I've assisted in the highly demanding task of transferring people between nursing home and hospital, visited the hyperbaric medicine unit (which looks like it came out of a Soviet nuclear silo) and spent two hours "ramped", which is the technical term for holding patients on ambulance stretchers while waiting for beds. As promised, it has contains periods of boredom (fell asleep in front of the TV after lunch) but the chance to hang out with some great people - the paramedics are good fun and very welcoming.
Of the three high-priority (lights and sirens) calls, two have been really not that urgent, but at the third we clattered up the back steps of a poorly-maintained establishment to find a couple of other paramedics thumping on the chest of a person passed out with probable drug overdose. "Have you ever done CPR?" they ask me, and when I admit to it never being on a real patient, they have me take over. I keep up a reasonable rate of compressions and am reassured that my technique is okay.
To the surprise of absolutely nobody, the patient never showed any signs of life. The lead from the first team declares the death, and we leave them to deal with the coroner. The person who started resuscitation before the ambulance arrived asks me something, and I reassure them that they did as much as they could.
So that makes me none for one in the resuscitation stakes, but that's not really a surprise - TV is different to real life.
2 comments
Mark Tearle :: Friday, June 5th
And I thought it was your home computer!
Tom :: Thursday, June 25th
"I've spent the last two days with the WA ambulance service, under the care of a couple of paramedics. It's been a good introduction to the realities of front-line emergency care."
This opening sentence makes it sounds like you were an accident victim rather than some sort of intern ...
