A father takes his unconscious child to the hospital, even escorted by the police. He is flashed – and loses his driver’s license. Is that fair? Our author, himself a father and paramedic, is ambivalent. A comment.
When a rescuer is called to a children’s emergency, the pulse always goes up a bit. When you then get out of the ambulance and hear the child screaming or crying from the apartment, you are usually immediately a little more relaxed. That sounds paradoxical at first, but it’s easy to explain: A child who screams and cries still has energy and, above all, gets air. This means that one of the greatest dangers for children, lack of oxygen, does not exist for the time being.
With the father, who is currently the subject of heated debate in Germany, the situation was obviously different: his child was unconscious, limp, possibly turned blue. A horror idea for all parents.
It was later determined that the little girl had a febrile seizure. A not so rare, usually not serious complication of high fever, but which requires medical clarification – and which has an absolutely dramatic effect on parents in any case. The man then grabbed his child and raced with him to the hospital. As a result, he lost his driver’s license, although he was even accompanied by police officers on the way.
Many are outraged by the judge’s decision, who said the father should have called an ambulance. Legally, the matter is relatively clear, but many mothers or fathers ask themselves: What would you actually do in such a situation? As a father of two daughters and a previous 16-year professional experience as a paramedic, I can understand both sides.
What speaks against the action of the father:
As a father, however, you can understand that the man acted differently in the present case:
The bottom line is that in this case, judges cannot actually make a decision that makes everyone involved feel that they have been treated fairly. As a paramedic, I can understand the judges’ arguments. As a father, it feels kind of wrong when someone just wanted to help their child and gets punished for it without actually harming anyone.
As a father or mother, one can only hope that one does not find oneself in such a situation. The case has one good thing: according to media reports, the little girl is doing well again. Then the anger about the temporary loss of your driver’s license will hopefully be forgotten at some point.
