Whatever it takes…

Posted by Patrick Lickiss on Jan 11, 2012 in General | 0 comments

I have a friend who works for a large urban EMS system (hint, it’s not me!) and he was told by a member of his leadership team that it’s important for EMS to do “whatever it takes to save a life”. While listening to this story, I couldn’t help but shake my head. What does that even mean?

Aren’t we supposed to be working in the best interest of the patient? Sure sometimes that means making a difficult decision in order to improve a patient’s outcome, but the bravado in that statement scares me.
Take a cardiac arrest patient, for instance. If that patient presents in asystole, should we be going out of our way to transport? Wouldn’t that fall under the category of doing “whatever it takes to save a life”? Sure, but it wouldn’t be in the patient’s best interest. In fact, the American Heart Association has gone so far as to say that transporting a patient in persistent asystole is unethical. Notice that they didn’t say “not recommended” they said UNETHICAL. That’s about as strong statement as I’ve ever heard the AHA make.

We have to be careful that we’re not doing more “stuff” to patients because we can or because we’re trying to “save a life”. We should be acting in the best interest of our patients and doing what we can to improve outcomes. Bravado and grand standing simply doesn’t have a place in modern EMS.

It should be pretty obvious that I’m a fan of evidence-based medicine.  If a treatment has evidence to back it up, great. But a role of “hero” or “savior” in order to inflate your ego is plain silly and belies an attitude seen more frequently on television than in the real world.  Beating a dead horse isn’t brave and it just doesn’t accomplish anything. Just my two cents, what do you think?

Image via Wikimedia Commons