New form passes care of patients to friends

By Nicole LaPrade

The university has implemented a new form for students to sign when they agree to take care of an intoxicated friend who refuses medical treatment from campus EMTs or the Santa Clara Fire Department.

Community Facilitators and Campus Safety officers, not EMTs, carry the forms when responding to calls. Only a patient's family member, a student of the same gender or a university staff person may sign the form. This excludes CFs and ARDs.

"We're not looking to put the blame on someone else, we're trying to build up a supportive environment to make certain that everyone is safe," Assistant Dean for Student Life Matthew Duncan said.

According to Duncan, students who sign the form are not legally responsible for what happens to the person. Instead, it is a way to ensure that an intoxicated student is being cared for.

Junior Richard Bersamina, who is both an EMT and a CF in Swig Hall, says he would be hesitant to give the form to any of his residents or suggest for them to sign and has doubts about the effectiveness of the forms.

"The form can say that they're not legally responsible, but it still has that feel," Bersamina said.

The idea for the new housing form arose from a situation last year that left university officials concerned. An intoxicated female resident student was left in the care of her unaffiliated visiting male friend without a guarantee that her condition would be properly monitored.

But according to Duncan, administrators felt it was important to ensure that someone, who ideally is not intoxicated him or herself, and a member of the Santa Clara community, would tend to a fellow student.

Even when a student has been deemed coherent and capable of refusing medical treatment, there is still the potential for conditions to worsen, Duncan worries.

When students refuse medical care or advice from the EMS or the Santa Clara Fire Department, they are required to sign, for themselves, an against medical advice form. The AMA forms are used on nearly all types of medical calls received and are not unique to Santa Clara.

To sign the form that releases EMTs from medical liability, the patient must be capable of understanding the consequences in refusing the care or advice of the EMTs.

According to Bersamina, who has been a Santa Clara EMT since his freshman year, for a student who is known to potentially be too intoxicated to refuse medical treatment, they must answer four basic questions to determine whether or not they are alert and oriented and able to make the decision.

The patient must know who they are, where they are, what the date is and what happened to them. If they answer even one of these questions incorrectly, they are legally incompetent to refuse medical treatment.

A patient who is deemed coherent enough to make informed decisions about their medical treatment have four options--to be transported if necessary, to have a friend take them to the hospital in necessary, to go to Cowell Student Health Center in the morning if necessary, or to do nothing. If they decide to do nothing, they are refusing to take the medical advice offered to them, and then must sign the AMA form.

Nick Johnson, a senior member of the campus EMT team, supports the implementation of the new form because it ensures that intoxicated students who do not need to be transported to the hospital will not become seriously sick or injured after the EMTs leave. He said that Santa Clara EMTs nearly always return every hour to check on intoxicated patients who were not transported to the hospital.

"My main concern about the new form is this: people seem much more willing to simply look after a friend than to physically sign a form that says they accept responsibility for caring for the patient," Johnson said. "I just hope that the new form does not deter people from looking after their friends," said Johnson.

Although it does not hurt to be cautious, said Bersamina, he feels that the new forms are undermining the confidence that the EMTs know what they are doing when releasing people.

He also said that he would not know what to do in a situation where no one was willing to sign the form -- a situation that recently occurred in Dunne Hall.

"There was quite a bit of on-scene confusion- In practice, the form has given rise to a number of complications that must be ironed out," Johnson said. "No protocol exists to handle situations other than the ideal. Nobody seems to know how to deal with a situation in which either nobody is available to sign the form or nobody wants to sign the form," Johnson said.

According to Duncan, if no one is willing to sign the form, the Office of Student Life will be contacted by Campus Safety and a decision will be made on the course of action that will be taken. If the student is local, their parents could be contacted or a staff person will be asked to watch the student for the remainder of the night or until another student is willing to.

Duncan also said that there are no set punishments for students who sign the form and don't follow through with their promise to watch their fellow student.

*ààContact Nicole LaPrade at (408) 554-4546 or nlaprade@scu.edu.