002: Reverberating for Decades




Uncommon Sense: the This is True Podcast show

Summary: In This Episode: Three amazing stories of medical professionals going outside protocol to do the right thing: to be fully human in the face of death — all in just 9 minutes.<br> <br> <a class="twitter-share-button" href="https://twitter.com/share?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">Tweet</a><br> <a href="#transcript">Jump to Transcript</a><br> <a href="https://thisistrue.com/category/podcasts/">How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes</a><br> Show Notes<br> Since this is mostly photos (which you can click to see larger), I’ll do it with paragraphs rather than bullet points. First up is the paramedic letting his dying patient have one last look at the beach:<br> United is long gone (and they switched to a new patch during my tenure):<br> Last is Carsten Flemming Hansen looking at his last sunset:<br> <a name="transcript"></a><br> Transcript<br> If there’s any profession the public deals with on a regular basis that’s bound by rules and protocols it’s medicine. In life or death situations, scrutiny is high, and professionals — particularly in the United States — know that everything they do might be reviewed by lawyers looking to justify a lawsuit. But some do the human thing anyway, guided by their Uncommon Sense. This episode has several inspiring examples.<br> I’m Randy Cassingham, welcome to Uncommon Sense.<br> There was a story in issue 1226 of the newsletter about something rather unusual that paramedics in Australia did that wasn’t about dumb people doing stupid things. I’m going to read the story verbatim. It’s called Final Wish:<br> Paramedics in Hervey Bay, Qld., Australia were taking a terminally ill woman to a hospital when she sighed, she wished she could “just be at the beach,” rather than go to the palliative care unit. “Above and beyond, the crew took a small diversion to the awesome beach at Hervey Bay to give the patient this opportunity,” says ambulance officer-in-charge Helen Donaldson. “Tears were shed and the patient felt very happy.”<br> My tagline on the story is: “Life’s a beach, then you die.”<br> Sadly, the story made it into a “weird news” newsletter because it’s so unusual. I think it’s a wonderful story and readers loved it, and the tagline. The reason we know about this event is Queensland’s Ambulance Service posted about it on Facebook, with a picture that is on the Show Page. I’m afraid that in the U.S., medics could be disciplined for doing something like this. But Down Under, the crew was praised. The service concluded their online post, “Great work Hervey Bay team Danielle &amp; Graeme. The Service is very proud of you.” And as a volunteer medic in a rural area in the U.S., I’m proud of them too. In the photo, we can see they took the gurney out of the ambulance and rolled the patient out on a bluff overlooking the ocean so she could not only see the water one last time, but feel the breeze and taste the salt air.<br> Graeme is standing there, back a little bit, waiting with her, watching over her to make sure she’s OK, but just giving his patient that last moment. This isn’t a drive-by “hey look out the window when we go by here and look at the beach.” No. They stopped, they took her out, and rolled her off the pavement so she could really experience the ocean one last time.<br> In a field bound by protocol, medics do learn to think outside the box. Still, it’s unusual. Medics are usually in hurry-up mode, get things going and get back in service so they can take the next call. But instead these medics took a few minutes out to give their patient what she really needed. They exhibited Uncommon Sense.<br> It reminds me of when I was a full-time medic in...