Ode to A Dumbass

Oh Dumbass Paramedic, why must you vex me so?

When mean nurses and doctors cast aspersions at your competency and character, I defend you.

When they ask why you bring obvious surgical patients here, instead of the hospital with a frickin’ surgeon that is only ten minutes further away, I say, “Perhaps he thought the patient was hemodynamically unstable, and thus had to choose the closest hospital.”

When they deride the vital signs and physical examination findings you report, I reply, “Have you ever tried to take a blood pressure in a moving ambulance? It sounds like Powerstroke diesel engine.”

When the patient presents with an altogether different complaint than what you reported, I remind everyone of the times when, after calling report, aliens have kidnapped my patients and replaced them with an exact duplicate with an entirely different chief complaint.

When we catch something crucial that you have missed, I remind everyone that history rarely repeats itself, especially Patient History.

When they question your education, I remind everyone that Former Student often does the same things you do, and we all know he had a world class paramedic instructor.

When they say, “Dumbass Paramedic would eat a shit sandwich,” I jump to your defense and say, “I have first-hand knowledge that he abhors the taste of bread.”

When you bring in patients and have no clue what is wrong with them, I remind everyone that many patients are poor historians.

When you botch the intubation, I point out that adequate ventilation is the Gold Standard, and that you should be commended for resorting to a Combitube so quickly.

When I overhear you remark to your partner, “AD has forgotten what it’s like on the streets,” I refrain from pointing out to the impressionable EMT that each and every time I get off the toilet, I flush into the sewer more EMS expertise than you currently possess.

When you miss an IV twice, yet I, with my meager IV skills, am able to dart the patient with a 14 gauge from across the room, I remind everyone of the Three Attempt Rule, which states that if two providers have unsuccessfully attempted a procedure, the third provider, regardless of skill level, will be successful on the first try.

But when you bring me an obese patient with a known history of gastric reflux and inability to lay supine, collared and boarded from a motor vehicle collision in which no damage occurred, which you yourself described as “a bullshit insurance wreck,” and the only justification you can offer me for the spinal immobilization is “it’s our protocol,” you mark yourself as a Dumbass of the First Order.

Not just ordinary dumbass behavior, but dangerous dumbassery.

And while I am busily trying to prepare suction and turn the boarded Land Whale onto his side to prevent him from aspirating his own vomit, it does not behoove you to stick your clipboard in my face and ask for a signature, no matter how politely you do it.

And if you ever do such things again, Dumbass Paramedic, I am going to come down on you like the Hammers of Hell. I am going to ridicule you loudly and publicly, and do so in front of the patient you coerced into a needless and uncomfortable procedure by scaring him with threats of death or paralysis.

I am not going to report you to your supervisor, Dumbass Paramedic, because a competent medic at your agency would stand out like a syphilitic talleywhacker at a short arm inspection, and all of your comrades, save one, are just as fucking stupid.

No, I’m going to expose you for the piss-poor excuse of a paramedic you are, to everyone in earshot. I may even take out an ad in the paper and hire a skywriter. Never again shall I politely, discreetly and privately take issue with your actions.

It’s going to be shockingly, embarrassingly public.

And then I’m going to rip off your head and eat ice cream from your empty skull, you synaptically-challenged, knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, retarded chimp wearing a paramedic patch.

Oh, and Glacier Doc? If you ever again order cervical and head CT scans for that patient with no loss of consciousness, no significant complaint, totally absent mechanism of injury, no clinical exam criteria indicating the need for radiology at all…

…while I’m trying to keep this guy from choking for the thirty minutes it will take for the radiology service to fax us a CT report…

You’ll be next.

Asshat.