No-one's talking sense any more

Day shift: Six calls; three by ambulance; two by car; one with police.

Stats: 2 unwell adults; 1 chest pain; 1 ? circulation problems; 1 abdo pain; 1 eTOH.


The unwell man was a 69 year-old who’d been lethargic, weak and sick for a while until his wife decided enough was enough and called an ambulance. He needed one and, despite the call being read as a possible car journey, a crew turned up and he was quickly taken away. His breathing wasn’t good and he looked off-colour.


The other unwell man was a 39 year-old at work who decided he didn’t feel well and had his bosses call an ambulance two hours later. He was the silent, emotional type who doesn’t talk much and doesn’t answer questions and the crew was understandably stressed that they were getting nowhere with the details. We get this a lot and it’s okay if you are very ill and can’t speak but it is kind of selfish to have an ambulance crew attend and then not even talk to them when they need to know what’s wrong. We can’t use psychic abilities to guess what’s up and we can’t treat things that are emotional or psychological.


After an hour or so of sunning ourselves on Trafalgar Square and running back and forth with radio swap problems, we were sent to a 64 year-old woman with chest pain. She walked out of the callbox and over to the car before we had much of a chance to park up. An ambulance joined us very soon after we landed, so the student had very little to do, although she stayed with the patient and crew to get the ECG results.


A 20 year-old female with Guillain–Barré syndrome told her boss she suddenly couldn’t feel or move her leg, so we were called to deal with it. At first it looked as though an ambulance would be the only option because she had varicosed veins and stated she couldn’t weight bear at all. We were in the basement of a ladies underwear shop and we waited for a while before I finally decided that, once I’d learned all I could about some of the stock, courtesy of the Supervisor, and had gleaned info on what the Hell a ‘Tankini’ is, we could probably wheel her out on a chair with castors and use the lift to get her to street level. Then I’d physically lift her into the car. That was the plan and that’s how it was executed, much to the amusement of the customers.


After taking a man to the local police station after he told us he’d been hit by a motorcycle (he’d swapped details with the guy and let him leave the scene), we went to a 25 year-old who’d fainted and who now had abdominal pain – a very common combination on a call. She was fully recovered, if she’d passed out at all, and was still complaining of abdo pain – an ambulance wasn’t required, so when the crew turned up, after they’d been cancelled, they were happy enough to leave it with us.

We took her with a colleague in the car and had to stop when we were informed by kindly drivers that the hatch had been left open. Luckily, nothing fell out. My student doesn’t want me to report that it was her fault for leaving the hatch open. But it was. So there :-)


A useless journey for a 55 year-old drunken woman next and police were on scene standing over her when we arrived. Another FRU was also arriving and so we were very much surplus. It’s been a day of duplicates and communication drops.

Be safe.