I would like to start with an apology.
A little while ago, I asked the question ‘What is it that makes an ambulance’. I then went on to inform you that the only equipment that an ambulance requires is a defibrillator and a bag-valve-mask. I may have made the suggestion that this shows the priority that the LAS has on patient care.
But I must apologise, for I made a mistake.
You don’t need the defibrillator.
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Yes, on my final shift I found myself on an ambulance without a defibrillator, going to calls of elderly patients with chest pain. Then our tail lift stopped working, so there was no way to use the stretcher.
We we refused our request to go ‘unavailable’ in order to return to station in order to get replacement kit.
So the last shift continued my tradition of trying to give good healthcare despite management policies.
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The patients were also a fair mix of the normal sorts of patients I’ve spent the last eight years going to – a fall, a drunken and abusive alcoholic, a homeless chap with chest pain, a runny nose, and two hospital transfers.
My last call was for one of those transfers, an elderly chap that the doctors at a local hospital suspected was having a heart attack that we blue-lighted to the heart-attack centre.
They didn’t think that he was having a heart attack, but given his long, complicated and somewhat obscured medical history I still think that the local hospital did the right thing.
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So, no bangs, no whimpers, just a continuation of what my shift has been like since I joined the service.
I’m going to hold off on writing about my new job for a while until I get settled in a bit, I think that it’s important that I get the lay of the land, and besides, it’s better to reflect than immediately report.
I’ve still got a few things to write about the ambulance service sitting in my notepad, so that will keep me going for a bit.
(Plus I need to work on a new banner for the blog, maybe a new layout and who knows what else…)