Slow moving ambulances

[Ausf-A]

Does anyone know if ambulances drive at a slow, almost funeral pace if their occupant has died during the journey to the hospital? I have witnessed such activity, with the flashing lights but no siren in both the UK and Germany. Be cool if someone in the paramedics could answer this.

[funkymoped]

im not a paramedic. but i do know ambulances will travel slowly if the patient is at risk of more pain or injury from being thrown around in the back !

some years ago my son had a double break in his lower leg. he was taken to hospital by ambulance (25 miles away) at a very slow pace.

the break was so bad that the drugs the ambulance crew were able to give, gave him very little relief from pain.

so to answer your question, i think its more about the living than the departed.

[Ausf-A]

>funkymoped, this had crossed my mind too. I suppose if the injuries are not life threatening then this is the case. A friend whose brother is a paramedic once mentioned something similar, but I had a hazy emmory of the deceased patient theory too.

[ianess]

I've seen this too and I was led to believe it was to avoid further injury if the patient has for example a suspected broken neck and needed transfer between hospitals. The ambulance usually has a police escort as well.......fairly puts the hairs on your back up.

[Grunty]

Ambulances often travel at around 4 m.p.h. when carrying a patient with a back injury, when smoothness is essential. Often a police escort will travel in front, spotting potholes etc. so that the ambulance driver can avoid them. Once, as a traffic police officer I needed to urinate when I was asked to escort an ambulance. I thought the job would be over in minutes, but it turned out to be one of those cases which had to be escorted for about 35 miles at walking pace. Quite an uncomfortable journey.

[dannydingbat]

Legally, only a doctor can pronounce that someone is dead. If someone is apparently dead on the journey, this should make no difference to the speed of the vehicle.

[Grunty]

There is nothing in law to say that danny, but it is generally accepted that a doctor is the only person with the necessary skill and knowledge. I am not a doctor but I pronounced someone dead, and it was accepted, when his body was spread over 150 yards of railway track, and some of it had been to the nearest town and back on the front of the train.

[dannydingbat]

Sorry Grunty, paramedics and nurses can only make an assessment, a doctor is needed to pronounce it in the same way as a doctor is the only person who can sign a death certififcate. This from the British Medical Journal

"The scene is familiar. Ambulance staff respond to an emergency telephone call: "I think my husband has died." They find a pulseless, apnoeic corpse, in their view clearly beyond help. His distressed widow requires professional support and care. But there are no definitive signs of death. Thus, because ambulance personnel cannot pronounce "life extinct" (they are not, after all, doctors), the charade must be acted out of instituting full resuscitation measures while removing the victim "from public gaze."

[dan_999uk]

In point of fact dannydingbat, ambulance staff have a protocol called "Recognition Of Life Extinct" where they can diagnose the fact of death.

In the circumstances you outline, providing certain criteria are met (asystolic arrest + no CPR in progress + non-witnessed collapse + "clearly beyond help") then it would be treated as a sudden death and left with the police.

We can also ROLE where the injury is incompatible with life, such as incineration, hemicorporectomy or foetal maceration.

In response to the original question, if a patient arrested on the way to hospital, then you'd see a marked increase in the speed of the ambulance! The ambo crew would start basic or advanced life support and get to hospital as soon as possible.

If an ambulance is carrying a body (which is quite rare) then it won't have the lights flashing, and it will travel at normal road speeds.

Ambulances carrying unstable spinal injuries or particularly delicate injuries such as an impalement or a stabbing with the knife in situ have to travel slowly to minimise any further trauma.