Wow!!! I've just done my first mentored shift - a night shift, 1030pm to 6.30am - and it was brilliant! I can't really remember many specific calls, I answered at least 15, but one call in particular stuck with me. It was from a mother whose 3-month-old baby was having breathing problems. I went through the script, and at the end she thanked me! I know it probably shouldn't have come as any great surprise, but to be honest, it did. I've listened in to plenty of calls, and that was about the 5th that I had taken myself, but she was the only person who was grateful and said thank you. I definitely think I'm in the right job, because for the whole drive home I had a huge grin plastered on my face, despite the fact that I'd been up for 21 hours!
I'm off to do it all again in a few hours too - bring it on!
Tuesday 18 December 2007
Thursday 13 December 2007
My First Live Call
Yesterday morning at 7.53am, I took my first live call. You can tell it was important, because I noted down the exact minute of the call!!
I set off from home at 5.30am, absolutely bricking it, and I realised - the person who will be at the end of the line doesn't even know that they're going to be dialling 999 yet, let alone having me answer the phone! Poor thing.
I sat down with my trainer at 7am, so that I could listen to her take some calls before I took one myself. We got 3: an elderly gentleman who fell over in the kitchen, a police call to a custody suite where an 18yom had decided to fall unconscious in the back of a police van when he was arrested, and a single-vehicle RTC.
Anyway, onto my call! As soon as I heard the beep in my ear and I started saying "Ambulance emergency..." a young woman shrieked down the phone that her little boy needed an ambulance. She sounded very distressed, so I was unable to get control of the call by using repetitive persistance. I couldn't even get the location of the emergency! She gabbled into the phone, and then decided that she'd drive the kid to A&E herself and hung up. I phoned back, and it was answered by a man, sounding equally as upset as the woman, who confirmed that they didn't want an ambulance. That was a bit of a strange first call, so my trainer let me take another one.
This was an easier call, because it was from the receptionist of a GP surgery, who was calling to report that a baby was fitting. I got the initial information down (chief complaint etc.), and started to go through my questions. This is where she started to get upset, because she didn't know the answers. The baby's mother had just brought him in from the street, so they weren't even patients at the surgery. I explained that I had to ask the questions to keep the computer happy, and ended up just putting 'unknown' as most of the answers. I thought the call went quite well, because I managed to calm the caller down, and hopefully the baby was just having febrile convulsions (where the baby gets too hot and has a fit, it's quite normal, but worrying if you don't know what's happening).
One of the other people on my course had a nightmare first live call - she had to talk someone through CPR! She did very, very well and we all gave her a round of applause when she came in, because our trainer explained what had happened. We found out today that the crew were really impressed with the effective chest compressions and thought the patient stood a good chance of survival, so they continued CPR until they got to the hospital. Unfortunately he died overnight, but at least his family got to say goodbye.
Roll on Monday night, I'm let loose on the public!! :-D
I set off from home at 5.30am, absolutely bricking it, and I realised - the person who will be at the end of the line doesn't even know that they're going to be dialling 999 yet, let alone having me answer the phone! Poor thing.
I sat down with my trainer at 7am, so that I could listen to her take some calls before I took one myself. We got 3: an elderly gentleman who fell over in the kitchen, a police call to a custody suite where an 18yom had decided to fall unconscious in the back of a police van when he was arrested, and a single-vehicle RTC.
Anyway, onto my call! As soon as I heard the beep in my ear and I started saying "Ambulance emergency..." a young woman shrieked down the phone that her little boy needed an ambulance. She sounded very distressed, so I was unable to get control of the call by using repetitive persistance. I couldn't even get the location of the emergency! She gabbled into the phone, and then decided that she'd drive the kid to A&E herself and hung up. I phoned back, and it was answered by a man, sounding equally as upset as the woman, who confirmed that they didn't want an ambulance. That was a bit of a strange first call, so my trainer let me take another one.
This was an easier call, because it was from the receptionist of a GP surgery, who was calling to report that a baby was fitting. I got the initial information down (chief complaint etc.), and started to go through my questions. This is where she started to get upset, because she didn't know the answers. The baby's mother had just brought him in from the street, so they weren't even patients at the surgery. I explained that I had to ask the questions to keep the computer happy, and ended up just putting 'unknown' as most of the answers. I thought the call went quite well, because I managed to calm the caller down, and hopefully the baby was just having febrile convulsions (where the baby gets too hot and has a fit, it's quite normal, but worrying if you don't know what's happening).
One of the other people on my course had a nightmare first live call - she had to talk someone through CPR! She did very, very well and we all gave her a round of applause when she came in, because our trainer explained what had happened. We found out today that the crew were really impressed with the effective chest compressions and thought the patient stood a good chance of survival, so they continued CPR until they got to the hospital. Unfortunately he died overnight, but at least his family got to say goodbye.
Roll on Monday night, I'm let loose on the public!! :-D
Sunday 9 December 2007
On the other side of the fence...
