The things we do!

Green 1 Allocated (77YO female needs help getting to the commode, carer needs assistance)

Well you can imagine that the air was blue in the cab of our ambulance as my crewmate & I ranted and raved that surely we are not here to support the private (for profit) care company. Not that we have anything against the poor old girl that needed a poo, we just didn't agree that an ambulance should be sent. Anyway we arrived at the address and discovered the real story, so here goes:

The old girl had an accident in the morning and hurt her knee while the carer tried to move her on her electronic standing machine. Due to the old girl suffering from cerebral palsy since birth it turns out that she had originally refused transportation to hospital that morning by another ambulance crew because she is terrified of being admitted to hospital for a couple of months. She doesn't like hospital due to being in and out of them all of her life. Well I can tell you that it was a mission and half to get her to agree to go to hospital, we did everything. The upsetting thing for us was that she started crying as we explained that the best thing for her at the moment was to pop over to A&E have a quick xray and come back home.

The only way to persuade her to go in was to promise that we'll pop in every time we're close to that particular A&E. I can tell you that we did pop in and see her and reassure her that she'll be ok. We even arranged that her carer would be at her home just before Patient Transport dropped her off.

Green 1 Allocated (97YO female cut to leg)

It's late 2245, 15 minutes before the end of our shift and we are making our way to an affluent part of London. We arrive in the block of flats and are greeted by a concierge who showed us to the apartment. These apartments were in Victorian era buildings with lovely mosaic flooring in the hallways and still had the old lifts which had wooden doors. The flat is a multi million pound apartment but clearly under-kept due to the old girl being to old to care for it. She had been a journalist by trade and was one of the first women in the industry. She was as tough as old boots and had just been to dinner at her club. She had a very slight cut to her leg, for which an over zealous and now absent carer had called us out for. We dressed her leg and ensured we left enough dressings for the next day. Because she didn't want to go to A&E the London Ambulance Service has a policy of not allowing any person over the age of 55 to stay at home without further assessment from a Paramedic (We are a type of Medical Technician). So we waited for the Paramedic and had a chat with her to pass the time. In comes the Paramedic, carries out some checks and an ECG and signs us off and goes off to another job.

We of-course stay to help her brush her teeth and assist her to the toilet, help her into her nightie and tuck her into bed. We then ensure that her pendant alarm is within handy reach and that her bedroom light is off. Oh we also notice that her clocks are wrong so we adjust them, and that there are trip hazards everywhere so we adjust that (Creased rugs etc) we then close all the windows, turn her heating on, switch all the lights off and lock her front door as we say goodnight and sweetdreams. It's now 0045.


Thing is we don't have to go to this level of compassion and I'm not sure if other crew's do it (I'm sure they do) but I know that I go home feeling good about myself, I would much prefer these old girls over and above any self induced issue like drunkenness.