The problem is….

Consider this an open letter to the citizens of which ever county I’m working at the time.  If the shoe fits, then wear it.

Daily in EMS, we rush out to some location that we’ve never been to before, often armed with only the house number and street name as our guide.  Someone is in trouble, hurt, sick or perhaps dying, and we go as fast as we can, to get there and hopefully avert disaster.  Our response time depends on many factors, some which are beyond our control, some we can have an influence on.

And to the people waiting on our arrival, minutes seem like eternities, and it seems like we will never get there.  The most common comment we hear upon arrival is , “You sonabitches took long enough to get here, we been waiting damn near 30 minutes.”

Lets examine that if we may.  The average time from your placing a call to the 911 center to 911 activating us is 1 minute, and we are rolling out the bay within 2 minutes, often sooner, at night, no more than 3.  Depending on how far from the station you live, will determine our travel time. Those of you that live at the far ends of the county, ie Booster Club road, or at the Lake in Seminole, yep, it’s gonna take longer.  Both those locations are over 20 miles from the station, and an ambulance can only go so fast.  To further delay that, take into consideration, there are many many cars out there on the road, and the average driver is listening to his radio, talking on his cell phone and paying absolutely NO DAMN ATTENTION to his rear view mirror. 

We come flying up behind them, lights flashing, siren screaming, air horn blowing, and they just keep right on driving in the fast lane, without a care.  And when they finally notice us, 99 percent of them instinctively jam on the brakes instead of moving to the right.  Wait? Did I say move to the right? YES !!!! Georgia law says you move to the right and yeild the right of way to us,  heck, it also says KEEP RIGHT EXCEPT TO PASS, but who the hell pays attention to that? NO ONE.

Our ambulances are not race cars, they are 1 ton trucks, carrying near maximum load in equipment, the don’t slow down fast, but they dang sure don’t accelerate like a Mustang GT, so once you’ve forced me to drop down to 45, it takes a few minutes to get back up to cruising speed.  Thus you’ve added a minute or more to my response time after I’ve done this on average 4 to 6 times enroute. 

We also have to slow down at intersections, because people love to run red lights, thats how we get so many wrecks to respond to, and if we get slammed in an intersection, we don’t get to you at all.

But say for the sake of argument, we get a clear road, good weather, and aren’t responding 25 miles out, and we bust up into your neighborhood looking for your house.  Do you have your house numbers posted on your mail box or beside your driveway?  And if you do, are the shrubs cleared back so they can be seen? Are they faded out ?, are they facing the right direction ? And are they bigger than 1 inch ?  Usually not.

The house number is required by law to be posted, very seldom is this enforced, and they should be a minimum of 4 inches tall.  Awful big you say? Try this, get in your car and drive down an unfamiliar road at 70 mph and see just how many house numbers you can pick out, it ain’t easy. Some people have the right size numbers, God bless them, but, the majority of you don’t.

What about GPS you ask, can’t you find me with your Garmin? Or TomTom or which ever you have? Well, perhaps, but for one they aren’t very reliable at a house to house level, and then they love to send you 10 to 15 miles out of the way just so they can put you on a major highway.  Then there is the little problem of not all trucks are equipped with them.

So, we can spend up to 4 or 5 minutes or more looking for your house, begging dispatch for more details that could help us find you.  We often see people looking out the window at us, or doing jumping jacks  in the front yard, but that is misleading as well.  Usually the ones staring at us from the windows are either the neighborhood Gossip seeing who is distressed, or the patients family who GOD FORBID should give us any indication that we’ve arrived at the right location.  The athletic ones doing the jumping jacks are rarely the patients family, but rather just excited by the lights and noise.

Give us a friggin break here people, have someone outside if at all possible to wave us in, and if you aren’t the one we’re coming to, don’t flag us down to ask who we are looking for.  Oh, and I almost forgot, if we roll up, and call out the window at you asking if you called an ambulance, don’t give us the Deer in the Headlights or Dumb cow look, just say No.

And if you are called back by 911, since you ignored the directions to stay on the line, ANSWER the GD phone, so we can get additonal information, like a description of your house.  And if you painted it last year, don’t tell us what color it used to be, nor does telling 911 you see us help, cause we see a lot of people standing around. If I can’t see you, then it helps me or you exactly NONE.

We responded one time to a patient at the new high school, and as we rolled into the parking lot, which I might add is huge, a young man in a football uniform ran out to us waving us down, then turned and ran towards the field house. Thinking we were getting a break, we followed him, pulled to a stop and jumped out.  As I grabbed the jump kit, my partner ran towards the building.  A jackass in a red Jeep pulls up screaming at us, “you dumb sombitches, the GD kid is over there” as he pointed to another building about 100 feet away.  Well excuse the Hell out of me, I don’t read frigging minds, and when well over a hundred people are standing around staring at me like a herd of cows, with blank expressions on their faces, I tend to gravitate towards the one waving at me.  And, on a side note, if you’re reading this, and your that red faced bastard who was driving the Jeep, please come see me, I’ve got a few things to discuss with you.

All in all, taking in consideration what I’ve just outlined, when we arrive, remember this, we are just as interested in getting to the patient as fast as possible as you or the patient is for us to get there. So don’t bother to slow us down bitching at us.  If you aren’t part of the solution, then damnit, don’t become part of the problem.

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