No, it is Basil Besh who is the medical professional. Anna Watson is a physician assistant. Basil Besh is a doctor. Part of having your doctor's license is being subject to an oversight board of your peers. As a patient you can complain to this board and if the doctor cannot prove that he has provided adequate care, he can lose his very expensive livelihood.
They key here is that he has to justify himself to his peers, ie doctors who would look at the patient records and his notes and judge whether he provided a standard of care by calling or not calling an ambulance, etc. Randos on the internet speculating about patients they know nothing about is PR, not medicine.
The way you will know whether this story is real or another one of the endless Telsa hate pieces is that this guy will lose his license if it is real.
Additionally PAs can prescribe many drugs in most states, but the supervising physician is ultimately responsible for the patients care.
Finally there are numerous subspecialties that simply aren’t available to PAs.
A PA degree only requires 2 years of post-bachelor training. An MD requires 4 years of medical school and a minimum of 3 years in residency (most specialties require 4, but some require more — e.g. 7 years for neurosurgery, or even more for oral & maxillofacial surgery since that also requires a 2-year DDS and a 6-year residency).
So 2 years for PA vs. between 7 and 11 for MD.
They are different from physicians, but they're still medical professionals.
I'm not sure I'd say that PAs are not "professionals" but I would say that they are only in a broader sense of the word.
Example?
(added emph) Um, yeah, I would be.
> it isn't stuff you need to call an ambulance for
If you crush or sever your fingers, you really do need to call an ambulance.
Paramedic here... If the bleeding is controlled, there's not really anything an ambulance is going to do other than give you an expensive ride to the hospital. Counting dispatch/response/on scene time, you'd likely get to the hospital just as quickly if someone drove you in their personal vehicle.
I'm not defending Tesla's practices here... I'm far more concerned about the other cases mentioned (workers passing out, feeling dizzy, etc).
The stuff Tesla is doing, allegedly, is only done by really shaddy companies.
Yes, medical care availability and quality suffer as the consequence of the European model, and that everybody regards it as "free" (despite having been taxed through the roof) doesn't help. On balance, it's probably better than the US system, but it's not the rose garden a large chunk of HN seems to think.
And nobody thinks health care is free, just universal. It might seem free as everybody is used to pay part of his salary every months but health care cost is a recurring topic over here.
Availability for emergencies, and ambulances are for emergencies, is by no means bad. There are medevac helicopters placed in a way to minimize response times. And they are covered by your basic insurance.
Availability can be an issue compared to private insurance due to budget constraints in the public model and the fact that doctors and hospitals have to live. Again, emergency services don't suffer from that. Could overall availability be better? Yes. Is availability overall satisfactory? I would say yes as well (point in case, general doctors in the countryside, there are not enough of those for a variety of reasons).
Ambulances are low risk and cheap somthey really should be used even down to ~0.1% chances of serious issues.
If the injury is higher (with the potential for compartment syndrome distal to the injury site, or closer to major blood vessels), then sure, I may be in a bit more of a hurry (a "bit" being the operative word there... slow is smooth, smooth is fast).
> If you crush or sever your fingers, you really do need to call an ambulance.
Why? It's not life threatening, you're diverting critical life-saving public resources from someone else, you can definitely get to a hospital faster on your own and probably faster with a ride share, and you are incurring a very high cost.
Furthermore, it's not like they get to the hospital and then are seen immediately because they showed up in an ambulance. They still have to wait in line because the injury is simply not severe
If they have first responders on site, there's no reason they can't get gauze and then go see a surgeon.
Questionable
you're diverting critical life-saving public resources from someone else
Why, do we have a desperate shortage of such resources? Then maybe we should build more of them instead of guilt tripping people who have suffered severe and perhaps permanent maiming.
Furthermore, it's not like they get to the hospital and then are seen immediately because they showed up in an ambulance. They still have to wait in line because the injury is simply not severe
Of course it's severe. It's not the worst thing that can happen to someone, but then ERs aren't swamped 24/7 either, and to the extent that they are overburdened we should do something about that rather than minimize the problem.
This is not true. Patients arriving in ambulances are triaged and helped according to need, just like anyone else.
