A Sense of Accomplishment.

This is the first A&E ambulance I ever went on. I know before I said I was going to be on a car, but in the end I ended up on this with a training officer, Sally, and newly qualified Paramedic, Phil.
I was due to do a 07:00 to 19:00 shift, and I wanted to be early. I left my house at about 05:00, and was at the station by 06:00. I knocked politely at the door and the night shift let me sit down and wait for my crew. As the crews came in I sat there quietly until Sally came, and we introduced ourselves. Shortly after Phil came in, we shook hands. They seemed like nice guys.

Ensuring that their Paramedic bags were stocked up, we waited for our vehicle to come in from a job night staff had been on, but another job came through on the phone. So, we had to take the ambulance that was in the garage, the one above. In went all the kit, as well as me, in the back. And off we went, sirens screaming at the traffic to move out of the way, while the blue lights bounced off the surrounding buildings. It felt strange, I was expecting a rush of adrenaline to be pumping through my body, to be fair I thought my brain owed me a little stimulation considering I had woken up so early, but alas none came. I was excited, just not as much as I thought I would have been. So after going through lots of red lights and round the wrong way of traffic islands, we finally made it to the address in double quick time. The MDT (mobile dispatch terminal, it gives information about the job in question) stated that it was a 76 year old male complaining of chest pain. Phil told me to grab the carry chair and blanket, and off we went. The FRU had already beaten us there:


(taken on station, I'm not silly enough to whip my camera phone out on a job)

The FRU Paramedic had started doing some basic obs, and had the gentleman on O2. Phil started to ask the gentleman whether he had any chest pains, and we quickly began to ascertain that he didn't, but that he had been having a domestic dispute with his wife, and wanted the police. Phil asked me to set up the carry chair and blanket it. Thank God the training kicked in. Up until this point the experience had felt a bit like watching an episode of Trauma, but it changed once I began interacting. Phil got the gentleman onto the chair with ease, and asked me if I wanted to take the bottom end of the chair and carry him down the stairs. For a second I panicked. i had only used dummies before. Then, a moment of clarity, "I'm going to have to do this for real at one point, so it might as well be now." As there was a training officer there I wasn't too worried about anything going wrong, so we did it. By this point the adrenaline had kicked in good and proper (finally), the gentleman must have been about 50kg, but it didn't feel like it, for all I knew he could have been made out of paper.

In the gentleman went into the back of the ambulance, and we did some more obs on him. Phil explained everything he did, he was so damn smart! We took him to the hospital, and handed him over to a member of A&E staff looking rather dubious about dealing with this gentleman. Bless.

Back into the ambulance, to carry out a decent VDI (vehicle daily inspection). That took a good hour, checking everything was stocked up and clean. I now have a good understanding of what equipment we carry, and where it is too.

So. Off we continued through the day, all the jobs we went to apart from the first were people who were genuinely sick. No time wasters. I was amazed.
The jobs included:

• Suspected heart attack who we had to blue light into hospital.
• A lady reported having severe respiratory distress, who had a heart rate of 226. Needless to say we blued her into hospital, and the doctors gave her a drug called Adonzine (I think), that slowed her heart down, as if she kept beating so fast her heart would probably stop. I think the diagnosis was Narrow Complex Tachycardia. I helped carry her to the ambulance, so in a tiny, tiny little small way I helped to save her life. It feels good..
• A poor gentleman who had extreme abdo pain, you could tell he was in deep pain. Its really not pleasant to see somebody who is genuinely in pain, you can just tell there are. We carried him down two and a half flights of stairs too.
• A gentleman with a query stroke, who looked really ill and was shaking a lot. We suspected an infection of some sorts, but Phil was surprised when he took his pulse and it was 29. He asked me to get the chair quickly, he thought we needed to move sharpish. However, he did ask if this (66 year old) gentleman was an athlete, or a runner and he was, which explained the low pulse. Panic over. Phew.
• A transfer for a gentleman to an eye A&E from his home. The doctor advised him not to drive and to call LAS, but the gentleman wasn't expecting an A&E crew to turn up, to be honest neither were we. In truth a "green crew" should have been sent, crews who deal with low priority calls, but none were available. But since we were the only available resource we were sent. I was just about to go to the loo when the call came through on station, I swear that damn phone is connected to the toilet door handle. Bless this guy, he knew he didn't need an A&E ambulance, but I tried to reassure him on the way there. The trip took us about 45 minutes, so once we got there we popped to the loo and pushed green to mobile i.e. ready for a job. Unfortunately it was about 18:15, we knew were going to get a job before we got back to station and of course we did.
• A pregnancy! A Somalian lady was lying on her bed writhing in pain at the contractions, her husband had to translate as she didn't speak a word of English. We had to take all the family, as there was no one else to look after the couple's other two kids. Very cute they were too. The lady didn't give birth in the ambulance, but all the time I kept thinking, "I bet you're kicking yourself for doing the naughty nine months ago".

Well that was it. We got back onto station at about 20:00, so had done a thirteen hour day. It had zoomed by. I honestly don't know where the time went. All the time during the day all I could think about was "What an absolutely fantastic job!". The fact that someone is mad enough to pay me to do it as well is the icing on the cake. Life is good.

Tomorrow: UNIFORM! I got a massive box of it yesterday, I just need to catalogue it. The Missus loves a man in uniform. Till tomorrow then.