Out of Area

Occasionally, we get calls for other parts of the UK. Usually this happens if somebody – from Cardiff for example – phones a relative in Sussex, and they suddenly collapse. The person in Sussex will phone 999, and we process the call as usual. When the call is finished, we’ll look up the ambulance service for that county and pass it to them to deal with. Yesterday, I took a call for a patient in High Wycombe, a 73 year old female who had collapsed in her utility room. Her son, who had special needs, panicked and called his uncle who lives in Brighton. He phoned 999 himself, and automatically got through to the Sussex control room. I took the call as usual, but then there was some confusion over which service actually covered High Wycombe! It’s East Midlands Ambulance Service, if you’re interested. Altogether that call took 11 minutes from the initial beep in my ear to completing passing the call to EMAS. Not bad!

Sometimes, we have to use our powers of persuasion with patients. I got a call from a very sheepish 57 year old man who was stuck on the toilet. He was disabled, and couldn’t transfer himself from the toilet to his wheelchair. He was also pretty certain that something was going on ‘down there’ so that was causing him a bit of pain. He wasn’t sure he needed an ambulance, and asked me if I thought he did. “How will you get off if we don’t come out to you?” I asked. He couldn’t think of an answer, so agreed to let me send a crew to him.
“I feel such a fool!” he told me. “Stuck on the toilet at my age! Will the crew mind? It seems such a stupid reason to have an ambulance.”
“That’s what we’re here for, to help people. People call ambulances for far more trivial reasons.”
I felt pleased with the way I handled this call. I made this man feel slightly better about calling us out, and even though we could have refused to send one because he wasn’t in a life threatening situation, how else would he have got off the toilet? If he’d called the out of hours GP, I’m sure they’d have referred him straight to us anyway!

Full Moon

I always thought it was a myth when my colleagues told me that the strangest calls seem to happen when there’s a full moon in the sky. I was on a 12-hour night shift recently, and it was all going OK until about 1.30am when Dave – a regular caller – phoned us, saying he’d passed out 3 times in as many hours. I went through my questions as usual, but he kept saying he couldn’t understand me, like I was speaking a foreign language. As I was trying to ask the rest of my questions, he told me the doorbell was ringing (at that time in the morning??) and insisted on answering it. It was clear he wasn’t going to give up, so I let him go and answer it. He came back to the phone a few seconds later, saying the taxi driver was there. “So you’re getting a taxi to the hospital?” I asked. “Shall I cancel the ambulance?”
“No,” Dave sounded exasperated, “The taxi is here so I can get food! You speak to him, I haven’t got time for your stupid questions!” so he passed me to a very confused sounding Italian man, who got very impatient when I asked to be put back on to Dave and slammed the phone down. Agitated, I phoned back and the taxi driver picked up. “Does Dave still need an ambulance? Is he going to make his own way?”
“You’re making me late for work, go away and leave us alone!” was the reply I got. Dave grabbed the phone from the taxi driver, so I asked him. “No,” came the grumpy reply “I just want some food, so go away!” We got a further 4 calls from Dave that night – the saga only ended when I got one of his calls at 4.45am and passed it straight to my DDM (duty dispatch manager) who managed to persuade him that maybe it would be a good idea to go to bed.

At 2.30am I got a call from a woman who said he partner was hitting himself over the head with a deodorant can. She sounded exasperated, and explained that he had a history of mental health problems for the past 3 weeks. No matter how many times she asked him, he simply refused to give her the deodorant can. I wonder what happened to make him go crazy like that?

My final call of the night came via NHS Direct, for a female with a headache and confusion. The twist was, she was Arabic and neither she nor her husband – the caller – spoke English. NHS Direct had got a translator from Language Line, so we knew what we were dealing with but this made the call much longer and drawn out than usual. I had to ask my question which was translated, then the answer was also translated, a bit like you see on TV sometimes. It was very interesting though, and fitting that it should be the first Language Line call I get, exactly six months into the job!

A Mother's Instinct

Not being a mother, I can't say I really understand, but it seems to me that a mother's instinct is an incredible asset. My mum can almost always tell when I'm lying!!

When it comes to life-threatening emergencies, this instinct is amazing. I answered a call for a one year old little boy, who had spots and was vomiting. The call came from the child's mother, who had phoned NHS Direct earlier that evening. They put the boy's symptoms down to chickenpox and recommended the usual plenty of rest and calamine lotion to soothe the itching. But the mother's instincts told her this was not just a case of chickenpox. She was convinced it was something worse, as the baby was now quite floppy and unresponsive. When the crew got to the house, they were equally as concerned for the baby and rushed him into hospital on blue lights and sirens. I later found out that he had been diagnosed with meningitis. If she hadn't phoned 999, his condition would have deteriorated rapidly and he could have died.

Sometimes, the instincts of a parent - more often than not it's the mother, for some reason - can be rather annoying for the child (offspring, I should say, I'm not a child!) but on other occasions, such as this, it can save lives.

Number one rule..

...Windows are not designed to be jumped through, especially when they're closed!!

Of course, most people know that already, and would think I'm pretty stupid for mentioning it in this blog. But one of the most interesting (and major, it turns out) calls on Friday night turned out to be just that. A very drunk, and very upset, 19 year old decided to throw herself through the window of the local post office just to show her (now extremely embarrassed) boyfriend how much she loved him. Being quite a warm Friday night, the town centre was milling with people, so we got several calls about this particular incident. There were 7 call-takers on duty that evening, and I think we all got at least one call relating to it!

We had a paramedic manning the clinical advice desk that night, so he drove the 300 metres to the scene. The patient's leg was bleeding severely when he arrived, and apparently her nerves and muscles were there for all to see. Her right thumb was completely degloved (the skin was torn off the thumb tissue - not pretty!) and she was taken straight to A&E when the ambulance arrived. We later heard that she'd been taken for extensive surgery soon after her arrival at A&E. Because of the damage she's done to her thumb, she won't be able to return to her job as a hairdresser for a long, long time. That was certainly a night for her to remember, although I'm sure she'd love to forget it.

The Joys of a Saturday Night!

I hope you've enjoyed my last couple of posts, they explain more about the technicalities of my job, because I haven't really had many interesting calls!

This week is my relief week, so I did a 10-hour night shift last night -I worked from 8.30pm to 6.30am. It started off well enough, the 'usual' chest pains and falls, as well as drunk people and overdoses. It got interesting when a call dropped into my ear and the first thing I heard was shrieking teenage girls. The alleged problem was that one of the girls - 18 years old, apparently - had taken an overdose of ecstacy tablets. They seemed rather proud of the fact they were experimenting with drugs, despite the fact that the tablets seemed to be having a detrimental effect on the patient's health. When I asked exactly where they were, they said they were by the side of the road next to a well known local park. I took the call as usual, then went on to take a couple more calls.

After about 15 minutes, the girls phoned back and the call came through to me again. The patient was now deteriorating, losing consciousness. They were louder and more giggly than before, and one girl in particular seemed quite mouthy, yelling in the background "Where the hell's this f***ing ambulance? Hurry up, you f**ing c***s!" I don't have time for people who shout abuse at the people who are trying to help them, so I asked the caller to get her mate to calm down. The girls kept passing the phone from one person to the other, including the patient, who seemed really drugged up and out of it. Several minutes after the ambulance had booked on scene, there was still no sign of the crew so I asked for better location details. The whole time, the swearing girl was getting more agitated, so I instructed the caller to send her to check the road sign. She came back, and what do you know? The whole time she'd been screaming abuse about the ambulance service, I'd sent our ambulance to completely the wrong side of the park! I entered the correct location details, and sent one of the girls to flag down the ambulance.

So that's that. An ambulance, in the busiest town in the county on the busiest night of the week, driving round and round in circles because a bunch of kids were too high on drugs to give me the correct location in the first place! Oh yes, it's the joys of a Saturday night!