This is a bit of a pet peeve I picked up from one of my instructors at my old base. Dick is the Senior First Aid Instructor, and is a certified Physician Assistant (Army) with about 900 years of training and experience.
The other night during a training session with the FD, we viewed the CD on the new CPR protocols. All through the video the commentator referred to the patient as the "victim".
As Dick put it to us both as students and Instructor trainees, there are only two types of "victim" where that specific word should be used.
1) the victim(s) of a major disaster
2) a person who has been abused: sexually, verbally physically etc.
He drilled into us that a person who has receive injury due to circumstance of a vehicle incident, trauma from a fall, etc (our normal day to day events) is not a victim. He or she is a patient - plain and simple.
To refer to a person who is in need of medical attention from any event other than numbers 1 or 2 above is to put that person in a disadvantaged mental state, whether that person realizes it or not. Because they are not a victim, they are a patient.
Or maybe I am one of the few who thinks this way, I dont know, but it irritates me when I hear health care providers and emergency responders refer to a patient as a victim.
Ok... The Rant Lamp is Out.
The other night during a training session with the FD, we viewed the CD on the new CPR protocols. All through the video the commentator referred to the patient as the "victim".
As Dick put it to us both as students and Instructor trainees, there are only two types of "victim" where that specific word should be used.
1) the victim(s) of a major disaster
2) a person who has been abused: sexually, verbally physically etc.
He drilled into us that a person who has receive injury due to circumstance of a vehicle incident, trauma from a fall, etc (our normal day to day events) is not a victim. He or she is a patient - plain and simple.
To refer to a person who is in need of medical attention from any event other than numbers 1 or 2 above is to put that person in a disadvantaged mental state, whether that person realizes it or not. Because they are not a victim, they are a patient.
Or maybe I am one of the few who thinks this way, I dont know, but it irritates me when I hear health care providers and emergency responders refer to a patient as a victim.
Ok... The Rant Lamp is Out.
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