Ask a Paramedic anything at all...
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I called 999 for an ambulance several weeks ago as my wife was having what can only be described as a " funny turn ". One second she was fine, the next she was writhing around on the floor in agony with pains in her chest and stomach, and panting for breath.
The lady who took my call didn't seem to have any sense of urgency and kept asking the same questions over again. She then kept me on hold for several minutes while she spoke to a paramedic before agreeing to send an ambulance.
My question is, are the people who answer the phones trained to assess the need for an ambulance, or do they take the word of the caller ?
When the paramedics did arrive they were absolutely brilliant and stayed for over an hour before concluding that my wife had a severe case of trapped wind .
I would like to echo what others have said and thank you for all you do.
By the way, the paramedics who attended reckoned they weren't held in as high regard as firemen and felt a bit aggrieved about that ! What are your thoughts ?
The lady who took my call didn't seem to have any sense of urgency and kept asking the same questions over again. She then kept me on hold for several minutes while she spoke to a paramedic before agreeing to send an ambulance.
My question is, are the people who answer the phones trained to assess the need for an ambulance, or do they take the word of the caller ?
When the paramedics did arrive they were absolutely brilliant and stayed for over an hour before concluding that my wife had a severe case of trapped wind .
I would like to echo what others have said and thank you for all you do.
By the way, the paramedics who attended reckoned they weren't held in as high regard as firemen and felt a bit aggrieved about that ! What are your thoughts ?
thatjagbloke said:
My question is, are the people who answer the phones trained to assess the need for an ambulance, or do they take the word of the caller ?
?
Read this one ?
https://bit.ly/2srBQUg
" Successful applicants (both full and part time) will be required to undertake 6 weeks classroom based training, working Monday to Friday, full time hours. No annual leave is allowed during this period. Following the training course, you will be required to undertake 4 weeks mentoring.
It is a pre-requisite that candidates must successfully complete the training programme, including all examinations. Candidates unable to pass within the allocated time may have their employment terminated. "
£16,968 - £19,852 /yr
I think it's a helluva job for this (little) money and the stress/high stakes
Edited by The_Doc on Saturday 2nd June 17:08
Missed this thread the first time around and thought I chip in with a few of my experiences (started as a tech in 2000, para later, all in and around the Yorkshires, stopped after about a dozen years)
Highlights for me that I'll always remember are going to a little old Lady with chest pain who I later recognised as someone I fully resuscitated a year before in a busy High Street - still soldiering and probably still now.
A young heavily pregnant girl beaten up at her home by a new boyfriend - she begged me to take her two year daughter in the ambulance with her as we took her in for a suspected fractured jaw, then revealed en route I had delivered that girl for her in the back of an ambulance two years before.
A teenage girl who on arriving home to find me treating her Aunt flung her arms around me and told me I had saved her life by giving her such a talking to about her anorexia and what she would go through before dying that it scared her into saving her own life - she'd gone from 12 stone to just over 5 when I first met her, and back to 10 and a bit and full of life.
Funny bits were a guy hopped on drugs who'd been attacked and could not figure out what the itch in his back was - there was an small axe in his shoulder blade.
A call to multiple casualities on a railway line late at night in the countryside - that turned out to be bits of a few cows that had strayed onto a line.
A Staff Nurse who would not believe I (as a fresh faced tech) was holding in an arterial bleed with one finger - so ordered me to remove it in front of Junior Doctor - the 8 foot arc of blood was a crimson thing of beauty.
In a dozen years I was probably threatened once a month or so, racially abused about every couple of months, had a knife pulled on me about half a dozen times and a gun pointed at me once.
Sad things were a watching week by week, month by month the deterioration of an increasingly addicted drug user from what drug users call 'a functioning user' to a husk of man dying under a bush in the snow about 100 yards from the hospital entrance after he had yet again discharged himself and got another hit yards outside the A&E entrance.
Trying to cope with a mother who's daughter had been stabbed on Christmas morning by the estranged father.
A guy who phoned his estranged wife to say he was going to kill himself - she called us and rushed to him as he had his daughters with him; they were safe and unaware upstairs - he had massive carving knife wounds down to the bones on both forearms but insisted that was all he had done. Took him in, family around him and starting to smile again, then found out later he died later that night of acute renal failure after revealing just as he was about to be discharged (about 6 hours later, after a mental health assessment) that he had drunk two litres of anti-freeze.
Things I (and most others, I don't think I stood out in any way despite a military background previously) really struggled with was cpr on children, abused children, cpr in public high streets as a sole responder with back up coming delayed and very distant across the moors, and as a tech attending a pregnant mother with twins, one twin compromised with encephalitis; as soon as I got to the job I feared it could all go wrong and dear lord it did despite all my requests for back-up, neo-natal support, one then two Para responders turning up to help, but as they warned you in training with pregnancies, one fairly stable patient can become many very critically ill patients in seconds, not minutes...
I left for reasons other than the job and would have continued if it was possible but I wouldn't go back to it now.
