MET call

Today on my neurology outpatient placement I experienced my first MET (medical emergency team) call. We were just finishing lunch in the office, and a couple of patients had already arrived and were waiting in the outpatient gym. Our supervisor was describing to us a task he wanted us to perform before the end of the week when we heard someone scream, followed by large thud +++. We all ran out of the office and into the gym to find one of the patients lying on the floor having a seizure. There was also a small pool of blood developing on the floor, from the patient hitting his head. Our supervisor ran to the patient, supported his head and spoke comforting words while the patients’ seizure continued. In the meantime, the students ran around grabbing the first aid kit etc. to stem the bleeding, while another physio called the MET call.

The patients’ seizure lasted almost four minutes, during which he was conscious and talking. Once the seizure had subsided he continued to lie on the floor while we attended to the cut on his head, checked his pulse, and asked him what had happened The patient reported that his arm began “shaking” before he went into a full body fit causing him to fall off the plinth he was sitting on, onto the floor. He seemed quite calm and was making jokes and apologising for causing a scene. The patient was being treated in neurology outpatients for a stroke he had in January, from which he was making a good recovery. He had no past history of seizures or epilepsy. The MET took almost 10 minutes to arrive; they couldn’t find the location of neurology physio outpatients despite being given a clear description of the location. When they did arrive they turned up without the MET trolley, and no one seemed to be taking charge. Thankfully this event did not turn out to be serious enough to warrant a MET call; however I still found their response time, professionalism, and general organisation disgraceful.

This event was very confronting, particularly on initially finding the patient on the floor. The situation did not seem so serious upon seeing the patient conscious and talking during the seizure, but it was shocking nonetheless. After all the drama had finished and the patient had been taken away on a stretcher, our supervisor made the point that he was debating whether or not to call a MET call (the other option would have been to call the neuro ward and get a doctor to attend), but erred on the side of caution. I think if I was in the same situation again, and I was a senior physio taking charge, I would definitely make a MET call even if the situation did not seem serious enough to warrant one. We have a duty of care to our patients, and I would rather get in trouble for making a MET call when it was not indicated than for harm to be caused to a patient after neglecting to do so. I would hope that the response was more rapid and organised than the shambles I witnessed today though!

Anyone else had a MET call/code blue called on a patient??