earlier this year was coming back from Texas and came across a serious one car accident. Pulled over and grabbed by work gloves, got my kit from the storage box and rushed over. Saw that the patient was trapped so with some others was going to get started on extrication and realized that the pair of work gloves I had grabbed and put in the truck were both left gloves! Not so helpful...
Turns out the patient who was a pretty, nurse in her late twenties or so died on scene. It hit me pretty hard on the rest of the drive home. First time in a long while I had worked a fatality. You let yourself forget what that feels like and last two hours of the trip home were pretty somber. There was a few lessons in that incident for me.
Mental preps - dealing with the loss of someone. As soon as I got to the vehicle I did an assessment and took vitals. She was in a bad way already. It wasn't possible to remove her due to the extensive damage to the vehicle. I talked to her and let her know she wasn't alone. I hope she heard me.
Physical preps - grab the correct equipment. Not having the full set of gloves left me at a disadvantage but not helpless.
Medical preps - in working on her I got blood on my arms from her despite wearing vinyl gloves. It was after EMS arrived and went to clean up that I realized I had no means to clean myself off despite my kit being quite extensive. I chided by self for that and have since corrected that situation!
We do what we can
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