Monthly Archives: June 2014

Buckle your kids up

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It must be common knowledge by now that when some people hear our sirens or see our blue lights they do incredibly stupid things.  So it must come as no surprise that when I approached a large roundabout on blue lights, a car already travelling round it slammed on it’s anchors at the very last minute.

Under normal circumstances this would not be an issue . . . I had preempted their move and slowed to a crawl before reaching the roundabout.  They had stopped.  Neither of us hit each other and no other vehicles were involved.

However, as the driver slammed hard on his brakes I watched in horror as the little girl sitting in the passenger seat was launched forward like a cannon ball into the windscreen.

She wasn’t wearing her seat belt. Continue reading →

Crisis

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“Big sick” is pretty obvious in most people.  They change colour.  Breath oddly.  Sweat profusely.  They look . . . . pretty bloody sick.

This is what my patient looked like . . . pretty bloody sick.  The first thing that struck me was the amount of sweat pouring from this guy.  It really did look like someone had hosed him down and his colour was ashen grey.  Call it intuition, call it a 6th sense – but something inside me was saying this was NOT going to end with me leaving the patient at home with a “GP referral”.

. . . really did look like he'd been hosed down with waterI was aiming down the “inferior MI” front at this stage.  And with a BP of 56/24 and a heart rate of 40 everything was slotting into place for a full Right Coronary Artery Occlusion . . . Continue reading →

Early CPR

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The blue flashing lights were a give away.  As were the waving arms.  But really, it was the classic rhythmic movement of someone performing chest compressions that caught my eye.  And at 200yds and closing fast you could tell the compressions were good.  Really good.  Hard and fast.

hard and fast!Skidding to a halt and very nearly T-boning a police vehicle (oh the cakes I would have had to have bought!!!) I jumped out the car, grabbed the Lifepak machine and headed over to the commotion.  A crew had arrived at the same time and were bringing the rest of the gear.

What was happening?  Well, an old man had collapsed in the street and gone into cardiac arrest of course. Continue reading →