The dozen years or so of experience gave me huge respect for the NHS staff as a whole, Nurses, Doctors and also the Police who hardly ever get thanked by the public for their roles in a lot of our little human disasters. Huge credit is due to the people who can walk into your lowest, most painful, most needy moment in your life... and calmly as they possibly can, make things better.
As I grow older, if I should ever need an ambulance I'd like to think I'll be right behind the front door, medicine list, medical history and list of allergies all written down and still be willing to walk to the bloody ambulance.
NHS management? A Stalin-style cull is needed.
Highlights for me that I'll always remember are going to a little old Lady with chest pain who I later recognised as someone I fully resuscitated a year before in a busy High Street - still soldiering and probably still now.
A young heavily pregnant girl beaten up at her home by a new boyfriend - she begged me to take her two year daughter in the ambulance with her as we took her in for a suspected fractured jaw, then revealed en route I had delivered that girl for her in the back of an ambulance two years before.
A teenage girl who on arriving home to find me treating her Aunt flung her arms around me and told me I had saved her life by giving her such a talking to about her anorexia and what she would go through before dying that it scared her into saving her own life - she'd gone from 12 stone to just over 5 when I first met her, and back to 10 and a bit and full of life.
Funny bits were a guy hopped on drugs who'd been attacked and could not figure out what the itch in his back was - there was an small axe in his shoulder blade.
A call to multiple casualities on a railway line late at night in the countryside - that turned out to be bits of a few cows that had strayed onto a line.
A Staff Nurse who would not believe I (as a fresh faced tech) was holding in an arterial bleed with one finger - so ordered me to remove it in front of Junior Doctor - the 8 foot arc of blood was a crimson thing of beauty.
In a dozen years I was probably threatened once a month or so, racially abused about every couple of months, had a knife pulled on me about half a dozen times and a gun pointed at me once.
Sad things were a watching week by week, month by month the deterioration of an increasingly addicted drug user from what drug users call 'a functioning user' to a husk of man dying under a bush in the snow about 100 yards from the hospital entrance after he had yet again discharged himself and got another hit yards outside the A&E entrance.
Trying to cope with a mother who's daughter had been stabbed on Christmas morning by the estranged father.
A guy who phoned his estranged wife to say he was going to kill himself - she called us and rushed to him as he had his daughters with him; they were safe and unaware upstairs - he had massive carving knife wounds down to the bones on both forearms but insisted that was all he had done. Took him in, family around him and starting to smile again, then found out later he died later that night of acute renal failure after revealing just as he was about to be discharged (about 6 hours later, after a mental health assessment) that he had drunk two litres of anti-freeze.
Things I (and most others, I don't think I stood out in any way despite a military background previously) really struggled with was cpr on children, abused children, cpr in public high streets as a sole responder with back up coming delayed and very distant across the moors, and as a tech attending a pregnant mother with twins, one twin compromised with encephalitis; as soon as I got to the job I feared it could all go wrong and dear lord it did despite all my requests for back-up, neo-natal support, one then two Para responders turning up to help, but as they warned you in training with pregnancies, one fairly stable patient can become many very critically ill patients in seconds, not minutes...
I left for reasons other than the job and would have continued if it was possible but I wouldn't go back to it now.
The dozen years or so of experience gave me huge respect for the NHS staff as a whole, Nurses, Doctors and also the Police who hardly ever get thanked by the public for their roles in a lot of our little human disasters. Huge credit is due to the people who can walk into your lowest, most painful, most needy moment in your life... and calmly as they possibly can, make things better.
As I grow older, if I should ever need an ambulance I'd like to think I'll be right behind the front door, medicine list, medical history and list of allergies all written down and still be willing to walk to the bloody ambulance.
NHS management? A Stalin-style cull is needed.
McGee_22 said:
Missed this thread the first time around and thought I chip in with a few of my experiences (started as a tech in 2000, para later, all in and around the Yorkshires, stopped after about a dozen years)
Highlights for me that I'll always remember are going to a little old Lady with chest pain who I later recognised as someone I fully resuscitated a year before in a busy High Street - still soldiering and probably still now.
A young heavily pregnant girl beaten up at her home by a new boyfriend - she begged me to take her two year daughter in the ambulance with her as we took her in for a suspected fractured jaw, then revealed en route I had delivered that girl for her in the back of an ambulance two years before.
A teenage girl who on arriving home to find me treating her Aunt flung her arms around me and told me I had saved her life by giving her such a talking to about her anorexia and what she would go through before dying that it scared her into saving her own life - she'd gone from 12 stone to just over 5 when I first met her, and back to 10 and a bit and full of life.
Funny bits were a guy hopped on drugs who'd been attacked and could not figure out what the itch in his back was - there was an small axe in his shoulder blade.
A call to multiple casualities on a railway line late at night in the countryside - that turned out to be bits of a few cows that had strayed onto a line.
A Staff Nurse who would not believe I (as a fresh faced tech) was holding in an arterial bleed with one finger - so ordered me to remove it in front of Junior Doctor - the 8 foot arc of blood was a crimson thing of beauty.
In a dozen years I was probably threatened once a month or so, racially abused about every couple of months, had a knife pulled on me about half a dozen times and a gun pointed at me once.
