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Comment by ctchocula | Hacker News Reader

Talk about leaving us on a hanger. You can't write all that and not share a single story.

To be fair, some of the stories he told me are horrific enough not to share, and its amazing that those weren't the issues that made him leave. They certainly could have had a cumulative effect.

There was one "gallows humor" story of an obviously fatal bicycle accident. As paramedics, they could not declare the victim dead. They had to have authorization from the hospital.

The hospital insisted they send the EKG data back.

They said "Ok", and rather than going through the effort of connecting up the victim, they just stuck the leads to the truck and said "here it comes".

Then they got the OK to declare there at the scene.

Are you serious?

Imo kinda more respectful if the person is clearly deceased, to not remove clothes and attach probes to them

I probably misunderstood the context. Both checking life signs on, say, a headless body or imitating the check for the sake of bureaucracy sound equally terrible :(

If it helps, in a lot of place "injuries incomparable with life" are sufficient to cease care on a patient.

Still (and this is a general opinion unrelated to any judgement about the OP's story, which I don't hold any opinion on), finding a pulse can be hard for a lot of folks in a lot of situations.

I'm pretty okay with, say, 20-year-old EMT-Bs needing a bit more bureaucracy before they declare me dead. It takes about 90 seconds to place a 4-lead, no shade on those kiddos.

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