Second Rate

As I came to work today, walking through the parking lot, I noticed a woman on the ground with a maintenance worker sitting next to her. As a generally helpful chap, and since I'm an EMT, I decided to go over and see what was up. Turns out she slipped on the curb and hit the ground pretty hard, hurt her knee and elbow and was pretty light headed and close to fainting. So I sat with her checked out her knee and elbow (which all was fine) and talked to her and calmed her down, gave her some water, and sat with her while she lied down. Anyway, it took about 10 minutes for the Nurse to show up, and during that time I continued talking with this woman and helping her relax (she was fine. she was kind of just scaring herself to some bit) until the nurse came at which point I figured they'd take her to the nurse office to lie down for a bit before releasing her. Anyway, when the nurse came, she marched in right up to the woman and started bombarding her with questions. Her bedside manner was ATTROCIOUS. I mean, good god, it was horrible. If this was an EMT Practical and I was a trainer I would have blasted her for having horrible bedside manner (thank you IEMS for setting my standards of patient care high, although I suppose real credit goes to my grandfather, whose standard of patient care is higher than anyone else would ever be able to achieve, he was THAT good). Anyway, a security guard came with her and when the nurse came I backed off for a moment and was about to leave when the woman started freaking out again and looked at me with a face that shouted 'umm what the hell is going on, this nurse is freaking me out, come back, you made me feel calm' so I explained to the security guard that I was an EMT and that I waited here with the women for the past 10 minutes and all the guard said (I swear we could have replaced her with a robot. In fact, we could have replaced the nurse with a robot too for that matter) was 'thanks but you have to leave. you have to leave. goodbye, you have to leave'. Aside from being treated like a second rate citizen, which I HATE, it was really appauling to see the standard of care that this lady was receiving. If I was a patient with something wrong the last thing I want is a nurse who's freaking out more than I am. Anyway, I didn't want to cause a scene, that would have just made it worse, so I walked away. I don't know what happened to that lady, but I hope they didn't botch it completely. I'm sure she's fine, but man, some times, I really wonder how the heck people get off being so shitty at what they do.