NIght shifts

Well I am working the full weekend nights this week and it has been a fairly eventful set of shifts so far.

Friday Night:

It started out quietly, with our first call being that of an anaphylactic female, she was treated with epinephrine, salbutamol and oxygen and transported to hospital for further care. Our next call was some 2 1/2hrs later, now this is unusual for a Friday night, but it sometimes happens.

The calls started to pick up and the night started getting busier, we were sent to stand by at one of the designated dispatch points and after being there for a whole 15 minutes we were winging our way to a reported hit and run on a busy street near by, 4 minutes later we are pulling up to be met by a group of excited people standing around a male who is lying on his back with facial (minor) injuries. The Police quickly arrive on mass and we quickly assess and treat the patient, placing him on a rescue board and securing his head with a rigid collar and head blocks, once he was secured he was taken into the back of the Ambulance and was examined further to see if he had any other injuries. This patient was lucky and he had relatively minor injuries. We transported him to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary due to the mechanisms of his injury.

We were heading back after doing some 999 calls in Edinburgh and stopped to fuel up the Ambulance, as I was in paying for the fuel my colleague signalled that we had a call, this time it was a car that had left the road and rolled down an embankment landing on its roof with a report of 5 people trapped. When we arrived we were the second crew on scene and quickly found out from the fire service that there were only two trapped and a third patient in the back of one of the fire engines, my colleague went to check the person who was not trapped and I started to gather together all the necessary equipment for our trapped male patient.

Now picture the scene, dark slippery embankment with clio sized car on its roof, 8 firemen, myself and one paramedic all in the car with the two patients, it was like a Guinness book of records challenge for how many people you could get into one car... The male was eventually extricated from the car, placed onto a rescue board and with collar and straps etc all applied carried out and up the embankment to the warmth of our waiting Ambulance where we did a head to toe check to rule out any other obvious injuries.

The female was removed in much the same fashion and was taken to the other vehicle for a check over and she and the patient in the fire engine were re-united and both transported to hospital. Our patient was taken to the same hospital, I however did not travel, because the patient was requiring paramedic interventions en route (pain relief etc) I jumped on with the third vehicle which had arrived (bringing my replacement paramedic) and LS (paramedic) travelled with my colleague and patient.

Now by this stage it was 0545hrs and I was wet and muddy, once clearing on scene and updating the EMDC I was asked if we were able to do an urgent call or if we wanted our now long forgotten meal break.... as you can guess I plumped for the meal break so that I could get cleaned and warmed up.

Saturday Night:

This started out once again with us being sent out at the start of the shift for a diabetic male who had taken unwell whilst driving his car, when we arrived he was starting to respond to the chocolate that his father had given him, his blood sugars were still low so he was given an injection to raise his levels and we transported him to Livingston (St. John's Hospital) for further care.

Back on station for our vehicle check and once this is complete coffee!

The following calls were all relatively small in comparison to the night of car accidents, we did still manage to get a call that took us into Edinburgh and we were then captured for a couple of calls, one was a male found confused and wandering around in his underwear in the common stair well of his block of flats. We transported him to hospital to get him examined and to see if they could find out what had happened to him, as he was not showing any physical injuries.

We eventually got back on station at about 0400hrs and had our second break (tea and toast) and then got the chance to clean the outside of the vehicle and re stock for the day shift coming in. We were lucky that we did not get called out again and managed to finish on time this morning....

Oh well only one more to go then off until Tuesday NIGHTSHIFT!