Advice for Handling Medical Emergencies Off the Clock

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During your time working as a medical service professional, you will have instances where a medical emergency carries you off the clock. Because of the nature of health care, it is unreasonable to assume you will never handle emergencies off the clock. Many things from surgery to wound dressing simply will not conform to a schedule you can plan for.

One of the ways the health services industry has evolved to deal with this is to make employees salaried. This way, employees are paid per day, or per job, no matter how long that job takes to complete.

Medical Emergencies

The best way to handle emergencies is to prevent them from occurring in the first place. To achieve this, staff should be trained in how to respond in various emergencies. Things that arise can mostly be planned for like fire, or natural disasters and emergencies arising from human elements such as crime, terrorism and accidents. Ideally, training should occur on a regular basis and when there is a new hire. In addition, all training material should be readily available to all staff, but especially to shift managers and clearly marked.

In most states, working off the clock is technically illegal. This does not mean it will not happen. Because of this, if you find yourself working off the clock, you should immediately report the overage of time both to your employer and your union representative. Doing this will help make sure that any discrepancy in services due to you working outside of the time allotted, so it does not come down to you acting illegally, but rather in a manner meant to respond to an emergency situation.

A Medical Emergencies Checklist

Before committing yourself to responding to an emergency off the clock, you should ask yourself some questions:

•Is this in fact an emergency?
•Am I the only person available to respond to this or am I just the closest person?
•Am I the best person to respond to this?
•Will responding to this violate any laws and/or put my licensing in jeopardy?
•Can I justify my involvement?

If an emergency does occur, stay calm. It does nobody any good if there isn’t a clear head responding. If you find yourself in a situation where you cannot maintain calmness (ex. – the emergency is personal, perhaps your family member is involved.), pass on the task to the next highest person in charge. If this is not possible, take a minute and refer to the training material for the emergency at hand. Mostly, you know what to do, but breaking things down to steps will help you be in a calmer frame of mind.

What’s important to keep in mind is you are not being paid for off the clock services. However, your work will be judged. You are taking a risk by working off the clock as most companies and non-profits will not legally back you up, if you weren’t technically working for them. Working off the clock also calls into question your fatigue and whether or not the hospital or clinic was fully staffed. It is a risk that should only be taken for actual emergencies where no one else is available and you ethically could not turn away. Handling off the clock emergencies should always be well thought out, for this reason, it is not unreasonable for you to plan ahead of time what sorts of things you would or wouldn’t respond to.