It's On My Arm!

I learned a very important lesson today. Never get between a wheelchair and a wall.

We ran a call for a high priority fall. The patient had right-side paralysis and couldn't get up so we needed to move him off the floor and into his bed. As always, nothing is ever that simple. The room, as it turns out, wasn't big enough to fit all the people in the room in order to effectively move him because the wheelchair was in the way. It was one of those electric wheelchairs with a joystick to control it. Well, it turns out these wheels sort of lock and you kind of have to drag a 200+ pound wheelchair out, but not only is the weight an issue, the wheels are actually more like tires and are made of rubber with extra traction. Using the physics formula for static friction, where the wheelchair is around 80 kg (I'll round on the low side), acceleration of gravity is 9.8 m/s/s, and the coefficient of friction between wood and rubber is 0.8, the static friction force is 627.2 Newtons. So it's the equivalent of pushing a horse (not really, but you get the idea).

But that's not all; we get the idea of just using the joystick to move the wheelchair out. Unfortunately, it's hard to navigate the thing from the front facing the back and the doorframe is narrow as it is.

Before I know it, I hear "Ouch! Would you mind moving this off my arm?"

I had accidentally pinned one of my crewmember's arm between the door and wheelchair. Not a particularly pleasant feeling, I'm sure. So I reverse it and push it just enough out of the room to run it completely out of the way.

Ah, the joys of EMS.

Vale omnes.