Shotgun accuracy
Monday was my first night back after being off for a week. One of my partners said the weekend was very slow, but we hit the ground running. One patient, an overdose suicide attempt who has been off his meds, had a five pack a day nicotine habit and was jonesing for a smoke…Of course as a papered psych patient he can’t go out and have a cigarette. We figured he was going to ramp up and fight us in an attempt to leave, and we stood by for a long time. He must have adjusted or maybe wasn’t up for the fight, as he never pushed it all the way.
In the last hour of the shift a neighboring town EMS brought in another suicide attempt. He was ETOH and had overdosed on numerous pills. He had put the barrel of a shotgun in his mouth, the put it to his head, and pulled the trigger, at his girlfriend’s apartment. He missed his head and put a hole in the wall. EMS couldn’t patch because he was trying to get off the stretcher and walk out the back of the ambulance, while it was driving down the highway. The neighboring PD dropped the PEC onto the stretcher and then was kind enough to call us with a heads up that the patient was combative, but they never bothered to escort EMS. We helped him stay on the bed and made sure he didn’t assault staff while the doc ordered enough Haldol/Ativan to put him to sleep. I asked the nurse if he was showing off for the girlfriend. She figured he was dead serious (no pun intended) with killing himself but was too uncoordinated from ETOH to get it right.
Over the weekend there was a fatal MVA on the interstate where an organ donor was doing over 100 MPH when he rolled and was flattened by a tractor trailer. The local private ambulance service brought the body to our place and dropped it in the morgue outside the cooler and left him boarded, collared, and unbagged, They left a mess as he had bled all over the place (serious head trauma) and there was grass and dirt divots attached to the board. Apparently administration had a big investigation as to what happened and who is supposed to clean up the morgue.
There was also a double shooting over the weekend and yesterday there was a homicide where a dude was shot dead in his car, so the local free enterprise zone turf war might be heating up.
In the last hour of the shift a neighboring town EMS brought in another suicide attempt. He was ETOH and had overdosed on numerous pills. He had put the barrel of a shotgun in his mouth, the put it to his head, and pulled the trigger, at his girlfriend’s apartment. He missed his head and put a hole in the wall. EMS couldn’t patch because he was trying to get off the stretcher and walk out the back of the ambulance, while it was driving down the highway. The neighboring PD dropped the PEC onto the stretcher and then was kind enough to call us with a heads up that the patient was combative, but they never bothered to escort EMS. We helped him stay on the bed and made sure he didn’t assault staff while the doc ordered enough Haldol/Ativan to put him to sleep. I asked the nurse if he was showing off for the girlfriend. She figured he was dead serious (no pun intended) with killing himself but was too uncoordinated from ETOH to get it right.
Over the weekend there was a fatal MVA on the interstate where an organ donor was doing over 100 MPH when he rolled and was flattened by a tractor trailer. The local private ambulance service brought the body to our place and dropped it in the morgue outside the cooler and left him boarded, collared, and unbagged, They left a mess as he had bled all over the place (serious head trauma) and there was grass and dirt divots attached to the board. Apparently administration had a big investigation as to what happened and who is supposed to clean up the morgue.
There was also a double shooting over the weekend and yesterday there was a homicide where a dude was shot dead in his car, so the local free enterprise zone turf war might be heating up.
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