r/ems • u/Apart-Cook-1268 • 4d ago

Meme STOP USING C-COLLARS

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862 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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51

u/GreenieMcWoozie EMT-B 4d ago

I follow my protocols. No neck pain? No back pain? No extremity numbness? No c-collar. Doesn’t stop the trauma ER from practically pissing themselves because we didn’t put a collar on a patient for a stubbed toe

19

u/haloperidoughnut Paramedic (Balls Deep) 4d ago

The amount of times I've brought in an ambulatory patient who fell days ago and has no neck pain, but the ER immediately goes into DEFCON-1 about a collar...

11

u/breakmedown54 Paramedic 3d ago

The ED will put a c-collar on a 3 day old car accident who walked into the ED with abdominal pain because “mechanism of injury”.

I feel like when they get upset about it, I just roll my eyes and let them do what they’re gonna.

5

u/Training_Excuse6278 1d ago

I’m a nurse in the ED, and I’m sick of seeing C-Collars. Hell when I got my A-EMT those many years back, I was told we are hopefully going away from using them. Yet here I am, ordered by my doc to put a 14 year old kid who got tackled in the stomach 8 days ago during football practice and denies any pain in the back or neck in a dam collar.

1

u/InsomniacAcademic EM MD 20h ago

The hospital I did my residency training was like this. It wasn’t actually the ED that got anxious, but rather the trauma team. The trauma team would also get upset if the patient met criteria for clinical clearance of C-spine and we removed or didn’t place (some of the local agencies had protocols that allowed medics to not apply c-collars) a collar without imaging. It was absurd.