Caught on video: Turkish emergency medical staff accidentally drop a patient head first off of their stretcher as they made there way from an air ambulance helicopter.
I am not familiar with the type of stretcher they are using, my department uses a different style. Let me know if you see something that seems odd in the way they are moving the stretcher that might have caused this to happen. It is hard to tell if the patient is off center of the stretcher or what might have occured to make this happen.
I appears as though the patient is already immobilized.
You might assume that if the patient was flown in, their injury/illness might already be pretty bad. This fall probably did not help things.
I wonder what kind of finger pointing went on after this occured if there were hospital staff and EMS staff at the side of the stretcher when this happened.
Have you been in a situation like this where a patient comes off of a stretcher or the stretcher falls over?
And they placed the pt. back on the broken stretcher.
And they had a hard time getting the pt. back on the stretcher.
yes, I had a similar situation many years ago. Wheeling the stretcher in the up position, my partner and I didn’t have two hands on the stretcher. We were turning to load into ambulance. The wheel hit a small rock and the stretcher tipped over. Patient was OK! But, if you watch the video the lead attendant had 1 hand on the stretcher which didn’t put him in a position to stop the forward/downward motion. Lesson to learn use both hands and assure there are 4 hands on every corner of the stretcher and wheel in the down or 1/2 down position. It keeps the center of gravity lower to the ground.
P.J. Norwood
It can happen with the high center of gravity. That is why we must always have control of the stretcher!
I held my breath when I saw the sheet start to fly – I never saw the rotors but it sounded like they did a hot unload. Fail all around. Hope the patient is OK.
Educated guess. Judging by the supports, the stretcher was designed to be pushed in the other direction. Also, the main reason I was taught to the stretcher with the patient feet first.
That is what I have always learned and done – pushed with the feet first.
When I saw the video, I thought it looked like the stretcher was supposed to go the other way too. But then I kinda figured why would they design a stretcher that couldn’t be moved either way?
I thought maybe the pt. was on the stretcher backwards AND it was being pushed the wrong way, but it appears as though the pt. is in the right position on the stretcher.
Looks like the legs not locked and it folded as designed… Lesson Learned
I believe this type of stretcher is a single loader type where the legs collapse as you push it into an ambulance. They are going head first, which is the first problem – should be feet first due to the design of this type of stretcher. Second major problem is the patient is not secured to the gurney. Third major problem, it appears the people a the head of the gurney only have 1 hand on the gurney – so when the stretcher begins to fall forward, no one realized it until it was to late. What appears to happen is that an item falls from the stretcher or from one of the persons that are pulling. That item drops on the path of the wheel and it gets accidentally chocked and lunges forward.
There is a reason that everyone needs to be trained on all mobile stretchers of this nature. Actually, there are many reasons as illustrated by this video
Ive always been afraid something like this could happen, that why I keep a death grip on the stretcher at all times! But I normaly just throw the patient, stretcher and all on to my shoulder and leave the posibility for things like this at a minimum…… But thats just me.
http://www.ELAFFHQ.com
That headline might be problematic for people with dyslexia!
Turkey Falls Off Stretcher On Patient
Bad, bad day for everyone involved. It looks like one of the old Ferno strechers with folding legs.
The legs stay locked but the head is over-wieghted and the patient is going head first. I’ve never dropped a patient in 20 years (knock on wood) but I’ve come close. My near misses have always been sideways. I’ve never seen one tip endwise like this.
We have these type of stretchers at one of my part-time jobs. I hate them, but yes they are the one man load style. The head is locked into a load position and then pushed into the ambulance causing the legs to fold up flat, and only needing one patient to “load” the patient.
According to the video, it doesnt look like the cot malfunctions though. It appears to stay up, just tilt over. I think this was caused by maybe having the patient too far up (toward the head) of the cot and the direction they were wheeling it. As someone else mentioned, we try to always go feet first to prevent this type of accident.