Christmas

I'm stunned. 80,000 dead and rising. This brings my own feeble
attempts at lifesaving truly into perspective. God rest the souls of
all those who have died and bring some peace to those left behind.

Kings of Leon

Concert went well. Normal kind of fainting and heat exhaustion.
Nothing spectacular.

First PTS Shift

1800 Tuesday 7th December. P, K and myself have just prepped the
ambulance, engine is running and warming up nicely. Next thing on the
agenda - call DorAm Control and see if they have any work for us.
I make the call, saying I have a PTS crew for them - do they have any
work for us? Well to say they bit my hand off would be an
understatement. They had an Urgent - one step down from a blue light
job. Female, 89 yo, CHF and Cellulitis, needs to go in to the mediacl
assesment ward at Poole General from a village out past Blandford.
GULP!!! So much for a gentle intro. This could get interesting. P
drives whilst myself and K try to find out exactly where we are going.
Getting to the village no problem. Finding the house was an issue. We
find the patitent to be reasonably fit and take them from the house to
the ambulance on a carry chair. Settle them onto the cot and off we
go. On arrival at the hospital we transport them in to the ward on the
cot. Make the ambulance up and see if there is any more work for us.
They have a job at the hospital. Transfer a 90yo male seated patient
back home from A&E. We transfer him from the hospital chair on to the
cot, get the cot in the back of the ambulance and then its my turn to
drive. We get to the patients house transfer him from the cot to the
carry chair then take him back in to the house.
Two jobs in four hours duty may not seem like much but they were
interesting in their own way. Practice makes perfect so I'm looking
forward to next Wednesday when my next shift will be.

PTS Work

Had a phone call last night from the Super. The new HQ will not now be
ready this year so we are moving in on the 4th of January. Spoke to P
about doing PTS work and we are planning to go out on Tuesday nights
between now and Christmas. Will probably take K out as "third man".
Even if DorAm have no work for us we can at least sort the ambulance
out and get it in a more usable state.

Ambulance Aid 1

Had an interesting weekend on my Ambulance Aid 1 course. Basically the
course revolves around making sure that you are safe to move a patient
to and from the ambulance as well as look after them in transit to
wherever they are going. It is not an emergency response course. This
is to allow me to do Patient Transfers etc. However when paired up
with someone of a higher qualification and acting as driver I'll now
be allowed to crew the ambulance on a duty. I'm working with P on
getting out to do some PTS work next Tuesday if we don't move in to
the new HQ....