Knight In Shining Armour

I was having one of those crazy busy nights; all us clerks were run off our feet, when a motor-vehicle accident was brought in.

The EHS (paramedics) have their forms in triplicate, they keep the white one, the yellow goes to the nurses, and the pink goes to us admitting clerks. Some EHS are awesome at filling out the forms, getting ALL the details they can, which is such a big help; others couldn't care less, which makes life more difficult for us with STAT registrations. Of course there are just some times that the patient is so critical that they do not have time to fill anything out other than the patients name and birthday which is totally fine; this was one of those times.

After finding the patient in our database, and running off all the paperwork, I went to drop it off in the Trauma Bay. I have a section in my database where I need to fill out the accident details ( time, location, mechanism of injury ) the best way to find that out accident info if a patient is in trauma bay and surrounded by doctors and nurses is to see if I can catch one of the EHS and ask then as they are re-stocking their gurneys.

Just as there are nice people, and jerks in every profession, it is the same with paramedics. Some are understanding and helpful, others act like I am a fly on the windshield of their existence! I had the misfortune of dealing with one of the latter. This gentleman acted like I was the biggest hassle he had encountered all day...all questions I asked him were answered with one word answers, grunts or "I dunno, my partner might know".

Right before I was about the slink away feeling the size of a termite; one of the other paramedics spoke up. My knight in shinning armour was one of the veteran paramedics, who I hadn't seen leaning against the wall. He turned the jerk paradmedic and said

" Hey buddy, you be nice to the little admitting clerk, she is only trying to do her job", the other paramedic looking very shame-faced turned to me and said "I can go see if my partner has the sheet with all the info" to which I promptly replied with a smile " thats ok I can get it myself."

The veteran paramedic gave me a thumbs-up as I walked by toward trauma bay. So often us clerks are viewed as the pee-ons of the ER; people often forget that we have an important job to. We are the ones who get the correct patient in the census so tests can be ordered, and medical histories can be viewed. Not life-saving I know in the big scheme of things, yet important none the less; and the fact that someone recognized, and stood up for me that evening, left a grin on my face until I left for home that evening.