Emergencies happen anywhere, anytime, and sometimes, medical professionals find themselves in situations where they are the only ones who can help. Is There a Doctor in the House? is a Medscape Medical News series telling these stories.
I had worked a normal 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. shift in our emergency department. It was a nice day out, so I put my headphones in and started walking home through the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Denver. I passed a couple of buildings and reached an alleyway. At that moment, I glanced over.
Two guys were standing over a third person who was down on the ground. One of the people standing was on the phone. I paused for a second and thought, that doesn’t look right.
The guy on the ground was clearly out. And the other two were looking concerned like they didn’t know what to do.
I walked up the alley and asked, “What’s going on? Can I help?” One of the guys explained that they had just found this man lying here and had already called 911. They sounded a little bit out of their element. They certainly weren’t medically trained.
I leaned down next to the man on the ground. He was probably in his mid-to-late 40s. Unconscious. I always start with, “Hello? Can you hear me?” No response.
I felt for a pulse and he had one, but he didn’t appear to be breathing. I thought, I know what this is. I said, “Sir, I’m going to open your eyes.” I opened his eyes, and his pupils were tiny. It was almost certainly an opioid overdose.
And I had naloxone in my bag.
I got it out and started to assemble it. I didn’t have Narcan, which is the easy one. I had to put this kit together, draw up the medication, and put on the little nasal atomizer.
The two other guys were standing there watching. Then the one on the phone walked down to the end of the alley to where the ambulance was probably going to arrive so he could wave them down.
I gave the man the 4 mg of naloxone, two in each nostril.
He still wasn’t breathing. I did a basic maneuver where you lift his jaw a little bit to help open up the airway.
Suddenly, he started breathing again. I couldn’t do any meaningful measurements of his oxygen saturation or anything like that. I just kind of looked at him and thought, Okay, he has a pulse. He’s breathing now. That’s good.
Luckily, the cavalry arrived soon after that. Our Denver Health paramedics pulled up into the alley, and one of them recognized me from the ER. I explained that I had already given the guy naloxone. They did their assessment, and he still wasn’t breathing well, so they gave him some breaths with a mask and a bag.
We got him onto the gurney and into the back of the ambulance. They started an IV. He seemed to be breathing okay by then, and his numbers looked okay. But he wasn’t awake yet by any means.
I handed off care to them and disposed of my sharp in the ambulance. Then they took him into the ER that I had just left moments ago.
The two other guys had already disappeared. I think they saw the ambulance and thought, our job is done. So, I didn’t end up talking to them at all.
So, just like that ... I started walking home again.
I like to think of myself as a cool, calm, collected person working in the ER. But my heart was definitely going fast at that point. I called my wife to tell her about the crazy thing that just happened, and she could hear in my voice how amped up I was.
In the ER, it’s very common to see patients who need naloxone, have opioid toxicity, or have received Narcan in the community. Luckily, this man was found right away. He had likely overdosed only a few minutes earlier. Those scenarios can go bad very quickly. If there’s no one there, people often die.
That’s why I started carrying naloxone.
Now, I encourage all my friends to have some, and I suggest all medical professionals to keep some with them. Just be prepared. Put it in your backpack, your purse, keep it in the house, in the car, wherever. The nasal autoinjectors are incredibly easy. Like, stick it up the nose, push the big red button. Done.
When we train lay people to administer Narcan, we try to keep it simple. If you see someone, and they’re not responsive, not breathing, just give it. It’s not that there’s no possible harm if you’re wrong. But the benefits so vastly outweigh the risks that we are very aggressive to say, go ahead and give it.
I think we all have a responsibility to care for our communities. Obviously, that can take a lot of different forms. I had the privilege of being in the right place at the right time with the right tool to potentially save a life. That was the form it took for me that day.
Later, I followed up with a friend who took care of the man in the ER. He went through our standard procedure, being monitored to make sure the opioids didn’t outlast the naloxone. We have a lot of resources and next steps for people that have opioid use disorder. He was made aware of those. And then he walked out. I never saw him again.
It’s not the sexy part of our job in emergency medicine, not the super high–intensity adrenaline rush–type work, but a lot of what we do is talk to people like this guy. We counsel them. We think about their longer-term health and not just the overdose. This is an incredibly high-risk population in terms of their mortality risk from the opioid use disorder. It’s astronomical.
I obviously believed in this work before, but that day changed something for me. It added a layer of urgency. Now, when I have a moment in the emergency room to connect with someone, I know the reality — this person sitting in front of me could die in an alley. Maybe not today, but next week or next month.
I have the naloxone in my bag. Just in case.
Patrick Joynt, MD, is an emergency medicine physician with Denver Health in Denver.
Are you a medical professional with a dramatic story outside the clinic? Medscape Medical News would love to consider your story for Is There a Doctor in the House? Please email your contact information and a short summary to access@webmd.net.
A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com .