Is it just me?

[Mr hawkings]

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Ok,

So this morning i was walking to the hospital to go to work and i saw a lot of commotion on the street out front. Apparently a truck has run over a cyclist and the cyclist was lying on the pavement next to the truck with the cops standing next to him talking to the driver.

At least 15-20 doctors (in their white coats) and nurses walk right past this scene on their way in because the staff aprking is on the other side of that street. Each one glanced once at the guy on the ground and kept walking.
What struck me was that not a single one asked the cops about the man's status or why they were just standing there.

I assume that the cops did not want to move him till he was stabilized cos an ambulance arraived 10 mins later, immobilized him on a board and drove him 100 yards into the hospital.

I know an EMT is better equiped to handle that situation but My question is did all those docs make an assesment at one glance that their help was not needed or am i being too idealistic to think that if i had an MD behind my name i would at least check to see if there isnt anything i could do.
Is there any law prohibiting that or is it purely a personal decision?

I have not started med school yet so maybe the idealism has yet to be beaten out of me by the system.

 

[SocialistMD]

Do you think the cop is smart enough to ask for help if he needs it when he sees 15-20 physicians walk by?

To answer your question, I probably would have asked if he was okay, but I give the police enough credit to assume that, if the guy on the ground needed emergent life-saving help, he would have been doing that instead of interviewing the driver, and I bet that if CPR or something like that had been going on, those physicians walking by would have stopped to help, but other than that there really isn't much more they could have done.

There is something you learn in medical school (and even more in residency) and that is how to recognize true emergencies. Sometimes all it takes is a glance.

 

[kypdurron5]

I think it's understandable, I mean all of those physicians had patients to see who actually bothered to make appointments >).

 

[docB]

A few points:

The best possible scenario in this case is EMS responds, applies appropriate stabilizing care and transports to the ED. It will be much worse for everyone else involved if some well meaning but out of their area doc steps in and tries to take over the scene. That's how you wind up with patients with C2 fractures getting brought into the ED in a wheelchair with no C spine precautions because someone's worried they might have a broken ankle.

Not everyone in a white coat is a doc. It would certainly be bad for a dietician or a case manager to get involved.

Even if the patient need some physician level intervention right now, before the ambulance can get there, or he's gonna die, the doc who steps in will still have to wait for someone to go and get him whatever equipment he might need to do his miraculous intervention.

Don't worry. The system will beat the idealism from you. It's designed to.