Heart Attack

Today we got a call from San Pedro Peninsula Hospital (SPPH) asking us to transport a patient from their ER to Torrance Memorial Medical Center (TMH) for an angiogram. Since the patient was on a nitroglycerin drip a nurse had to take the call. We get calls similar to this all the time, no big deal. This call was different because the staff at SPPH told us that the patient was about to arrest and that we needed to hurry. Because of the serious condition of the patient we decided that the paramedics would take the RN instead of the EMTs. This is done on critical patients because we can do things for a dying patient that the RN is not allowed to do (such as intubate). Once we got the the ER at SPPH it was apparent that our patient was in no such distress. As it turns out the cardiologist at TMH is more than a little panicky. I talked the nurses in the ER at TMH and they confirmed that the cardiologist on duty that day needs to mellow out just a bit. He wouldn't make a good ER doctor.