How often do EMS crews show up to your dept unannounced?

LOL! Sounds like the movie "Office Space" -- "Sounds like somebody's got a case of the Mondays!" HA! That would have pushed me right over the edge.

Very rarely does a medic unit fail to call. Every now and then when we get a unit from the next county bringing someone in on mutual aid, they don't call us. We try to keep an eye on the CAD in the nurses station when we can so we don't get an unpleasant surprise! Recently dispatch gave a medic unit a phone patch to the wrong ED, so they showed up unannounced ... couldn't blame them, though! They thought they called.

This happens to us all too often. EMS will bring in inappropriate patients to our 12 bed ER. They will call report when they are on our grounds knowing that we can't divert at that point. For example, a mva that clearly should have gone to one of the level 2 trauma centers in town or chest pain that should have gone to one of the 3 hospitals in town that have cath labs. I make it known to them that it is unacceptable to bring patients in without a heads up. It happened yesterday and they said they tried to call. As it turns out their radio wasn't working properly, this was 3 hours into their shift. I don't think it is safe for the patient if they are not taken to the most appropriated hospital. They will get burned one day and it will be the patient that suffers.

I've gotten reports as they were pulling in...I don't much care so long as we get about 30 seconds to think before they show up. I want to have a room cleared before they roll in, and if it's a sick person we'll pull equipment and people to the bedside. Report prevents a scramble, making us look and feel disorganized, and it prevents moving the patient to the right room, and doing a bed juggle 30 minutes after arrival.

LOL! Yeah, I love it when the report ends with, "aaaaaaand ... we're at your back door."

They show up unannounced all day long. We only get called on the box if the pt is critical or the medics are requesting the doc to order a med they can't give just based off protocol, like Cardizem.

Very infrequently.

What gets confusing at our facility is that the city fire dept/EMS uses the fire radio, another ambulance service uses a different radio, and another two use the phone to call report. Sometimes the ones that have to call in via phone get put on hold indefinitely by someone, and they eventually just give up and hang up...But that's not their fault.

A bad part of where I work is that we have TWO nursing homes within 2 minutes of the ER, too...and lord knows we get respiratory distress calls, sat of 65%, with almost NO warning.

Every so often, we'll get an ambulance in that the crew didn't call report on, and it's almost ALWAYS one of our frequent fliers with the same bogus complaint he/she has had the last 437 times they came in by ambulance. We tend not to get too hot under the collar about it, because they usually get downloaded to triage, anyway.

Had one a few days ago on a record breaking day...had a full house, 4 squads out we were trying to place, and one rolls in with a respiratory distress...."oh sorry, we forgot to call". Guy....seriously? I wanted to holller "WORK WITH ME PEOPLE!"

A few weeks ago we had one bring in a homicidal mental health we had not heard about saying, "oh, the cops said they called so we didn't think we needed to"....sigh

In the ER the problem has little to do with caring a whole lot about the report and a LOT to do with traffic flow. I don't really give a crapolla how much notice I have on pt information/condition...I care about having a couple minutes to figure out where the heck I am going to put the patient amidst the throng of other sick people.

And yes....mistakes happen. But that does not mean it isn't frustrating when they do.

Unannounced? Really? We will get a notification if they are bringing us someone really jacked up, but other than that..we don't get any " warning" before they come rolling in with a pt...

I work in a Level 1, 48 bed pediatric ER and I am going to say that most of them come in without warning. Usually we get warning on the Trauma's or CPR in progress, other than that, they just come in. No big deal.