McConnell was loaded into ambulance on a stretcher, according to eyewitness and new video | CNN Politics
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Emergency responders took Sen. Mitch McConnell to an ambulance on a stretcher after being called to his home last month for a report of an unconscious person, according to new video of the incident and an eyewitness account.

The neighbor said emergency responders worked quickly – but they did not seem panicked.

“In a situation where perhaps time is of the essence, there seems to be a little bit more urgency, but there was no urgency here,” the neighbor told CNN.

When the emergency vehicles left the street, the neighbor said their sirens were not on.

  • Fondots@lemmy.world
    6·
    3 days ago

    I luckily haven’t been on-scene with a lot of EMS calls, I work from a bunker that’s usually miles away from where the action is taking place, so take thoughts on this for what they’re worth, I’m a bit outside of my area of expertise, and I don’t have a lot of details to go on so I don’t really want to speculate here, but I’ll leave some thoughts.

    Also, just to reiterate, the class 1,2,3,4,5 terminology is what my agency uses, things can vary a lot from one place to another, and I certainly can’t speak for the policies and training and such that are in place anywhere else.

    But an unconscious person is basically always going class 1 or 2 unless they were already a vegetable and it’s normal for them to be unconscious, but honestly even then it would probably be class 2 unless they really just need an ambulance to move them from point a to b and there’s not actually any other medical issues going on. They’re going to be going with some sense of urgency and leaving with lights and sirens.

    If he was, in fact in cardiac arrest that is absolutely class 1 material. They’d be doing CPR on him or shocking him with a defibrillator as they’re going, he’d probably be intubated and they’d be ventilating him with a bag, I assume EMS in whatever town he lives in probably have some pretty good equipment so they’d probably have a LUCAS device to do chest compressions for them, etc.

    I was actually on-scene with a cardiac arrest after a motorcycle accident once, helped perform CPR on someone until the ambulance arrived. I don’t think EMS was on-scene for 5 minutes before they were speeding off with the guy with lights and sirens going and a LUCAS strapped to his chest. I never looked up the call, but I would bet good money that that guy didn’t make it, but it was still fresh enough that there was a tiny chance and so he went class 1.

    Hypothetically if they were able to restore a normal pulse with a defibrillator or whatever else they might have in their bag of tricks these days, it might go class 2, but that would still be high priority.

    I can’t imagine any situation where they’re taking a patient who is unconscious and normally isn’t any less than a class 2 unless they’re dead.

    From the short clip, and based off of the descriptions, it’s hard for me to say much. They’re certainly not running with the stretcher, but that could just be them being calm and professional, you don’t really want to be jolting the patient around after all, and they’re not exactly pussy-footing around, but still I don’t know if I’m seeing the kind of urgency I’d expect. If they did in fact leave without sirens, that’s really not jiving with the class 1 or 2 I’d expect for an unconscious patient, that sounds like 3, 4, or 5. It could be that they turned them on once they left the neighborhood, that’s not unheard of to avoid disturbing neighbors and causing a scene if there’s no traffic in the neighborhood for them to have to get through.