Violence from the drunks, druggies and criminals doesn’t worry me – the job that worries me is the little old lady who has become confused and is sitting in her living room with her husband’s service revolver, or her favourite kitchen knife, desperate to stop the strange men in green from stealing her away in the night.
As normal the ambulance service has investigated, but in a show of support for its road staff, has stated that the policy of waiting for the police at a rendezvous point is the correct thing to do.
We are not cowards, but neither are we stupid/paid enough to wander into dangerous situations.
I’ve just gotten on station for the start of my shift, only to find out that some scrote had broken into the station last night and nicked the video recorder and DVD player.
I mean, it’s not like we are ever on station long enough to use them, but it’s the principle …
These are the sort of people that we serve, these are the sort of people we are polite, professional and caring towards – and this is how we are repaid …
It’s getting so you have to tie things down now …
Yesterday a ‘Decontamination POD’ truck was stolen; this is an unmarked truck that we use to carry around chemical incident equipment. The current word is that this truck was carrying a load of atropine, which is the treatment for nerve agents.
If people were to start injecting this into themselves, they could get serious (as in fatal) effects.
I leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide if this is a good or a bad thing …
Still no drunks, but the weekend starts today and my shift ends at 2 a.m. …
I’m going to describe a job I went to last night.
The patient is female and 30 years old. She is married and is attempting to get pregnant. The only medicine she is taking is fertility treatment, and she is (obviously) having unprotected sex; she is normally fit and healthy and has no allergies. Her normal menstrual period is regular, but her period is over 2 weeks late this time around. She has been having nausea and vomiting for the past 3 days. She has no abdominal pain, and is not tender or guarding. She has no pain or increased frequency of passing urine. All vital signs are within normal limits.
So … given this information …
(a) What do you think is ‘wrong’ with her?
(b) Does she need a trip to hospital in an ambulance?
(c) Why do you think she hasn’t done a pregnancy test?
Sometimes a day can just drag along. Today, due to rather unusual circumstances, the day really dragged. Here is the time-line of today:
10:00 Turn up for work, brew a cup of tea.
10:01 First job of the day, taking someone from Newham hospital to Barts hospital.
10:02 Cut my finger on my locker door, try to stop bleeding, look for plaster.
10:23 Give up search for a plaster – there are none on the station – leave for Newham hospital.
10:26 Arrive at Newham hospital, ask for plaster; they also don’t have a plaster so I now have a huge dressing on my finger.
10:28 Meet with patient, pleasant woman – meet nurse who will be accompanying patient, barely understand nurse because of her inability to speak English.
10:30 Get patient’s notes and read them – they make more sense.
10:32 Ask nurse in charge why this patient (who is having cardiac monitoring and a blood transfusion) is going to an outpatient department. Get told that the patient ‘just is’.
10:54 After packaging the patient on a stretcher, loading them on the back of the ambulance, we set off for Barts hospital.
10:55 Nurse escort tells me that she gets travel sick.
10:55 and 20 seconds Give nurse a vomit bag.
11:37 Arrive at Barts hospital.
11:38 Enter outpatients’ department. Reception seem rather surprised to see patient on stretcher appear in front of them.
11:40 Problem is referred to the sister in charge, she also looks befuddled.
12:00 We wait while sister in charge phones around the hospital trying to work out why this patient is in her outpatient department.
12:30 Still waiting … We let Control know why we are waiting – there is no stretcher/bed to put the patient on.
13:00 Still waiting.
13:30 Still waiting – we let Control know that we still have the patient on our stretcher while they work out what they are going to do with our patient.
14:00 Still waiting.
14:30 Still waiting – we let Control know that we haven’t gone to sleep, we are told by sister in charge that patient will be admitted soon.
14:45 We place patient on an examination bed so that we can go back to answering emergency calls; patient will hopefully be in a hospital bed soon. We leave the nurse escort with the patient.
14:48 We are finally available for another job.
14:49 We realise we have nearly no fuel, and no fuel card to pay for fuel. We decide to return to station to borrow a fuel card off an unused ambulance.
15:20 We arrive back on station to look for fuel card (and have a cup of tea).
15:30 We leave to get fuel. Take infusion pump back to hospital – the ward seem surprised that the patient has been admitted to Barts.
15:48 We have fuel, we are now ready for another job.
16:00 We get a call, out of area Matern-a-taxi.
16:09 Arrive at Matern-a-taxi, contractions (genuinely) every 2 minutes, previous baby born in 3 hours, drive rather quickly towards her booked hospital.
16:12 Patient’s waters break – start swimming in back of ambulance.
16:20 Arrive at hospital.
16:24 Throw patient at midwife, run back to ambulance.
16:30 Tell Control that we need to return to station to mop out the back of the ambulance.
17:20 Get back to station, mop out.
17:45 Crew to relieve us are already on station; await ambulance to dry out.
18:00 Leave for home.
18:37 Get home, collapse into sofa, start writing this post.
- Fin -
This is how you get to work an 8-hour shift, yet only do two jobs …
After this post I got given a box of plasters by a fellow blogger. No more searching around ambulance stations for sticking plasters.