This is something rather commonly stated and it's observably not true. I wonder what that's about, but I suspect it's a case of the way things are supposed to work (triage in the emergency room is supposed to not suck, but it's usually so bad that it is the weakest link in a patient's emergency care, even at a good hospital) and the way things actually work (riding in on the ambulance gets you in front of a doctor faster very close to 100% of the time).
For stuff like that there's nothing a paramedic will do that someone with basic first aid can't do. Until the victim is in surgery, there isn't a whole lot to do. Staunch the bleeding. Put the severed finger on ice. That's about it. Maybe you don't have much experience working in factories and shops where these sorts of accidents happen several times a year, but it's a gross overreaction to call medical professionals in. Once, in this shop this guy was cleaning out a paint mixer, and it somehow turned on while he had his arm in there. The mixing blade ripped his arm open, down to the bone from his shoulder to his wrist. We called an ambulance for that. What a mess, lol.
The gas station right next to my house has EMT vehicles almost every night hanging out and waiting to interveene in the area.
What?
One or more SEVERED FINGERS absolutely does justify an emergency response like calling for an ambulance. You know, "severed finger?" Meaning a finger that's been detached, ripped ragged, caught from it's bone and pulled off - that's what a severed finger is.
People in here are seriously arguing that it doesn't merit a call to an ambulance. As if a person in that situation is going to deduce the pros and cons of the situation at the time.
Common sense is too often a stranger here. Logic can take you far, but as in the case of this thread, much too far out.
Isn’t the complaint that the doctor did exactly that, and decided against the ambulance? (with the issue being that the cons may not have actually been full with the patients best interests in mind); the defense being that the doctor wad exactly the person who should be making that decision, and there’s a decent chance he was correct (based on his potential capacity to seize any life-threatening aspect of it, and assuming he did so)
It seems like a lot of assumptions are being made to make the claim that an ambulance should be required under any circumstance, having lost a finger. But even a tiny amount of trust in the doctor actually doing his doctoring is enough to say... maybe an ambulance would be unecessary, and a medical professional is probably the best person to make that call. If you’re not assuming malice, that is
If I severed my finger and a doctor came and gave initial treatment, and said "now get yourself to a hospital, but it's no longer urgent", I would take a Lyft too.
Besides the dickishness of pressing a typical Uber/Lyft driver into emergency service, ambulances have other advantages, such as the legal authority to speed and clear roads, and on-board medical equipment to continue stabilizing the patient during the trip.
Can we agree that, even if an ambulance isn't the best choice, it's amazingly callous to make a person with a severed finger sit around and wait for a fucking taxi rather than pull someone else off the line?
I'm sorry, what is this "indirect cost" of using an ambulance, when the purpose of them is to service severe injuries? Maybe you think a severed finger is no big deal, but how common do you think severed fingers are, to think that victims constitute a serious threat to the supply of ambulances on any given day?
It depends on the case. The problem is that people has a stereotyped vision of what is an ambulance. One vision that is typically urban and adapted to their country. The truth is that there are at least three types of ambulances and they are very different when in isolated areas or in big cities.
> how common do you think severed fingers are, to think that victims constitute a serious threat to the supply of ambulances on any given day?
Emergencies happen in clusters much more often than you could think.
On the other hand we have Anna Watson, a medical professional which was fired by said owner after raising concerns about their disregard for the patients' well-being. She's making very serious allegations and is risking a lot by blowing the whistle...
We have several (ex)-employees coming forward and claiming that their injuries were allegedly downplayed. There's no fucking way that one should take a Lyft to the hospital if they can't walk, sit or stand straight -> this indicates a potential spinal injury. Same goes for mangled hands. And yeah, even for amputated fingertips, the person is probably under shock!
And as always temps are getting screwed. They were allegedly turned away when requesting medical care.
There's even more criticism from anonymous employees, including medical assistants.
This smells to me like typical corporate bullshit, whatever the corporate doc says.
Disclaimer: I work for a Tesla competitor. Usually I try to stay away from this topic, but corporate callousness makes me angry. I don't care if Tesla suceeds or not, but they should treat their employees properly and obey the law.
Edit: there's obviously downvote brigading taking place on this topic. I've posted several relevant pieces of information, which according to the site rules should not be downvoted.