Case Study 2: The Bad
A patient recently wrote to MedicAlert to complain about her emblem being ignored. MedicAlert has had several of these letters in the past, but this one jumped out. When the patient mentioned to the paramedics that they hadn’t noticed her bracelet, they replied “Oh, no one looks at those... they’re useless.” The patient was upset: she had been under the impression that if she couldn’t speak, those trained to help her would pay attention to her MedicAlert bracelet. At the hospital, she mentioned this to a nurse, who replied “Yeah, those things are garbage”. She actually used the word “garbage”. Twice, in the span of an hour, the patient was told her MedicAlert bracelet has no value in communicating her health condition. Understandably disheartened and frustrated, she wrote to the MedicAlert Foundation, and with her story she included her bracelet. She no longer wanted it.
Case Study 3: The Ugly
An ambulance was dispatched some‐ where in Ontario last year for a patient presenting with signs of stroke. The paramedics rushed the patient to the local emergency department. On the patient’s wrist was a bracelet with the easily recognized MedicAlert emblem.
On the back, engraved in capital let‐ ters, were the words NO HEPARIN. Rare is it we come across a patient with heparin‐induced thrombocytopenia… even more rare would be for the patient to identify such a condition. But in this case, the patient didn’t have to – their bracelet spoke for them. If only those called to help had listened. The paramedics didn’t note the bracelet, and the emergency depart‐ ment staff didn’t either. Over a dozen well trained and caring health care providers were involved in the care of the patient, and not one of them spoke up before the heparin was adminis‐ tered. The patient died a few hours later.
Why did this happen? The patient had taken every precaution to help themselves by being members of MedicAlert and wearing the bracelet. Any one of the twelve or so caregivers had the opportunity to recognize the MedicAlert bracelet and communicate the information to the team. In this case, an emergency department tragedy could have been averted had the paramedics highlighted the critical history to the ED team
You Can Make The Difference!
Paramedics do more than just take people to the hospital. They collect valuable information about the scene, the patient and their course during
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patient care. Perhaps paramedics assume that hospitals will discover these same things, but as we’ve seen information can sometimes slip through the cracks. Paramedics have a special role to play in ensuring that as care is transferred to emergency departments, accurate information is transferred as well. Look for the MedicAlert bracelet, watch, necklace, tags and wallet cards. Call the MedicAlert Hotline for additional infor‐ mation and records that are available. After all, you can probably save more lives by communicating important information clearly than you ever could with your defibrillator. EMS
Dr Nijssen-Jordan is a pediatric emergency physician at the Alberta Children’s Hospital in Calgary and current Chair of the Canadian MedicAlert Foundation.
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