Interesting Night

I don't write about work much. Frankly, the stuff I find interesting isn't likely to excite most of my readers (...so I finally get the Eschmann thru the cords and the damned nurse threads the 'tube UPSIDE DOWN...), and I don't want the sort of audience that just posting tales of gore and suffering will attract.

Plus my prose really isn't that good.

The other night was a little different. I was just hitting my stride for the evening, getting ready to clean out the waiting room, when the "batphone" rang. For those of you who don't know, the batphone is the dedicated, taped line that paramedics use to contact me to give patient reports, get advice on difficult calls, etc.

Yes, it has an unlisted number.

Yes, it has a distinctive ringtone.

Yes, I sometimes answer it, "Rampart General, Dr Brackett speaking."

To be honest, most of the time it's boring stuff. Local EMS (who bring us most of our "real" emergencies, along with a fair share of our BS) use a radio for communication; that means that--in practice--the "batphone" is usually used for interhospital transfers and other such relatively boring stuff.

So when it rang Tuesday night I wasn't terribly impressed.

I picked up my phone, identified myself, and listened to the medic on the other end.*

them: "This is Lieutenant Dan from the Military Post. How are you today?"

me: "I'm fine, thanks. How are you?"

"Doing well, thank you**. We have a report of an oil tanker explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. About 144 people on board. Federally Funded and Big-Business rescue services are en route, we will give you more details as we have them available".

(blink, blink)" I copy 144 patients, no current ETA. You're going to send us the most critical?"

"That's correct. We'll give you further details as we get them".

"Thanks".

I hung up the phone, breathed a couple of times, and started letting people know. Started with the rest of the ER crew, notified our disaster specialist (who happened to be on duty in the hospital that night), and woke up just about everyone who can get me fired (which is an interesting experience).

Over the next few hours, patients and details trickled in. Some news service published a count of the "critical" patients***, we emptied out the ER by the simple expedient of only letting in actually sick people, called in extra staff, dragged out every spare ventilator, IV pump, and enough of that all-time medical standard, the gauze bandage, to fill a midsize car.

At one point I got a phone call from regionwide medical command, asking me how many patients I could handle. I had 7 empty beds in my ER, 14 beds in my ICU, and 40 ward beds in my hospital. Asking for that much job security made me a little nervous.

We wound up with less than a dozen patients.

The final count of the seriously injured patients was low enough that we could have handled all of them. Handling all of them at once may have been a little challenging.

I'm very glad that it wasn't worse. My thoughts and sympathies go out to those who were injured, lost, or killed in the event, and to their families and loved ones.

*approximate transcript follows. Details changed to protect the innocent.

**yes, these pleasantries actually took place. Sometimes I love living in the South.

***interestingly enough, this was on the internet before anyone was fished out of the water