Egos and Ownership

This past weekend I volunteered to work a very large festival (122,000+ attendees) in a medical capacity. I work with the a volunteer organization who uses the cross as their symbol (wink wink nudge nudge). The way we work is to have a crew chief, someone who is in charge of all the care given in that station and all the personnel. Now keep in mind this is a volunteer organization and thus we don’t always have the most experienced or well trained individuals either working or more importantly leading. This one crew chief was abysmal. There was already a little friction because the medical care was divided among three organizations, FD, ambulance company and us. There was some jockeying over who has what ownership by the executives which in every other group stayed at the high level. At our level our crew chief was complaining to anyone who would listen that we were getting a bad rap. Ok, no worries, where this entry really is going is our primary mission. He let it affect our care with patients. He was so upset that when we wanted to consult higher trained individuals in other agencies he would decline unless they would take full ownership yeadda yadda yadaa. Oh it was ridiculous. This weekend was a test of all of our patience and fortitude as he lashed out randomly at all the volunteers. A police officer came in with some heat exhaustion and is being treated by his friend, our highest trained medical personnel in the station, but he needs to jump up and start running care for almost 35 minutes so we now have no chief. It just kept going on and on in one of the most stressful scenes I have been in for quite some time. To give you an idea our station with just under a dozen volunteers (3 being management) treated between 150-200 patients each day (Fri-Sun) in 11 hours per day. That is equivalent of an average of 2 patients an hour but of course we know this comes in waves not steady stream.

Here is where I am going besides just complaining. We read about all sorts of challenges between FD and PD in most cities because of top egos trickling down through the ranks. This is no different than FBI and local PD and all types of other examples. I can now officially say that this type of inter-agency fighting actually is a huge disservice to the patients. It does very much affect the level of service given and I think this is atrocious. You can be upset and mad at different politics but you never let that affect the care given to the public, just my lowly humble opinion.

I know some of you are in the medical field like me as a volunteer so some of the patients I treated this weekend were the following (as one of the senior medical trained and experienced I did get a bit more challenging cases). I was also primary for driving into the field with our golf cart ambulance and transporting back to base. Interesting when the fields are packed with people. Here is just a taste.

* 22 month child in severe seizures,

* 8 month pregnant woman severely heat exhausted and lost consciousness, caused overheating and tachycardia of the baby

* 25 year woman with sever cramping of all four extremities (unable to open hands or feet, curling)

* 32 year old woman who fell in the field (pothole), c-spine and torn knee

* Dozens and dozens of severely heat exhausted and dehydrated individuals

* A thousand and one slashes and cuts on the hand from the food service volunteers

* A million and one scrapes and cuts from people who fall in the dirt

Overall medically a challenging and a great experience to learn. From a management perspective a perfect opportunity to watch how not to lead.