Assault With Bodily Fluids

I am usually a very cool customer when it comes to dealing with patients. Even the ones that are really annoying and/or offensive. But there are times when my limits are stretched.

Or both

We were called to one of our local dive bars for a 'man down.' As we pulled up we could see that PD was there talking to a man sitting on the sidewalk. There was blood all over the concrete.

My patient was walking out of the bar and was supposedly hit in the back of the head by someone with something. He then fell to the ground and hit his head causing a 4 inch laceration. Being a head wound there was quite a bit of blood.

I knelt down next to my patient and inspected his head wound while holding his head and neck still. The bleeding had mostly stopped. I asked my engineer to bandage it up and I started my assessment to see if I could clear c-spine. I asked my patient if he had any pain in his head or neck? He responded by swearing at me and telling me that he was bleeding.

No ****ing duh Sherlock.

I tried again and got the same response. After a couple of other questions to determine if he was alert and oriented (he was) I asked him how many drinks he had had. In response he reached his hand up to his head, covered his hand in blood and proceeded to wipe on my turnouts.

At that point I was done. I asked my captain to throw a c collar on the guy. By this time AMR was pulling up. I walked over and gave them a rundown on the call. Basically I told them that the....patient was hit and the head, was bleeding, was alert and oriented and being a prick. Since he didn't want to answer questions he was going to have to be placed on a backboard. Just precautionary. Usually I don't like placing people on a board because it's really uncomfortable, even painful. This time I was happy to do it.

While I was talking to the AMR guys I could hear my captain yelling at the patient not to grab him. At least the drunk wasn't just being difficult with me.

While strapping him to the board the pain in the caboose kept trying to sit up and yell that we should be trying to find the guy that hit him. We assured him the the police were doing just that. We finally got him good and strapped down and loaded in the ambulance. The last thing I heard from him was him yelling obscenities at the medic in the back of the ambulance.

Stupid patients.