Inside EMS is recording live at EMS World! Stop by the EMS1 booth #837 at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday as Chris Cebollero and Kelly Grayson (via Skype) take questions and comments from the floor.
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In this week’s Inside EMS podcast, hosts Chris Cebollero and Kelly Grayson discuss Brittany Maynard, the 29-year-old terminally ill woman who revived a national debate about physician-assisted suicide by ending her life with lethal drugs made available under Oregon’s law that allows terminally ill people to end their lives.
“I’ve got to tell you, I applaud the opportunity for her to do that,” Cebollero said.
Grayson agreed, saying it brings up a religious argument, with many people believing suicide is a sin, but frankly he doesn’t care.
“It’s not my place to say what another human being does with their own bodies,” Grayson said. “I’m not going to tell another person that they don’t have the right to die with some dignity and chose the manner of their own passing.”
Oregon and four other states ─ Washington, Montanna, New Mexico and Vermont ─ allow physicians to give lethal doses of medication. In Oregon, since Dec. 31, 2013, 750 people have used the law to die, most of them over the age of 70.
They also talk about how a national initiative to establish EMS performance measures has the potential to greatly shape the future of the industry.
For years, EMS has been batting around the idea of establishing benchmarks and setting realistic performance standards by which to judge agencies.
“It’s always been the Holy Grail and out of reach,” Grayson said. If it happens, it will be akin to fire ratings for fire departments.
“It has the potential to really transform the face of EMS,” he said.
Cebollero brought up that hospital reimbursement is now being based on patient outcomes and patient satisfaction, which is something that is trickling down to EMS, so having standards is place will become more important in the future.
“If we’re not able to show the metrics that we’re doing a good job, that is going to negatively affect the reimbursement we’re going to get from payers,” Cebollero said.
Grayson agreed, but took issue with patient satisfaction score being a driving measure for performance.
“The provision of quality medical care should not be a popularity contest,” he said.
They also discuss a story about a female Wash. firefighter-paramedic who received $600,000 in a discrimination lawsuit that claimed she suffered from retaliation and a hostile workplace for eight years.
She will resign as part of the agreement, but neither she nor city officials have admitted wrongdoing.
Grayson said that although there can be issues to work around in terms of the generalization of women being shorter and not as physically strong as men, especially when it comes to lifting patients in stretchers, females are just as important to departments as men.
He said it boggles his mind that it’s still an issue in this day and age, but unfortunately discrimination remains.
“I’ve got colleagues … who will just flat out tell you they don’t think women belong in EMS,” he said.
In the Clinical Issue, they reignite the debate about putting cameras in ambulances around the incident where Glendale fire firefighters got into an altercation with a postictal seizure patient that was captured by a bystander’s cell phone camera.
“In situations like this, does it help us now, that we have body cameras that we’re wearing, or a camera external to the ambulance, that we can video what we’re doing for our own purposes of keeping ourselves safe?” Cebollero asked.
Grayson said judging from their demeanor and how they behaved themselves, it may not have mattered.
“I get a distinct impression that their body cameras, had they been wearing them, would have malfunctioned and not recorded the indecent,” he said, “because quite frankly, that was some pretty egregious, inexcusable behavior on the part of some firefighters.”
Cebollero said the firefighters let their emotions get in the way of their response.
“I’m not trying to justify the behavior, but an emotionally charged situation like this, how does this affect their decision making?” he asked.
But Grayson characterized their behavior as retaliation, not self-defense, and said the incident is still not enough to warrant body cameras. Instead, it comes down to character and hiring, or firing, the right people.
“We’re endowed with a higher degree of public trust than your average citizen and,” he said, “and it behooves us to behave a little better than your average citizen.”
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned on the show:
