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!