Charlie Droeder

10/23/18

Ambulance Ride Along

This day at clinical I got the experience of riding along in the AMR ambulance from 4-

11pm in Youngstown. This experience was amazing and I wish I could do it again, I got to test

my abilities and get some practice with skills I haven’t had yet. I rode with Laurie and Kyle they

were very nice and helpful, when I first got there they said they’ve had three calls all day so for

me to expect it to be slow, they were so wrong. Within about a half hour of getting in the truck

we got our first call to an assisted living home, a man apparently fell out of his wheelchair and

was bleeding percussively. Upon arrival, the whole place was eating dinner Around a man

bleeding from his head and leg it was morbid to be honest, we had to stabilize his leg which we

assumed was a femur fracture or hip displacement with a large laceration from the knee cap to

almost his ankle which was bleeding heavy, we wrapped it up and straightened it so we could

roll him. We had to then get his head to stop bleeding as much as possible, the cut was to the

skull from above his right eye around his forehead to the left side of his head. We got him into

the ambulance when Laurie decided we didn’t have much time before he bled out with how

much blood he already lost so she had Kyle start driving while we worked on the pt. She had me

suction to keep his airway open he had blood and emesis aspirating, plus the blood from his head

wound flooding into his eyes. She told me to check his leg while she controlled his head, which

was when I found his leg wound had gotten worse the most blood I’ve ever scene, Laurie told me

to grab what I could from the gauze and trauma pads and do what I could to stop the bleed, I

also got a blood pressure cuff and tightened it around his thigh to act as a tourniquet, I held

pressure on his leg until we got into the er room and the doctor took it from me. The rush felt
amazing and Laurie was super impressed with my performance. We had more calls throughout

the night a couple I had to start fluids so I got some IV practice, we got to see some characters

that I didn’t even realize deserve to go to the ER but the overall experience was educational and

memorable.