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I had an experience that will support some of what has been said regarding SAR operations. My mother-in-law has alzheimer's and is under the care of 24/7 home-health care providers. One of the newer nurses over reacted to a situation and called 911 when she could not reach my wife. By the time my wife was contacted, an ambulance was on location to take her mom to the hospital, which we objected to once we understood the situation that had provoked the call. However, the head fellow with the ambulance said he could not comply with our request as once the paramedics were in a home responding to someone deemed potentially in need of emergency care, regardless of what we said, they had to take the victim to an emergency room (Where she inevitably racked up a huge and unnecessary medical bill!) I was kind of floored when my over-the-phone demands where ignored. We were told we can overturn an emergency responder if a similar situation were to recur only if we had a doctor's signed authorization on premise providing the likes of my wife's objections to be enforced. We now have that authorization.

Beware before initiating any sort of medical emergency for yourself or on someone else's behalf! That should go without saying, but I'm just saying.

peninsula wrote:Beware before initiating any sort of medical emergency for yourself or on someone else's behalf! That should go without saying, but I'm just saying.

I think you're walking away with the wrong lessons from this incident. If you have reason to believe there's a medical emergency, call 911. Better to call soon and have help on scene than not have it when you need it.

If an epileptic has a seizure in a grocery store, that store isn't going to hesitate to call 911. When the patient recovers, they can and generally will tell the ambulance crew that they're just fine, and - signed doctor's note or not - the crew will leave. They have no ability to treat or transport a patient against consent, and typically do not bill unless someone gets transported, even if it was the patient who initiated the 911 call.

If your mother in law were mentally competent and told the paramedics to leave, they would have, doctor's note or no. The problem with your situation is that you / your wife, as a third party, had no legal authority to be making medical decisions for your MIL. Put yourself in the paramedic's shoes. Say he leaves and something bad happens to your MIL. Your wife's sister (and maybe she doesn't have one, but how can the paramedic know that?) then sues the ambulance company for failing to provide care. What's he going to say, "oh it's okay someone on the phone told me to leave her alone"? Those family situations happen all the time, and they can get real ugly - e.g. Terry Schiavo.

^^^^
That makes sense!

mattyj wrote:If an epileptic has a seizure in a grocery store, that store isn't going to hesitate to call 911.

I've seen one once in my life in a restaurant. No one called 911. However my climbing partner dashed to the scene to make sure he was okay. Eventually he was able to get up. We were all shocked. Even if it was life threatening I don't own a cell phone.