*In this blog I am not saying it’s okay to break laws or people should break laws! I always recommend you follow your state and local laws!*
There may be a time in life that you will need to break a law. In EMS everything we do we really focus on legal. From treatments to transporting patients and everything we do in between we focus on the legal aspect of it. Even consent to treat, transport, and hospital destination there’s a whole legal aspect on that too. Sometimes we must focus more on the legal aspect than worry about patient outcome. When we do have to break the law, we put ourselves and the company at risk of getting into big trouble. Would you break the law to benefit someone else?
Laws are meant to be followed!
Laws are set in place for reasons and are meant to be followed. Sometimes people will break them intentionally and sometimes unintentionally. People who break laws know that there are potential repercussions. Working in EMS there are times this will happen. We may either accidentally or purposely break a law. But if there was enough justification to break the law, would it be okay, or should we still be held accountable to the full extent?
Protocols versus laws?
EMS we have protocols (similar to laws) which regulate what we do to treat and help people. These are set in place by our medical control (like doctors at hospitals) and we must follow them. Depending on the protocol we break we could have to go in front of the director of EMS and the Medical Control Authority (doctor) of that specific county. They could rule that we lose our medical license if we break a protocol or if we worsen a patient’s outcome. We can try to get around breaking the protocol by contacting medica control (doctor) and get approval to go outside of (or break) the protocol. They will not always approve of this. Would you break a protocol to save a person’s life?
EMS breaks the laws.
Fun fact in EMS we break the law from time to time. Also, driving lights and sirens when dispatched properly or in a life-threatening event are not breaking the law, our medical license and training allows it. Let’s take a deeper look into EMS breaking laws, I bet you have personally witnessed it a few times. EMS breaks the law when their lights are on, but the sirens are not. We will do this in residential areas to not disturb the neighborhood. An ambulance uses its lights to block traffic for a non-medical or police scene. For example, a kid loses his ball in the street and the ambulance sees the small child about to dart out into traffic. The ambulance uses its lights to stop traffic and gets the ball for the child. This ambulance technically misused its emergency lights. Have you ever witnessed EMS breaking the law?
Breaking the law.
I am not saying I am in the right for any of this. But just like anyone else I have broken the law speeding or not using my turn signal. In the ambulance we break the law every shift. If I am in a residential area and no cars are around, I see little kids you can bet we will turn those lights on and wave to the kids. I have been driving and children wanted to hear the sirens, I have turned it on (obviously with no moving vehicles around) to bring a big smile and cheer to the children. I have used my lights with no sirens in residential areas heading to emergency calls to not disturb residents especially at night. There have also been a few times I have seen a vehicle spin out in the snow and I will block traffic to make sure they can turn around or so they do not get hit. While laws do get broken from time and we are aware of the repercussions it’s sometimes a chance we take.
Have you ever broken the law on purpose?
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