One tough teen and 911 abuse

One tough teen


One unidentified teenager up in Trenton, NJ, drove himself to the hospital after he was shot in the chest by a masked black man.

The teen had just parked his car in a downtown area and was out walking down the street when all of the sudden he heard a gunshot.

Police said the teen then said he felt a burning in his chest and realizes he had been shot. He jumped back into his car and drove himself to the emergency room at Capital Health System-Fuld Campus hospital.

Police are investigating the case, but only know the shooter was a masked black man.

Pretty awesome a teen was able to drive himself to the Emergency Room.
Here in Florida regardless of the problem it requires a 911 call. I run calls all the time for a finger injury and they demand to be transported to the ER by ambulance.

Our 911 system here is so badly abused. Anyone at anytime calls 911 to get into the ER quicker. No waiting since most ambulances get a bed right away so they can get back out on the street to run to the next 911 call.

Even our 911 dispatcher abuse the system. If you called them and asked for directions to the emergency room and gave your starting location, they would generate a 911 call and send the fire department, ambulance and police. Talk about a waste of time and resources.

If they were already driving to the hospital, why stop them and make them wait, in most cases they could have been to the ER before anyone showed up to help them.

Of course the police were just as bad. I never heard of someone being too drunk to arrest. But in Florida, if the cop did not want to take them to jail, they call 911. Again, fire department and an ambulance would respond.

One of my all time favorites was the cop said the suspect was too combative to arrest. So he turned the patient over to EMS and we had to fight him all the way to the emergency room without police assistance I might add.

Even the hospital would abuse the use of ambulances. They needed a patient out of the ER, call the ambulance for a transport. Regardless if they needed an ambulance or not, they would call just to get the patient out of the ER.

These are just a very few examples of how the 911 system is abused every single day.

But not this teen, he was tough enough to take a bullet and still drive himself to the hospital.

Now I don't agree with getting shot anywhere and driving, he definitely could have used the services of 911, I guess all that should matter is he will be ok. He did go into emergency surgery and looks like he will make a full recovery.

Over the past few years here are some examples of some of my 911 calls

Jammed finger
Cough/Cold
Splinter
Drunk and don’t feel good
Drunk and complain of numbness in face and fingers.
Drank too much and vomited.
Back pain (which he had for the last 16 years) and now it’s a 911 call.
Sexually transmitted diseases
Lonely

(*which was a sad call the lady was 90 and had no family or friends where she lived so she called so she could talk to us on the way to the emergency room. I really feel bad for her. I usually go delayed at the ER to spend more time talking to her.)

Sore throat
Tooth ache –

Seeking narcotic pain medication

.
Headaches –

Seeking narcotic pain medication

Drug seekers –

if they wanted a quick fix, go to the hospital and try to get the doctor to give them some pain medication

.
Chills
Sun burn

and you would think the patient was dying. Never stopped screaming from the pain she claimed to have with her 1st degree sunburn

Blister after walking.
Use cocaine and now complain of chest pain.

Wonder what they expect to happen when they snort cocaine?

Roach in the ear.

This young lady called once a week for a roach in her ear. She was 20 and her home was like a trash bin. Its no wonder she had roaches in her ear. And sadly she refused to clean up and take care of the roach problem and expected EMS to help her get the roaches out of her house

.
Car would not start, so he called 911 to get someone there fast so he would not be late for work. Sadly we could not jump him.

Anyway, this is a very short list of why people call 911. I have been on calls for anything you can imagine. If you can think of it I have been on a call for it.

The people here have lost all concept of the purpose of 911.






Sadly I cannot even begin to count the number of calls I have been on for the reasons listed above and then an actual emergency call go out over the radio and we would be a block or 2 away from the actual emergency and could not take it since we were already on a call. Then the patient would have to wait for another ambulance to respond to them.

People here just have no concept of what abusing the 911 system actually does to the people that truly need a paramedic.