Today is Friday the 13th, a day of traditionally bad luck. The roots of the superstition is most likely a combination from numerology considering 13 to be unlucky because it is an irregular number and from Friday being considered an unlucky day with its associated deaths and cataclysmic economical events that have occurred on Fridays. Pop culture has embraced this day in the form of Jason Voorhies and the horror genre has made it a celebrated event.
As Rogue Medic dives into some research about how Friday the 13th being bad for your health I’m going to talk about 13 superstitions that I have when working EMS…
- You will get a call once you order and pay for your meal
- Half the food you order you will in fact end up wearing instead, 75% of it if you are wearing a white shirt
- You won’t need a piece of equipment until you don’t have it
- Your suction unit will not fail until you need it
- Everyone in your area will need an ambulance at 3:33am and will call at the same time
- Everyone outside your area will need an ambulance before everyone in your area needs an ambulance
- Every patient that needs intubation will have just consumed a Thanksgiving feast
- Regardless of the type or number of lights on your ambulance you will not be seen
- Regardless of the type or number of siren speakers on your ambulance you will not be heard
- Calls received after 6:00am and before 8:00am for the “unconscious” is really for the recently deceased who will have “just been” seen awake and alive before bed time
- Time magically slows to a crawl tripling the length of a shift every time your regular partner calls out sick
- The bigger the patient, the smaller the place they are when calling for an ambulance
- Morbidly obese patients MUST live on the top floor of a building without an elevator or an elevator that is broken
What superstitions do you have in your EMS system?
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Our pagers are fitted with tiny hidden cameras that allow dispatchers to see when we are eating, sleeping or on the toilet.
And here we thought we had privacy issues with Apple and Google. Obviously
they have NOTHING on EMS Dispatch.
No kidding.
Never say the “q” word or the pager gods will be most unkind!
Oh yes! Never ever say “Quantum”!
If you consider chili and beer to be a Thanksgiving feast.
I won’t question someone’s cultural preferences, but it definitely could be.
Besides… I’m all about turkey stuffed with chili.
And beer.
#10) Or it’s one of the shelters calling to dump a guy that doesn’t want to get out of bed. All of which are supposed to have chest pain, but non do.
#13) Or worse, they live in the basement and have to be carried UP a long flight of stairs.
Never, ever, take the off going crew’s assurances that “The truck is fine, we restocked it.” because the are full of s***. Run, don’t walk, to check out the truck. I once had a crew tell me that the truck was fine, only to find out that 7 of 8 lug nuts were missing. Where they went? No one knows.