Diary: Week 13 - slightly late!

So I got caught up in Christmas and New Years and gorging myself with food and alcohol and generally not needing to worry too much about University and my Paramedic training for a couple of weeks so I'm abit behind. However 2015 is here and I'm back in the swing of things at Uni for 5 weeks, I thought I'd update my diary for my second and final week on my Ambulance Placement which I spent on the Rapid Response Vehicle (one of the Ambulance Cars you see driving around everywhere...).

Read on to see how it went...




The first difference I noticed working on the RRV for a week, was that I was expected to do alot more. There was no Emergency Care Assistant on this vehicle, just me and my Paramedic Mentor which meant I had to up my game significantly in my second week. The next big difference was the volume of jobs, as we weren't conveying Patients to Hospital anymore - it meant you cleared from the job at the Patients house (most of the time) and another job came straight through which made for a very full shift!

Flying through traffic at 110mph on a Motorway section got my pulse racing as we made our way to a younger Patient that had taken a significant quantity of Paracetamol and other medication and had become unresponsive. Police were on scene and had requested us urgently, when we arrived it was obvious that this patient was completely unconscious and very sick. My mentor takes a whistle stop history whilst I secure the patients noisy airway with an NPA and position them on their side and attach the 3 lead ECG which is showing some significant abnormalities - luckily this patient would survive.

This became abit of a theme for my second week of Placement. On the run up to 'Mad Friday' and Christmas we saw a steady stream of alcohol and drugs related incidents and a rise in suicide attempts. All of this came to a crescendo when I worked Mad Friday night which saw back to back assaults, spiking, overdoses and people that just simply drank too much. Working on an unresponsive Opioid overdose in the middle of a nightclubs dance floor with the music screaming out and revelers getting a little too friendly or agressive with the Clubs security staff trying to keep people off of us was just another job on that shift.

So did I enjoy all of this? Absolutely. I got to do far more clinically than I did on a double crewed ambulance and the higher turnover of patients meant I got to see alot more - it's certainly gave me the early impression that I'd like to work on a car if I ever get through University! There is pro's and con's of working on either vehicle, but my preference is the car - others prefer double crews.

After this very tiring week, I was looking forward to two weeks of relaxing in preparation for returning to Uni early in 2015 for a few weeks before heading back out into Practice for much longer this time to gain my valuable experience.