Ever since I moved to Philadelphia roughly two weeks ago, I have been talking about going on a 'run to the Rocky steps.' It's a reasonable run-- 1.8 miles from my doorstep which makes for a nice 3.6 mile out-and-back, am I right?!
Today I don't have class until 1pm and I had missed my workouts for the past two days due to SO MUCH ANATOMY so I decided to sleep in until 9:30, and finally set off on the run I had been hoping for after a breakfast smoothie. The run to the Art Museum (Rocky Steps) was literally stop-and-go every 20-100 yards because of city stoplights, which is to be expected! After joining some tourists on a run up the Rocky Steps, I decided to take a different route home that would hopefully create less stoppage time.
I turned onto 20th street by the Ben Franklin Science building because Jordan and I went there two weeks ago and I knew it would get me to the correct cross streets to get home AND 20th street contains seemingly the only hill in the city. Shortly after I conquered the hill I had to stop at my first stoplight! At this point I welcomed the break and looked at my surroundings to see several tourists crowded around an older gentleman who appeared to have fallen on the ground.
I thought the group may have it under control but I couldn't stop myself from running over to them.. ;) I butted my way into the circle and thank goodness I did! No one had called 9-1-1 yet (note to self, take your headphones out of your phone before you dial 9-1-1 or you'll think you can't hear them)...so I did that. And thankfully I remembered that I turned onto 20th street (Thanks for that date, Jordan :D) because the road sign was nowhere in sight when I had to tell the dispatcher where we were.
Typically you're not supposed to move people after they have fallen but the tourists had already started to help him up. I instructed them to sit him on the curb and they readily followed my instructions. I was in charge the moment I stepped into the circle. It felt so good! I guess the tourist group had no background in emergency care because they handed me the gentleman's hat and glasses and asked me, "do you have this?"
YUP. GLADLY :D
So, I sat on the curb with Gordon* (not his real name). He was so insistent on getting up and walking home (down THE hill) but I had to keep deferring his attention and told him that we're going to wait for help to arrive because if the ambulance came and we weren't here, I'd be in trouble! And that if he's on blood thinners, we want to make sure there's no serious internal injury that we don't know about yet. He wanted to call his friend so I urged him to do that, figuring it would buy us some sitting time. At this point I put my Jefferson badge and Gordon* lit up, "Oh!! You are affiliated with Jefferson! How about that, thank you for stopping to help me!" We proceeded to talk about his past and where I've come from (we both are from Virginia!!) and had a rather good time together waiting for the ambulance.
Notables:
I gave Gordon* his glasses and he said they weren't his--to this I say he may be a little disoriented and definitely shouldn't let him walk home!
He was bleeding on his cheek and a little bit from his nose--don't let him walk home!
He fell off the curb and he's 82 years old--don't let him walk home!
When I heard the ambulance coming I said to him "Alright Gordon*, this ambulance is coming for you but I don't want you to be afraid, they're just going to check you out and make sure you're okay. Since you fell and you're on blood thinners we don't want you to get up and walk right away without being checked out first, and that's what they're here for. They have to be sure there's nothing going on that we can't see."
And Gordon said he understood and was glad they were coming because he bumped his head and was afraid he may have had a concussion, and his arm hurt....
The man who just 5 minutes ago said he could walk home by himself and was completely okay spare a little bleeding on his face now was thankful that the ambulance was coming.
Moral of the story--make the patient feel comfortable. Falling in public is embarrassing, as you can imagine, so you want to ensure them that they have no reason to be embarrassed by talking to them like a normal human being. Do not let them walk away. Do whatever it takes to keep them in one position and stay there. Talk to them to gather whether or not they're disoriented from the fall, to gauge their pain in their voice, or if they tend to grab/rub any certain part of their body subconsciously.
Once the ambulance arrived I said by to Gordon* and told him it was nice to meet him, and he wished me well in my studies at Jefferson.
I continued on my run with the biggest smile and all the adrenaline, because I finally felt like I belong in this city, am here to do good things, and played an important part of what it means to be the Jefferson community.
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