Well, what a fun Saturday night I had!! I'd planned to go to the cinema with my friend while he was back from uni for the weekend, we were going to see Fred Claus to get ourselves in the Christmas spirit - even my very cute Christmas tree in the corner of my room fails to make me Christmassy, I have no idea why! Then I was going to get very drunk in Wetherspoons with my other friend, but my flatmate decided she was going to be ill, so being the very caring person that I am I cancelled my plans and looked after her.
We were driving back from town at about 3.30pm and she made me pull over so she could throw up. She did that again on the way back, and even went blue round the lips so I tucked her up in bed. When she threw up twice more and shivered uncontrollably I phoned NHS Direct. As soon as I mentioned the fact that she'd gone blue earlier the call-taker told me to phone 999. I was reluctant to do that, because I didn't think we'd be taken seriously, and also my friend refused to let me. Then she threw up again so I phoned anyway. Vomiting once or twice can be normal, but she'd been sick five times! A single responder came five minutes later (well within the ORCON time!) and he was concerned enough to persuade her to go in. I followed in the car, which I felt guilty about because it would have been just as easy to take her in the car myself. I offered, but the paramedic said it would be better for her to go with him so he could keep an eye on her. They were short on ambulances (not surprising on a Saturday night!) so she went in the paramedic's car.
We were taken straight to a cubicle when we got there, and she had an ECG tracing. The nurse hurried out of the room with it, which worried me, but apparently it was OK. After four and a half hours of trying not to go insane staring at the same four walls, the doctor finally came and discharged her. They put it down to hyperacidity, because she had an acidic taste in her mouth, but we weren't convinced.
She was no better by this morning, and had been sick several more times through the night, so I almost had to forcibly drag her down to the hospital to see the out of hours doctor. The GP gave her a prescription to stop the vomiting and (touch wood) she's been on the mend ever since.
So there you go - I spent the week learning how to answer 999 calls, and end up making one at the weekend! It was funny being given the PDIs (post-dispatch instructions) and being given the standard "I'm going to ask a few more questions, but they won't delay any assistance," line - I could have saved the poor EMD the bother!
I take my first live call on Thursday, I hope I get a nice easy call like that, rather than a CPR attempt!
We were driving back from town at about 3.30pm and she made me pull over so she could throw up. She did that again on the way back, and even went blue round the lips so I tucked her up in bed. When she threw up twice more and shivered uncontrollably I phoned NHS Direct. As soon as I mentioned the fact that she'd gone blue earlier the call-taker told me to phone 999. I was reluctant to do that, because I didn't think we'd be taken seriously, and also my friend refused to let me. Then she threw up again so I phoned anyway. Vomiting once or twice can be normal, but she'd been sick five times! A single responder came five minutes later (well within the ORCON time!) and he was concerned enough to persuade her to go in. I followed in the car, which I felt guilty about because it would have been just as easy to take her in the car myself. I offered, but the paramedic said it would be better for her to go with him so he could keep an eye on her. They were short on ambulances (not surprising on a Saturday night!) so she went in the paramedic's car.
We were taken straight to a cubicle when we got there, and she had an ECG tracing. The nurse hurried out of the room with it, which worried me, but apparently it was OK. After four and a half hours of trying not to go insane staring at the same four walls, the doctor finally came and discharged her. They put it down to hyperacidity, because she had an acidic taste in her mouth, but we weren't convinced.
She was no better by this morning, and had been sick several more times through the night, so I almost had to forcibly drag her down to the hospital to see the out of hours doctor. The GP gave her a prescription to stop the vomiting and (touch wood) she's been on the mend ever since.
So there you go - I spent the week learning how to answer 999 calls, and end up making one at the weekend! It was funny being given the PDIs (post-dispatch instructions) and being given the standard "I'm going to ask a few more questions, but they won't delay any assistance," line - I could have saved the poor EMD the bother!
I take my first live call on Thursday, I hope I get a nice easy call like that, rather than a CPR attempt!
Wednesday 5 December 2007
On the Computers
We started using the computers this week, which was fun. The cardsets are fairly easy to use, but if I'm honest, I'm more of a computer buff than a cardset buff! ;-D
We learnt how to use Pro-QA (the programme we use, is it service specific or used nationally?) on Monday and Tuesday, and today was mainly spent practicing scenarios. I felt sorry for the person I was working with - he delivered a BBA who was breech, with the cord round his neck and not breathing, and just as everything was OK with the baby, the mother haemorrhaged very badly! Luckily, the ambulance crew came just as she stopped breathing. What can I say? I like throwing people in at the deep end! ;-D
Then this afternoon we had our Pro-QA assessments. I passed mine with flying colours apart from the fact that I didn't use the Echo protocol when I found out that the patient was hanging, which would have been potentially serious but luckily it was just a scenario, and if it was in real life I would have had a mentor beside me to remind me.
Hopefully I'll be back up in the EDC at some point this week, so I'll have something remotely interesting to tell you about! We were supposed to go up this afternoon after our assessments but it was extremely busy and everyone was stressed, so we did some quizzes instead which was all very fun.
As an aside, if you have any suggestions for my blog, please feel free to leave a comment. I'd love to know what you like/dislike, and what you'd like to see on my blog.
