​​

My Immersion Experience: A featured style narrative

Have you ever wondered what a patient transporter is or what it is like to be one of them? FYI, patient transport is one of the most important components in the healthcare field (academic). Patient transportation/ central transportation covers the job of moving patients and/or equipment through the hospital in which the employees are told in some form where the patient or piece of equipment belongs. Without such, it would probably be more difficult for patients to make their way around the hospital being that their nurses are busy with other patients, and they also have a job of their own, whereas transporting patients is not part of their job. Also, the hospital could get really crowded, due to having no way to get to where they need to go throughout the hospital. This job includes “ assisting patients in and out of taxis, ambulances, cars, and helicopters; lifting patients on and off beds; moving them to and from special service and treatment areas, and operating rooms; using wheelchairs or moveable beds” (Monster). Not only does this useful job consist of relocating people, but also, we deliver certain equipment such as seizure pads, IV poles, code carts, isolation carts, pumps, channels, and SCD machines to certain units. In the Handbook of Patient Transportation, Written by T.E Martin, he gives on the overview of the criteria patient transporters meet throughout the hospital. On page 1 of the book, he applies “Until the early 20th century, ambulance vehicle development was led by the need for the removal of injured soldiers from battlefields, whereas in the past 50 years the increasing requirement to transfer patients is more dependent on the evolution of modern medical technology and the economics of healthcare delivery. This explains that overtime, patient transportation has changed in many ways, and is still improving as the years go by. As far as patient transportation and the hospital, there are many things happening today in the hospital that are too soon and hopefully will be fixed. According to National Public Radio, Wyoming is wanting to allow Medicaid for ambulance bills. Being that hospital bills are sky high, the plan is to be able to cover the ambulance portion using Medicaid, mainly because that’s most of the entire bill. Along with the Wyoming situation, there are even more problems that occur daily. In the New York Times article: “Fighting Gridlock Where Minutes Can Mean Life or Death”, there is a problem which can affect patients critically. Apparently, at Long Island College Hospital located in Brooklyn, New York, patients have filled the hospital to double capacity. Unfortunately, they have run out of stretchers. This is a huge problem, especially for patients in need of critical care. 

Every hospital has a different way of transporting services and there are different types of ways for the employees of transport to accept certain jobs, whether it’s through technology, paper, or verbal communication. At my job, St. Vincent hospital, located in Indianapolis on 86th street, our transporters are required to use iPods to pick up transporting jobs. Sort of like Uber, you have a choice to accept or reject a job, in which you will be penalized if you reject it. Below you will find an example of what it looks like to accept a job from the ipods. 

As it is obvious that you have multiple selections to click regarding the run of the patient, cancelling that job will give you a rejection in which the dispatcher and manager will see on their computers. The first rejection is no problem, nor the second. When you hit your third rejection, you’ll be penalized for such actions. 

From a manager or dispatcher’s view, they know what run we are on, if we rejected or accepted it, what time we rejected or accepted it, how long it takes us to do the run (supposed to be only 5 minutes), when we are on the way back to our central transport area, and anything there is possible to even know. With the sensors built into our ipods, connected to their computers, they know where to locate us in the hospital if we are or aren’t doing what we are supposed to do, if we get lost, or for any cause it may be. From my view, I never knew that I was being sensored until I shadowed my manager. It was an interesting experience to get the “behind the scenes” information that I would have never thought of learning. Although patient transport may seem so smooth and easy, they have bumps in the road, in which it will affect the whole transport department. The whole department is known to move steady as transporters find the patients’/equipment destinations and get them there safe and sound. Unfortunately, I had to shadow on a bad day. Just like Long Island College Hospital, my journey at St. Vincent had some bumps in the road also. Here’s how it all went down……

The central system is buzzing as jobs are being completed by the minute. “Bzzzz.” “You hear that?” questioned my supervisor, Matt. As he takes a look at the central machine located on a large screen, it is jammed and frozen up. Transporters are blowing up the extension back to back trying to figure out the problem. Not to mention, the elevator is stuck with employees on it, which has been a big problem for our department because the workers haven’t made their ways around to fix it yet; bummer. Once again, the system does another sound “bzzzzz”. Not too long after, the screen goes black. The system has shut down completely. Now, Matt is worried. At this point, the hospital is filled with nothing but chaos. Nurses attempt to get the patients to their testing sites but they can’t because the transport system has shut down, which also made our iPods shut down. This results in us not knowing where to pick the patients up or take them to. For the workers who already got their patients before the system shut down, they are stuck with them either where they picked them up from, in the middle of a hallway, or on the elevator. As this all goes on, one of my co-workers has gone haywire because the system has done something that neither of us can control. She has insulted the manager, threatened and yelled to the top of her lungs at everyone, which resulted in her getting fired. As my time in the hospital and my research all ties and relates in some kind of way, this just shows how most hospitals, no matter the location, deal with problems just like one another. Even though the problems are not the exact same, you will still come across most things similar to one another.