Street Medic SOAP Notes

Getting pepper sprayed or tear gassed at a protest sucks. If it's ever happened to you and you got an eye flush from a street medic, then you know how much they do to support people when some kind of shit goes down. Some of the tools of the trade are the squirt-top water bottle for eye flushing, a patch or some red duct tape if going marked, and a ventilator mask.

There's another tool that we made for local street medics during the Black Lives Matter protests, and we thought it might be useful to make them more widely available. SOAP Notes are standard forms for documenting a patient's symptoms, to record their vital signs, and to write down a treatment plan.

You can jot down the details of the patient's condition on one side of the sheet and track vital signs on the back. The notebook has a very rigid 72pt. chipboard back, so you can easily write on it while kneeling or standing up.

For newly-trained street medics, there's a reminder sheet in front with the steps to doing a scene survey, the AVPU scale, steps to making an assessment, and other critical information.

When all hell's breaking loose and the air is full of gas and rubber bullets, you don't usually need to record a patient's pulse -- a few quick squirts from the water bottle is all there's time or need for.

But if you're helping someone with an injury or who is experiencing a medical issue, in many cases, you do have time, and you do have a need, to carefully make an assessment. This notepad is a good tool for doing so in an organized and detailed way.

(NOTE: If you record notes, make sure you give them to the patient afterwards, or ONLY WITH THE PATIENT'S CONSENT to EMS if you transfer the patient.)