We learnt how to use Pro-QA (the programme we use, is it service specific or used nationally?) on Monday and Tuesday, and today was mainly spent practicing scenarios. I felt sorry for the person I was working with - he delivered a BBA who was breech, with the cord round his neck and not breathing, and just as everything was OK with the baby, the mother haemorrhaged very badly! Luckily, the ambulance crew came just as she stopped breathing. What can I say? I like throwing people in at the deep end! ;-D
Then this afternoon we had our Pro-QA assessments. I passed mine with flying colours apart from the fact that I didn't use the Echo protocol when I found out that the patient was hanging, which would have been potentially serious but luckily it was just a scenario, and if it was in real life I would have had a mentor beside me to remind me.
Hopefully I'll be back up in the EDC at some point this week, so I'll have something remotely interesting to tell you about! We were supposed to go up this afternoon after our assessments but it was extremely busy and everyone was stressed, so we did some quizzes instead which was all very fun.
As an aside, if you have any suggestions for my blog, please feel free to leave a comment. I'd love to know what you like/dislike, and what you'd like to see on my blog.
Saturday 1 December 2007
Up in the EDC!
Today was a more relaxed day at work, because the main exam was yesterday.
We did 3 tests on the PC, but they were easy because there were 20 questions with a pass mark of 80%, but you could do them again and again until you got 100%. I did two of them more than once, but eventually I got 100% all 3 times, so I look a lot smarter than I actually am!
The rest of the day was spent either upstairs in the EDC (Emergency Dispatch Centre, where the 999 calls are received) or in the town centre for lunch. I had fish and chips from a decent shop we found, nice and healthy!
I listened to several calls when I was in the EDC, some interesting and some not quite so. We got 3 or 4 calls for elderly people who had fallen and could not get up, including one from a couple of district nurses who had been to visit an elderly man and found him on the floor in a confused state. He told them he'd 'tripped over the dog', despite the fact that there wasn't a dog on the property!
Next up was an ASHICE (age, sex, [medical] history, injuries, consciousness and ETA) from an ambulance crew who were transporting a very unstable elderly gentleman to hospital. I could hear sirens in the background, so if they were transporting him on 'blues and twos' he must have been in a bad way.
A 27 year old male was up next, it was a 4th party call (the caller was in an entirely different part of the town to the patient, and didn't know him personally) from a crisis team to say that the patient had taken 7 days worth of antidepressants.
The most interesting, and potentially tragic, call we received came from a woman whose husband was having a tonic-clonic (aka grand-mal) epileptic fit, which is the most serious and life-threatening one there is. He was watching TV on the sofa when he suddenly started having a seizure. Naturally, she panicked and was near-hysterical when she got through to us. The call-taker I was observing used the techniques we're taught to calm her down, which started to work until she was told to go through to the sitting room and check if the gentleman was still breathing. When she came back, she was experiencing a 're-freak' event, which means that the seriousness of the situation hits her, so she got very distressed again. The lady's husband stopped fitting so we told her to drag him off the sofa and onto the floor, so his airway could be maintained. We stayed on the line with her, until eventually the ambulance arrived. Hopefully he'll make a full recovery.
So there you go, two hours spent with one call taker on a Friday afternoon - what's a Saturday night going to be like?!
We did 3 tests on the PC, but they were easy because there were 20 questions with a pass mark of 80%, but you could do them again and again until you got 100%. I did two of them more than once, but eventually I got 100% all 3 times, so I look a lot smarter than I actually am!
The rest of the day was spent either upstairs in the EDC (Emergency Dispatch Centre, where the 999 calls are received) or in the town centre for lunch. I had fish and chips from a decent shop we found, nice and healthy!
I listened to several calls when I was in the EDC, some interesting and some not quite so. We got 3 or 4 calls for elderly people who had fallen and could not get up, including one from a couple of district nurses who had been to visit an elderly man and found him on the floor in a confused state. He told them he'd 'tripped over the dog', despite the fact that there wasn't a dog on the property!
Next up was an ASHICE (age, sex, [medical] history, injuries, consciousness and ETA) from an ambulance crew who were transporting a very unstable elderly gentleman to hospital. I could hear sirens in the background, so if they were transporting him on 'blues and twos' he must have been in a bad way.
A 27 year old male was up next, it was a 4th party call (the caller was in an entirely different part of the town to the patient, and didn't know him personally) from a crisis team to say that the patient had taken 7 days worth of antidepressants.
The most interesting, and potentially tragic, call we received came from a woman whose husband was having a tonic-clonic (aka grand-mal) epileptic fit, which is the most serious and life-threatening one there is. He was watching TV on the sofa when he suddenly started having a seizure. Naturally, she panicked and was near-hysterical when she got through to us. The call-taker I was observing used the techniques we're taught to calm her down, which started to work until she was told to go through to the sitting room and check if the gentleman was still breathing. When she came back, she was experiencing a 're-freak' event, which means that the seriousness of the situation hits her, so she got very distressed again. The lady's husband stopped fitting so we told her to drag him off the sofa and onto the floor, so his airway could be maintained. We stayed on the line with her, until eventually the ambulance arrived. Hopefully he'll make a full recovery.
So there you go, two hours spent with one call taker on a Friday afternoon - what's a Saturday night going to be like?!
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