Follow Up to Communicating with First Responders

I called Frederick Memorial Hospital yesterday to find out which ambulance was responsible for transporting my daughter. With their help, I called the number that they provided and left a message for someone to call me back to discuss what happened. My goal was to determine what went wrong, and what if anything I could do to prevent an EMT from overriding my authority in the future. I received a callback last night from a man who supervises the EMT supervisors, and we had a very helpful discussion to both of us. For my part, he suggested that I ask to have an EMT supervisor involved if I am ever in a situation again where an EMT will not listen to me. He agreed with me that the EMT's did not have to transport my daughter to the hospital if she showed no signs of injury, just because she was not competent to decline transport. He told me that if I were on the scene of the accident, I would not be asked to show ID, and so the issue of proving my identity should not have been a big concern over the phone. He told me that someone had asked to provide training regarding care of patients with autism to the EMTs under his authority recently, and that he would follow up and make sure that his EMT's received that training. In addition, he planned to issue a memo to his EMTs and supervisors regarding appropriate actions in future situations like ours. As I suspected, sometimes EMT's get in trouble for using their own common sense and become a bit gunshy about doing so as a result. That doesn't mean that there is not a way to get support for them and for patients when there is a difference of opinion about what is the correct course of action.