Blood, Sweat Tea | Page 9

share stations with the Fire Service. In fact, some years ago, when it was suggested the idea was shot down as we would be disturbing the firecrews' sleep throughout the night. Each station has it's own call-sign 'K1', 'J2', 'G4' for example, then each ambo has a suffix that is attached to this so one ambulance running out of station J2 would be called J201, while another would be J207.
The stations are spaced approximately 5 - 6miles apart, and you mainly service the area surrounding the station; however, with interhospital transfers and other irregularities you can quite easily find yourself across the other side of London.
It's an old joke that when asking if we need to travel so far the dispatcher will ask us if it still says London on the side of the ambulance.
There is a main station, and two or three 'satellite' stations, the main station will normally have between three and six ambulances running from it, while the smaller stations have between one and four. There is less cover at night, and you can easily find yourself being the only ambulance running from a given station.
Across London we deal with more than 3500 calls per day, and with a fleet of 400 ambulances of which perhaps only three-quarters are manned we seldom get a rest. Where I work we average one job an hour, and are supposed to transport every one of those patients to hospital.
The longest shift we officially do is 12hours in which we can expect 10 - 13 jobs, which doesn't sound like a lot but is enough to keep us busy... We spend 97% of our time away from station (compared with 3% for the fire service).
However, it is a fun job.
Night Shifts
There has been a discussion over on another medical blog's forums over which shift we prefer to work. Like many of the others I have a preference for working though the night. The reasons for this are many but include:
(1) I'm single I can lay in bed as long as I want. And breakfast is dinner... and kebabs are lunch... and an icecream is supper.
(2) You get empty streets, and so can drive like someone out of 'The Fast and the Furious'.
(3) You also get the strange jobs: 'sex-toy accidents', criminal behaviour, stabbings...
(4) It feels as if you 'own' the world: there is no-one else around, and anyone you do meet is normally shocked to be awake at night.
(5) You get to work a lot of jobs with the police, who are generally excellent people to work with.
(6) I get to sleep through early morning television - I'm sorry but I can't see the attraction of 'Trisha' or 'This Morning'.
(7) I don't have to go into a school, and be surrounded by 400 screaming children just because a kid has sprained their ankle.
(8) There is less management around - actually there is no management around (always a good thing); I like to avoid management as much as I can, I worked this job for 6months before they remembered my name.
(9) On a cold winter morning, I'm going home to my warm comfortable bed, while everyone else is trudging to work.
I still like nights, which makes me a rarity in the LAS. Most of my most interesting jobs occur at night.
Busy, Busy, Busy
No sooner do I post why I like nightshifts than I get two 'proper' emergency calls, one after another. The first was a 76-year-old Male 'Suspended'. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts there was little hope for him, and he died later in hospital without his heart ever restarting. His wife of 50 or more years was disbelieving of the whole situation, and I was too busy doing CPR to be able to comfort her much. It is one of the few things that I miss about nursing - sometimes you want to spend time with a relative. If you can't do anything for the patient, the relatives then become your concern. For the first time in 50years she was going to sleep alone and the nurse who would be looking after her is not someone that I would call the most sympathetic person in the world. I spent a little longer at hospital talking to the wife. The only consolation that I could give her was something that I've practised many times over the years - that her husband never suffered, and that he wouldn't have felt anything that we did to him.
The next job was a man, who after drinking too much, fell over in the street. He had a greatly altered level of consciousness, possibly due to the alcohol but also possibly due to the large head injury which was leaking a frankly excessive amount of blood over the tarmac. He could have been worse - he was