911 call, they never know quite what the situation will throw at them, but one thing they can be sure of is that it will come with plenty of unique lessons.
while this story is inspired by actual persons and events, certain characters, characterizations, incidents, locations and dialogue were fictionalized or invented for purposes of dramatization.
by Will Knight Photography LLC
