We pretty much do it all, but no, we don't do that.

We responded out of district for an elderly-ish male who had fallen. On arrival we found out the fall was two days ago but the pain has worsened and he wants to be seen in the hospital. Apparently, when it happened the FD responded but he refused transport to the hospital. I went through all of my assessments and he did seem to be in some pain, mostly in his hips. He had no obvious signs of a hip fracture or dislocation and his pelvis felt stable, but it did hurt him when I pressed on it. He was sitting in a rolling desk chair and we offered to just move him outside to the gurney on the chair to save having to have him get up and back down twice. We couldn't fit the gurney into the cluttered house and as it was we had to pick the chair up and carry it up a couple stairs. He agreed and understood there would be a couple of bumps and a little pain along the way, especially when we had to pick him up out of the chair and onto the gurney. My guess is he may have a small, type A fracture, but only x-rays will tell.

As we were moving the chair up the little steps into the living room, I saw a flash from one of the relatives phone go off. It was aimed at the ground and I assumed it was accidental. My firefighter, though, told me when we got outside that she was filming us the whole time. Another relative was complaining the whole time and asking why the fire department had taken him the first time when he fell. My captain had to politely go through the routine explanations of how we are the fire department and don't transport and that decision is usually made by the ambulance crew and additionally that if the patient is alert, oriented, and competent we can not force them to go against their will. That is called kidnapping. She wasn't too thrilled with that answer. She then presented us with a small stack of legal documents she wanted us to witness.

 

Again, we had to explain that that is not something we can or would do. It is far out of our scope of practice. I think it was about that time the filming began.

So, it will be interesting to see if anything comes of this. We relayed the whole thing to our BC and to the guys at the station we were covering to give them a heads up. They checked the log book and discovered that the original fall had actually been four days ago and a different crew had run that call.

I'm used to the fact that when we are working outside, especially at a fire that there are likely to be a dozen cell phones filming us, but I wasn't expecting it inside somebody's house on a medical call. I guess between, security cams, nanny cams, cell phones, and drones I can just assume that I always on candid camera.

Smile.