We have a few churches in my district and I've run a lot of calls on Sunday's for church goers who are overcome, ill, or even dead. The one common element of all these calls has been that the church service hasn't stopped, even when a group of firemen are doing CPR on the floor in the aisles. It's an odd thing to work a call in a church while services are going on. I actually find it harder to do my job than if everyone stopped and stared at me while I worked, I'm a lot more used to that. In churches I feel like I need to be quiet and not disturb anyone. It takes me out of my normal flow.
Normally when the Fire Department comes on scene we take control of it. We are in charge. People who are making it harder for us to do our job are made to leave (even if it's their house), we control what a patient does or doesn't eat/drink/smoke etc, we decide if they go to the hospital (whether they want to or not), if they are out of control we can sedate them or restrain them, we stop traffic and shut down businesses. It took a long time for me to get comfortable taking over someone's life decisions but I'm okay with it now.
More often than not we try to move the patient out of the Nave of the church and into the lobby where we can talk and work at normal volumes, but this is not always possible and sometimes we have to work wherever the patient is. I guess I'm just not comfortable shouting out to the priest/pastor/preacher to be quiet while I gather some information, especially when they haven't even paused when we came into the room.I'll run many more church calls in my career I'm sure, but I don't foresee any of this changing.
I know what you mean. We're usually the alpha male on scene controlling everything. Maybe in a church we are subconsciously aware that the big guy upstairs is "on scene." Or maybe it's just weird.
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I've never really thought about this topic before. Is there an email address that I use to contact you to further our discussion?
ReplyDelete(You can reach me at amy@smartsign.com)