Christmas Day
I hope you have all had a wonderful day, and not got too drunk.
We've had a rather busy shift today. Our shift started at 06.30. At 06.45 we were off to out first job - a cardiac arrest at a nursing home. Good start to the shift.
When we arrived, we were met by one of the care staff, who told us that the patient was not for resus. She'd telephoned the out of hours GP service and explained this to them, but the GP had insisted she call an ambulance. On examining our 90 year old patient, we discovered it wouldn't have mattered if she was for resus or not, she was beyond our help. The family had been expecting her to die - her son had been to see her yesterday and had left with the feeling that his mum wouldn't make it through Christmas. Shame he was proved right.
Some of our other calls included:
A call to a 72 year old man who lived in sheltered accomodation. He'd gone out for an early morning stroll, and fallen. He was found by a "carer" after he'd been laying on the floor in the cold for nearly an hour. I've put quotes around the word carer, because she gave us the impression that she couldn't really care less. We took the poor man to hospital suffering from hypothermia. We later saw him in a much happier state about to be given a lift home.
Then an elderly lady who called us because when she woke up she could hear Land of Hope and Glory being sung. That, and her upstairs lights didn't work - and hadn't worked for three weeks. She'd been on to her solicitor to find out why the electricity was cut off upstairs but not downstairs. While the crew did the obs, I had a little hunt around and found the fuse box. I reset the trip switch for the upstairs lights, and hey presto - the lights worked again. The lady was very grateful, but I'm now concerned she'll start calling an ambulance every time her lights stop working.
Next, a man who'd had three fits. To have five fits in a row is apparently quite normal for him, so we were at a loss as to why we were called. We took him to hospital in case he had any more fits.
Then a man with chest pains. Turns out he's been having them on and off for a while after a chest infection, but he won't take any pain killers. His ECG was normal, but we still wanted to take him to hospital - he refused, so we arranged a GP to visit instead.
A lady who'd fallen and cut her leg. It was a green call (our lowest priority of emergency call) which we don't normally run to on lights and siren, but we were asked to because there was apparently "Serious bleeding". When we arrived, we found a lovely lady with a bandaged leg, and not a drop of blood in sight. "She insisted on finishing her Christmas dinner before we called an ambulance." I refrained from commenting - it is Christmas after all.
There were a couple of other calls, but our last call was to a man with a migraine for 12 hours. "Have you taken any pain killers?" asked my training crew.
"No, I didn't want to mask the symptoms!"
It was the first time my crew had heard that - they were gobsmacked. After we'd taken the patient to hospital, one of the crew said "Duh! That bloke has a migraine, refuses to take any pain killers for it, then wonders why it hurts so much it's making him sick!"
Welcome to the ambulance service......
We've had a rather busy shift today. Our shift started at 06.30. At 06.45 we were off to out first job - a cardiac arrest at a nursing home. Good start to the shift.
When we arrived, we were met by one of the care staff, who told us that the patient was not for resus. She'd telephoned the out of hours GP service and explained this to them, but the GP had insisted she call an ambulance. On examining our 90 year old patient, we discovered it wouldn't have mattered if she was for resus or not, she was beyond our help. The family had been expecting her to die - her son had been to see her yesterday and had left with the feeling that his mum wouldn't make it through Christmas. Shame he was proved right.
Some of our other calls included:
A call to a 72 year old man who lived in sheltered accomodation. He'd gone out for an early morning stroll, and fallen. He was found by a "carer" after he'd been laying on the floor in the cold for nearly an hour. I've put quotes around the word carer, because she gave us the impression that she couldn't really care less. We took the poor man to hospital suffering from hypothermia. We later saw him in a much happier state about to be given a lift home.
Then an elderly lady who called us because when she woke up she could hear Land of Hope and Glory being sung. That, and her upstairs lights didn't work - and hadn't worked for three weeks. She'd been on to her solicitor to find out why the electricity was cut off upstairs but not downstairs. While the crew did the obs, I had a little hunt around and found the fuse box. I reset the trip switch for the upstairs lights, and hey presto - the lights worked again. The lady was very grateful, but I'm now concerned she'll start calling an ambulance every time her lights stop working.
Next, a man who'd had three fits. To have five fits in a row is apparently quite normal for him, so we were at a loss as to why we were called. We took him to hospital in case he had any more fits.
Then a man with chest pains. Turns out he's been having them on and off for a while after a chest infection, but he won't take any pain killers. His ECG was normal, but we still wanted to take him to hospital - he refused, so we arranged a GP to visit instead.
A lady who'd fallen and cut her leg. It was a green call (our lowest priority of emergency call) which we don't normally run to on lights and siren, but we were asked to because there was apparently "Serious bleeding". When we arrived, we found a lovely lady with a bandaged leg, and not a drop of blood in sight. "She insisted on finishing her Christmas dinner before we called an ambulance." I refrained from commenting - it is Christmas after all.
There were a couple of other calls, but our last call was to a man with a migraine for 12 hours. "Have you taken any pain killers?" asked my training crew.
"No, I didn't want to mask the symptoms!"
It was the first time my crew had heard that - they were gobsmacked. After we'd taken the patient to hospital, one of the crew said "Duh! That bloke has a migraine, refuses to take any pain killers for it, then wonders why it hurts so much it's making him sick!"
Welcome to the ambulance service......
written on the PRF by Steve at 8:33 pm
1 Comments:
Excellent.
Merry Xmas and Happy New Year. Did they send you to the NYE riot?
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