Emergency! (TV Series)
The Wedsworth-Townsend Act (1972)
Kevin Tighe: Paramedic Roy DeSoto
Photos
Quotes
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Paramedic Roy DeSoto : This application isn't signed.
Paramedic John Gage : I wanted to talk to you first.
Paramedic Roy DeSoto : Sure. What do you want to know?
Paramedic John Gage : You went through that first class of special medical training, right?
Paramedic Roy DeSoto : Right.
Paramedic John Gage : If you rolled on a rescue call now. Today. Could you use that training to treat a victim on the scene?
Paramedic Roy DeSoto : No.
Paramedic John Gage : Then why should I, or anybody else, spend twelve weeks, or twelve minutes, learning to do what we can't do?
Paramedic Roy DeSoto : Because you said *today*. There's a bill before the state legislature right now, Assembly Bill PM 11307, that will permit qualified fire department personnel to administer medical assistance in the field.
Paramedic John Gage : *If* it's passed.
Paramedic Roy DeSoto : You've asked a few questions before you came in here, didn't you?
Paramedic John Gage : I want to find out if it's a job, or just a title.
Paramedic Roy DeSoto : It's a job all right. It's going to be the most important advance in emergency medicine in the last fifty years.
Paramedic John Gage : Going to be. Well, maybe you'd better just hang-on to that application until it is.
Paramedic Roy DeSoto : That'll be too late. We're already late. Gage, there are over six-and-a-half million people in Los Angeles County right now and not nearly enough doctors to handle them even under normal conditions. When you get into an emergency situations: freeway accidents, drownings, heart attacks and a thousand others, people are dying at the scene! People who could stay alive if there was somebody at the spot who knew what to do!
Paramedic John Gage : But they won't let you fuction.
Paramedic Roy DeSoto : They will. They'll have to. Look, if that bill passes in the Legislature today, do you know how many people we have ready for the job?
[Gage shakes his head "no"]
Paramedic Roy DeSoto : Just me, and five other guys who took the training course. Six men for six-and-a-half million people. No, we can't wait for the go ahead and then train our people. If there's once chance in a million that bill will be passed, we have to be ready.
Paramedic John Gage : Use your pen?
[Gage signs the application]
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Nurse Dixie McCall : Kell.
Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D. : Yes?
Nurse Dixie McCall : 51 on the link.
[indicates communication radio link to field paramedics]
Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D. : What do they want?
Nurse Dixie McCall : Help.
Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D. : [into transmitter link] 51, go.
Paramedic Roy DeSoto : [over biophone] We have a male, tunnel worker, approximate age 60, was trapped under a digging machine. Patient had a cardiac history. He is now diaphoretic. Vital signs: 80 over 50; rate: 100 and irregular; respirations: 12 and shallow.
Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D. : Do you have your EKG hooked up?
Paramedic Roy DeSoto : Affirmitive, doctor.
Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D. : Send me something so I can get a reading.
[turns on EKG printer]
Paramedic Roy DeSoto : This will be Lead 2.
[turns on ELG transmitter]
Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D. : [reads EKG strip] Multiple PVC's.
[sees reading change]
Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D. : V-Tac.
[reading changes again]
Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D. : He's starting to fibrillate.
[to DeSoto]
Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D. : Defibrillate! 400 watt/seconds!
Nurse Dixie McCall : Kell! They're not authorized to...
Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D. : [into link] Are you receiving? Come on, 51! You've got a dying man on your hands.
Paramedic Roy DeSoto : Doctor, if we administer shock and we lose him...
Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D. : You're losing him right now!
Paramedic Roy DeSoto : You said yourself it wasn't worth risking the program for one case!
Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D. : I just heard from Walski in Sacramento. The bill passed late last night.
Nurse Dixie McCall : Kell... You never heard from Walski.
Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D. : Yeah, well I should have.
Nurse Dixie McCall : Do you know what you're doing? If that bill doesn't pass Kell, they'll crucify you.
Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D. : [looking at EKG strip] I don't care about that. We're not at a party or talking to a committee. That man's dead right now.
[into communication link]
Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D. : Zap him, dammit! Zap him!
Paramedic Roy DeSoto : [watches as Gage applies the defibrillator paddles to the man's chest] 400 watt/seconds!
[Gage shocks him]
Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D. : [reads strip] No conversion.
[into link]
Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D. : Hit him again!
Paramedic Roy DeSoto : 400 watt/seconds!
[Gage shocks the man again. At the hospital, Brackett sees the EKG adopt a normal rhythm]
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Paramedic John Gage : Sixth and Kenmore. That's over near 10's. Hang a left, I know a shortcut.
Paramedic Roy DeSoto : I know a better one. We swing right to Rampart Emergency.
Paramedic John Gage : What for?
Paramedic Roy DeSoto : Get a nurse on board. You forgot: we're the impotent wonders.