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Comment by JshWright | Hacker News Reader

I'm assuming the patient wasn't a racehorse?

If I had a dollar for every time a dermatologist or podiatrist tried to be 'helpful' on an emergency scene... I could probably buy a coffee at Starbucks... The same goes for 'nurses.' If an ER nurse wants to help out, that's great. Invariably though, it's a nurse at a nursing home or dialysis center...

I don't mean to imply these folks aren't skilled professionals, but prehospital medical emergencies are generally well outside their experience, and the confusion that arises from that can be dangerous.

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Unlike a podiatrist, a dermatologist went to medical school. If they're young, there's actually a good chance that they were among the very best medical students -- in the past few years, dermatology has become one of the more competitive fields in medicine because of the lifestyle (short predictable hours, high pay, minimal insurance hassles).

There are daft people in every field, but I would be delighted to have most of the derm residents and attendings I've met in an emergency (in fairness, I should note that this is a small sample, drawn from a couple top-tier hospitals, and biased towards people who do volunteer backcountry search and rescue).

Yeah, the podiatrist comment was a bit tongue-in-cheek.

Like I said, I'm not try to discredit these folks as skilled (and in many cases, extremely smart) individuals.

However, a couple weeks of a rotation through an ER during med school isn't really going to prepare you well for prehospital emergencies (SAR, on the other hand, can be great training for that). Making an assessment and clinical decisions based on fairly limited information isn't something I've found most physicians to be comfortable with, especially in an emergency setting.

My list of 'glad to see you' docs is pretty much: ER, OB, and Anesthesia.

I can't tell if you're joking or not, but a podiatrist does have to go to medical school.

On the other hand, it's good to have anyone step in to lend a hand, instead of standing back like sullen sheep.

That depends... If they start questioning my patient care decisions, I'm going to ask them to step away. Fortunately, we have preprinted cards explaining that if they want to take over patient care, they need to speak to my medical control physician (who will need to hear a _very_ compelling argument before they would be willing to hand a scene over to someone else)

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