Therapeutic Patient: A Case Study

The 911 call came in to my station and, in what seemed like a second, we were roaring down the road with the red lights flashing and sirens blaring. Everything through the window flashed by in a blur. My heart was pumping as I prepared to face my first ever seizure patient and also my youngest- a two year old boy. Everything that they teach us in EMT class is supposed to prepare us for the catastrophes of the real world. When people call 911 they are looking to us for confidence and calm, but I was not ready for a pediatric patient. Images of my younger siblings at that age kept flashing through my mind on the way there.
We arrived on scene and, to my intense relief, the little boy was not seizing. After we entered the boy's house, I took note of the surroundings, as per protocol. I have always lived in poverty, but this house was as close to living in squalor as I have ever seen. The house was filthy and reeked of cannabis. The children were obviously not being taken cared for at all. Seeing the environment that little boy had to live in made me want to take him home and never …show more content…
My esteemed EMT teacher, Mr. Woo, had always told us that there is going to be a time when you touch a patient and it feels as if all the knowledge is being sucked out of you. He said that when we touch them all of our training leaves us and our mind is a blank slate. Me, being the aspiring medic that I was, had yet to experience this phenomenon. It made me overly confident, and I thought maybe I would never have to feel that sense of emptiness and shock. I had always known what to do in an emergency situation, so I felt that my abilities were irreproachable. I falsely thought that I could deal with any situation and emerge unscathed. My personal failure was that I became so certain in my abilities that I thought I was never going to make a