No really, your paperwork is imoprtant.
I’ve told my crews hundreds of times that “your paperwork is just as important as any other part of the call and you must complete your paperwork before returning to service.”
I am a hypocrite.
Ambulance services constantly tell their crews how important it is to complete paperwork and that there is no way they should ever return to service before turning in a run sheet at the hospital. Then, when it gets busy, dispatch tones a crew that has just gone out at the hospital with another call.
Let’s stop this.
Run sheets are important. They’re our legal record of care given to a patient, they (sometimes) provide valuable insight about a patient’s condition to hospital personnel, and they’re how we get paid. But they’re never as important as you are if you’re the only ambulance in the system that is even remotely close to returning to service.
Next time, I’m going to tell my crews this: It is important to get our paperwork completed in a timely fashion, but not as important as providing ambulance service to the next customer in the community we are committed to serving. I insist that you complete your paperwork at the hospital whenever you can, but understand it is expected that you will break off if you have to run a call.
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