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Wesley,
The patient or family doesn't decide what vehicle is used for the transport. If the MD said by air, and the patient said by ground, would your former program send an aircraft? You wouldn't know what the family/patient said. Second, the patient is not yours until sometime after you arrive at the transferring facility. Any decision about patient care up to that point has been made or approved by the referring physician. So the decision to fly has already been made, or else you wouldn't be there. So when did the patient/family get involved? Before you arrived at that facility. The MD had to make a decision about the patients needs, had to confer with another facility (MD) to accept the patient, and then decide how the patient should be transported. Did this include a consultation with the family or patient about treatment options, and the potential risks associated with flight, it should have. Would a consultation like that meet those needs? Again, a decision was made to fly and your program got the call requesting they transport the patient. If the patient transfer sheet doesn't meet your programs needs, to include the risks associated with flying then your program should talk to that hospital about changing their form. That would be much better than the following. Your former program receives a call from a hospital asking if you could transport a patient by air. You get dispatched to that hospital, go to the bedside, and then discuss the safety issues of going by air with the patient/family. Afterwards, the family or patient tells you they don't want to fly. Do you pack up your equipment and fly home? This would be a time consuming and cost prohibited procedure, and find it highly unlikely that any program operates this way. Not that patients don't occasionally refuse to fly, they do. The decision to go by air vs ground has to be made by the transferring facility. The referring MD knows the status of the patient and what treatment they need. They have the responsibility to inform the patient/family of those treatment plans and the risks associated with them. To include, the need to be flown to X hospital for a procedure they can't do. The patients injuries and possible time constraints on receiving the appropriate treatment are what should dictate the form of transportation. The person with that responsibility is the MD at the referring facility. If the referring MD says my patient needs to be flown, and your program arrives at the bedside and decides to discuss the safety issues of flying and scares the patient into not flying, what potential liablility issues have you assumed? Reference preflight safety briefings- Any passenger (non-patient) receives a safety briefing. Patients don't take actions during an accident/emergency. The medical crew is totally responsible for the patient when loaded in the aircraft. Bob Carnevale
Wesley Copeland wrote: First of all, it is not the transferring facilities decision as to how a |