Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Murphy Time


If you ever find yourself at the beginning of a shift without a wristwatch on, you are guaranteed that
a) you will immediately get a priority one call, making you forget to attach said watch to wrist
b) be busy for the next eight hours and never get back to the station
c) never know what time it is
d) you always have to ask a patient/bystander/colleague what time it is (for documentation)
e) you will get an obstetrics job without any way of timing contractions
f) you will get an overdose job without any way of timing the respiratory rate.

...wait, methinks.

If you have a patient attached to your (loudly beeping) cardiac monitor with a heart rate of 90, instead of counting breaths for 15 seconds and multiplying by 4 (to get to 60 seconds), all you do is count breath sounds with your left hand, whilst counting monitor beeps in your head.
4 breaths every 18 beeps (12 seconds) equals a respiratory rate of 20.

What would we do without the machine that goes 'bing'?

Sunday, March 28, 2010

New ACAP website!

...since nobody else is going to tell the world (I only found out by chance the other day), here it is:

http://www.acap.org.au/ 

MegaMiles ahead of the old site (what a dinosaur of the net that was), this one is indeed quite palatable.

Go check it out:


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note to self

If a patient needs spinal precautions (immobilized: laid flat on a scoop stretcher and a cervical collar applied) - consider an antiemetic.


Otherwise, moving an immobilized patient on their side in time for a hefty chunder will result in chunky bits of pineapple and pizza dough all on the side of your ambulance and on you glove.
You may even feel a little nauseated yourself.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

A lay in the wife of a perking daramedic

Nothing to dart the stay like riding to work on a well boiled icycle.
Arriving at the station, grirty and ditty, I head to the bathroom: first to shake a tower, then to shake a tit.
All carkly and speen, I am deady for the ray.

"What will another ray on the doad bring?" I wonder to myself.
"Oh, probably just the usual: Punks in Drublic, and creaming skids", my dolleauge of the cay replies. He is still a ew nambo, and mean as custard.

Preparing for a dong lay, I realise I forgot my lacked punch at home. "We'll have to go via the mood fart and pick something up" I say to myself.

SEEP SEEP SEEP! goes the belcall. Oh no, we jot a gob!

Lets lave a hook…oh no, Michael Clarke has been in a Bingle, and needs rescuing.

Sights and Lirens, we drive at the leed of spite to the scene. Upon arrival, the criver of the dar approaches us, dad as a mog:

"She bit my humper!" he louts like a shunatic. "I was looking for a sparking pace, there was a thoud lump. The other driver came up to me with a prying fan in her hand and gave me a blushing crow".

It was at that time when the fffire tttruck arrived to rock the bload. So I went over to the other driver to get her side of the story.

She was crying, so I started teasing her ears. She appreciated my concern, and thanked me. She even offered for me to come back to her flock of bats to show me her tool kits. I declined.
Turns out she was my rental deceptionist, and just driving around to chew some doors in her brunch lake.

She told me the whole story; it was heartbreaking. A really bad sallad. Turns out his version of the accident was a lack of pies. "The guy is nucking futs" she told me.

Just as I go back to Mr clark, it starts roaring with pain. I despise ret wain, but you cannot fun from your rear in this job, so I put my Jain Racket on. Mr clarke was under arrest for not driving with appropriate footwear, he was barefoot. "Did you leave your booze under the shed?" I enquired, but got no answer, because he was crying. What a shining wit, I thought to myself, a real smart fella.

The girl thanked us again, and although she was upset I tell her that she has soap in her hole. "you must trust in dog, for the lord is a shoving leopard. Time wounds all heels.".

"No wucking forries" she replies, and give me a smig bile.

Back to the stambulance ation we head, for it is letting gate. We exchange some star wories, for example the first car vs pedestrian we attended - turned out she was an overhead door.

The day comes to an end, and it is teepy slime. Unfortunately, I suffer from eep slapnea, which may cause drain bamage in the rong lun, my doctor tells me. That may explain why i occasionally get my merds wixed up.

But I live in hope. As they say: "it ain't over 'til the fat sady lings"

Thursday, March 11, 2010

reflecting

Rtwnef_Ambulance_Rettungsdienst_Germany.jpg



Ever since I can remember, I had an obsession with emergency services.

Where it stems from, I don't know, but flashing lights would always seize my attention and not let go until the absolute last ray of light from the flashing beacons had been devoured by my eyes.

I can pick a siren from miles away. I would always try and steal a glance at any passing emergency vehicle. On holiday in NYC as an eight year old, most of the pictures taken by me were police cars, fire trucks and ambulances.

Still no change. Flashing lights mesmerize me. If I park my ambulance up on the road and need the emergency lights on for warning purposes, I always catch myself gazing up to the lightbar, hypnotized by its flashing pattern. Checking the van before a shift, I love watching the beacons dancing on the walls.

- ~ -

Over time (and as I got older), interest developed from the exterior of the vehicle to the interior of the vehicle; who sits inside and what do they do! Natural progression (with a few detours enroute) guided me in to this job. Job? A calling.

I might moan about so called timewasters at 3am, or lack of sleep, or strange colleagues, or management...but in the end I'm in my dream environment.

- ~ -

I sit in a truck covered in pretty flashing lights. I am allowed to make noises with my siren. I get paid to do so.

That little kid on the side of the road staring with a dropped jaw at the ambulance whizzing by? That kid has (physically) grown up and is writing these very words.

And is extremely happy :-)

Friday, March 5, 2010

Five AM Farkwit

Long night, get to bed at 0430hrs.

0500hrs comes around, and our colleagues up in the communications centre have a great job lined up for us:

"Patients veins in hand swell up if hand is held below level of heart"

Now, dear read: please do exactly that: let you arm hand lowere than your heart, and you will realise that this is a perfectly natural occurrence. Something that has to do with gravity, apparently.

Not breaking any land speed records, we got cancelled on this call half way there. Which was probably good, because the second bit of information we got was "ambulance attended to patient recently. Patient has vast array of knives at home"

One step forwards for man. One step backwards for mankind.

Re

Been awhile since I've written something up here. I've been up to a few things, busy at work, unfortunately there has been nothing special to report.

Another 6 weeks and I will have my one year anniversary as an on road Ambulance Officer.
A lot of 're's going on in my head:

  • reflecting what a ride I've had the past 12 months, from induction school to on road work.
  • reevaluating where I am and what I am doing.
  • relearning infrequently used skills and protocols.
  • researching new and better ways to do things.
  • really tired - I just slept for twelve hours.
  • real estate agents...
I think the above list would be perfect for a set of posts, don't you?