Life of a Trainee Paramedic

The past few shifts have not really had that many jobs of note.  They have been very steady with not that much break in between.  Luckily when I’m on nights, although on the first night I usually get tired around 4am, the rest are not that bad.  This is perhaps because I can sleep until 4-5pm if I’m lucky, so when it gets round to early morning time, I’m wide awake.  This is good when there are jobs coming in, but when your out on standby, and try as I may, I cannot do any reading that early in the morning, I find it hard to have a little shut eye.  If I get up earlier in the day, by the time I get tired, the colour has all drained from my face and it takes me a while to get going again. So I can’t win.  I like night’s though as you can sleep for as long as you like, where as on days you have to get up at a certain time.  I’m lucky that my shifts start at 6.45am, unlike some of my colleagues in another trust whose shifts sometimes start at 6am!  One of them told me that they had to get up at 4.10am to get there.  That would absolutely kill me.

My last shift I enjoyed the most though because there was a lot more patient care involved.  As I’m based in a city, there is not a great deal of journey time to the hospital, so by the time you’ve filled in the patient form, were at hospital.  This shift however, we had a transfer to a hospital that was 1 hour 20 minutes away.  The patient had sliced open all the fingers on his left hang by a circular saw while cutting some wood.  There was nothing medical to be done, just transport the patient to the receiving hospital.  The patient said originally when we were wheeling him out of A&E that he would probably sleep the whole way, but we ended up talking for the lot of it.  He had recently moved up to my area, but had come from an area which isn’t that far from where my home is so we got chatting about that and all sorts of things.  I really enjoyed it as it was my first chance to just chat like this.  I know that some patient’s will not be like this, they could be quite happy not to talk, or may not want to, but it went quick. 

Later on in the shift, we were called to an 83yr old lady who had fallen and couldn’t get back up.  We had to break the chain on her door to get in and found her lying face down on the floor.  She was checked over for any fractures before we moved her and we got her into her chair.  She didn’t really want to go to hospital, but we were not happy to leave her there on her own as her mobility was severely impaired so we made a deal with her that if she could get to her room without any assistance from us, then we would leave her.  She was unable to even lift herself out the chair so she agreed to go to hospital.  It was also my first chance to actually call a patient’s relative to inform her of what we were doing.  The journey to hospital would take about 20 minutes and I sat chatting to her the whole way there as well.  She told me about her children, how she used to be in the RAF in the war and was a very good ex-ballroom dancer.  Her being 83, and me 21, I was still interested in what she had to say, not just feigning it because of my job and had a good time talking to her.

These two jobs have hopefully helped me to fulfill one our learning outcomes for the portfolio ‘Outline the role of the paramedic in the care of the non-emergency patient’, and I think these two examples fit it perfectly.  Now I just need to get on and write that……

 TP