Sad things were a watching week by week, month by month the deterioration of an increasingly addicted drug user from what drug users call 'a functioning user' to a husk of man dying under a bush in the snow about 100 yards from the hospital entrance after he had yet again discharged himself and got another hit yards outside the A&E entrance.
Trying to cope with a mother who's daughter had been stabbed on Christmas morning by the estranged father.
A guy who phoned his estranged wife to say he was going to kill himself - she called us and rushed to him as he had his daughters with him; they were safe and unaware upstairs - he had massive carving knife wounds down to the bones on both forearms but insisted that was all he had done. Took him in, family around him and starting to smile again, then found out later he died later that night of acute renal failure after revealing just as he was about to be discharged (about 6 hours later, after a mental health assessment) that he had drunk two litres of anti-freeze.
Things I (and most others, I don't think I stood out in any way despite a military background previously) really struggled with was cpr on children, abused children, cpr in public high streets as a sole responder with back up coming delayed and very distant across the moors, and as a tech attending a pregnant mother with twins, one twin compromised with encephalitis; as soon as I got to the job I feared it could all go wrong and dear lord it did despite all my requests for back-up, neo-natal support, one then two Para responders turning up to help, but as they warned you in training with pregnancies, one fairly stable patient can become many very critically ill patients in seconds, not minutes...
I left for reasons other than the job and would have continued if it was possible but I wouldn't go back to it now.
The dozen years or so of experience gave me huge respect for the NHS staff as a whole, Nurses, Doctors and also the Police who hardly ever get thanked by the public for their roles in a lot of our little human disasters. Huge credit is due to the people who can walk into your lowest, most painful, most needy moment in your life... and calmly as they possibly can, make things better.
As I grow older, if I should ever need an ambulance I'd like to think I'll be right behind the front door, medicine list, medical history and list of allergies all written down and still be willing to walk to the bloody ambulance.
NHS management? A Stalin-style cull is needed.
Great post.Highlights for me that I'll always remember are going to a little old Lady with chest pain who I later recognised as someone I fully resuscitated a year before in a busy High Street - still soldiering and probably still now.
A young heavily pregnant girl beaten up at her home by a new boyfriend - she begged me to take her two year daughter in the ambulance with her as we took her in for a suspected fractured jaw, then revealed en route I had delivered that girl for her in the back of an ambulance two years before.
A teenage girl who on arriving home to find me treating her Aunt flung her arms around me and told me I had saved her life by giving her such a talking to about her anorexia and what she would go through before dying that it scared her into saving her own life - she'd gone from 12 stone to just over 5 when I first met her, and back to 10 and a bit and full of life.
Funny bits were a guy hopped on drugs who'd been attacked and could not figure out what the itch in his back was - there was an small axe in his shoulder blade.
A call to multiple casualities on a railway line late at night in the countryside - that turned out to be bits of a few cows that had strayed onto a line.
A Staff Nurse who would not believe I (as a fresh faced tech) was holding in an arterial bleed with one finger - so ordered me to remove it in front of Junior Doctor - the 8 foot arc of blood was a crimson thing of beauty.
In a dozen years I was probably threatened once a month or so, racially abused about every couple of months, had a knife pulled on me about half a dozen times and a gun pointed at me once.
Sad things were a watching week by week, month by month the deterioration of an increasingly addicted drug user from what drug users call 'a functioning user' to a husk of man dying under a bush in the snow about 100 yards from the hospital entrance after he had yet again discharged himself and got another hit yards outside the A&E entrance.
Trying to cope with a mother who's daughter had been stabbed on Christmas morning by the estranged father.
A guy who phoned his estranged wife to say he was going to kill himself - she called us and rushed to him as he had his daughters with him; they were safe and unaware upstairs - he had massive carving knife wounds down to the bones on both forearms but insisted that was all he had done. Took him in, family around him and starting to smile again, then found out later he died later that night of acute renal failure after revealing just as he was about to be discharged (about 6 hours later, after a mental health assessment) that he had drunk two litres of anti-freeze.
Things I (and most others, I don't think I stood out in any way despite a military background previously) really struggled with was cpr on children, abused children, cpr in public high streets as a sole responder with back up coming delayed and very distant across the moors, and as a tech attending a pregnant mother with twins, one twin compromised with encephalitis; as soon as I got to the job I feared it could all go wrong and dear lord it did despite all my requests for back-up, neo-natal support, one then two Para responders turning up to help, but as they warned you in training with pregnancies, one fairly stable patient can become many very critically ill patients in seconds, not minutes...
I left for reasons other than the job and would have continued if it was possible but I wouldn't go back to it now.
The dozen years or so of experience gave me huge respect for the NHS staff as a whole, Nurses, Doctors and also the Police who hardly ever get thanked by the public for their roles in a lot of our little human disasters. Huge credit is due to the people who can walk into your lowest, most painful, most needy moment in your life... and calmly as they possibly can, make things better.
As I grow older, if I should ever need an ambulance I'd like to think I'll be right behind the front door, medicine list, medical history and list of allergies all written down and still be willing to walk to the bloody ambulance.
NHS management? A Stalin-style cull is needed.
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