Shift # 8 We responded to something that I’ll never forget, and probably the worst thing I’ll ever see in my life, it seems like. A pedestrian had been hit by a truck.. no idea why they were on the road in the first place, I guess that’s beside the point. When we arrived I was trying to figure out what it was I was looking at ….. an animal? a person? apparently a person, with injuries sustained incompatible with life. A sight I will truly never forget. A group of about teenagers stopped and congregated on the side of the road that were first on scene, all look pretty shook up, so I felt sorry for them having to witness something like this. We’re trained to deal with these sort of sights and things, but the general public aren’t… its all very sad. So after being on scene for an hour and covering the deceased with a blanket, police shut the road, signing death certificates etc, we then went up the road to check on the truck driver, who was sitting there with some more police, also very shook up. After spending 10minutes there, we set off. 4am by this time, nearing the end of a very long friday night. We were instantly dispatched to our next job, which came through on our monitor as “Nausea and vomiting, feeling unwell”. Now here’s where the lesson is learnt! After what we had just seen, we were pretty jaded, tired, and me myself, feeling quite nauseous after what I’d just witnessed (a new feeling for me!), so I have to say we walked into this job with a very bad attitude… the attitude where you say to each other, “oh for gods sake!!”, we walked in and pt was crouched on the floor, head in her hands. She told us she felt sick, had vomited 3 times since midnight and was feeling quite unwell. She stated she’d had chicken for dinner, so my partner states to her “you’ve probably got food poisoning and thats not a reason to go into hospital tonight”. We were fed up with this unnecessary call, and wanted to have a break that we hadn’t had all night, and she called an ambulance for food poisoning!? We weren’t very happy. So I asked her to come sit on the couch to take some vitals anyway, and as I was doing this she casually mentioned 2 years prior she had been in hospital when they had to put her to sleep and restart her heart….. ummmm…… say what!? Do you know what was wrong with your heart that day? No. So I grab her wrist to feel her pulse, embarrassingly I hadn’t even done that yet, and instantly felt the inconsistencies in her pulse. uhoh! Ummm…. partner, grab the monitor please! 3 Lead shows shes in Atrial Fibrillation with a pulse rate of 170. Wow. Off to hospital we go! Once in the emergency department, we got to watch a cardioversion, which was very interesting! 30 of Ketamine, charge the defib to 50 joules, and zap! Heart rate instantly reverts to normal! So fascinating!!! So I guess moral of this shift was to never assume. It was also great to finish the shift on a positive note, instead of the grisly one prior.
Student Medic 