Real-Life Decision Making
You receive a call to respond to a residence late at night. The dispatcher says the man who called has severe abdominal pains. You and your partner arrive at the house to find a man, obviously very drunk, lying on the couch.
You and your partner attempt to examine the man, but he won't let you near him. He's too incapacitated to strike out at you, but still yells at you to back off.
"Where are you hurt?" you ask him.
"I was in a fight earlier down at Orlando's," he says, slurring his words. He tries to swing upright on the couch as he speaks, but groans and collapses again. He closes his eyes.
"Did somebody hit you in the stomach?"
"Oh it was some fight," the man says, swinging a feeble punch into the air.
You ask him again. "Were you hit in the stomach during the fight?"
"Oh yeah, some guys got me right there with a lead pipe," he says pointing at his stomach, and then chuckles, "Then I turned around and knocked all three of them out."
"So you were hit in the stomach?" you ask. He closes his eyes again and shakes his head. "Nah....I don't really know what happened at the bar."
It's difficult to know exactly what's wrong with him, so you decide to take him to the hospital right away. When you try to get him on the stretcher, however, he starts to yell and refuses to move.
Not everyone that you try to help wants to go to the hospital. "I've been kicked, punched, spit on and had people attempt to bite me," says paramedic Tess Goodman. "They yell and scream obscenities and make threats on our lives."
This man says he's not going anywhere. Maybe he'll sober up in the morning. If he's still having pain then, he can go to the hospital. After all, there could be other emergencies that need responding to -- you can't stay here all night arguing with him.
You could call the police and have them arrest him. If he's seriously ill, that may be the only way to force him to get treatment.
What are you going to do?