Physician assistant tends to wounded during Las Vegas shooting

In the line of fire in Las Vegas, a physician assistant gives aid to the wounded.

My wife and I had seats off to the right of the main stage. The shooting started, I think, during Jason Aldean's third or fourth song.

When that first volley went out, we were not exactly sure what was going on. It sounded like firecrackers. After the second volley of shots, we knew what was happening.

People were ducking down, running, yelling and screaming. We also noticed some people were getting hit by gunfire.

We tried to take a little bit of cover behind our seats, but I made the decision that we needed to try to work our way out of where we were. There was a lull in the gunfire and we used that as our moment to try and get out. In all honesty, I was focused on making sure my wife and I were safe getting out of where we were.

I also knew it was my role as a physician assistant, clinician and an ER provider to get to a position where I could start rendering aid to any of the wounded. We made our way across to the medical tent—I had noted its location earlier in the concert—and started working.

We had everything. There was a patient outside of the tent on an electric cart with a very unstable chest wound. I had patients with abdominal wounds, extremity wounds, all the way down to sprained ankles and people who were so emotionally distraught that they couldn't process what was going on.

We had random civilians come in and say, “I'm an off-duty firefighter/paramedic from Loma Linda,” or, “I'm an ICU nurse from Kansas, what can I do to help?”

That continued at the hospital where every patient we encountered told us the exact same thing when we went to help them: “Go find somebody else who is worse off than I am. I can wait.”

In an odd way it was almost heartwarming to see that resurgence of humanity and selflessness from people despite the events that were going on.