The kindness of control

First off the bat, you may have heard me talk about my friend Merys, she is a trainee doctor and therefore very poor and badly in need of a new laptop. If you’ve got 5 minutes to spare pop over to her blog and have a read of what she’s written or go here and vote for her superbly written piece!

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I would like to tell you about a job I did recently. I sometimes worry that even after my short time on the road I have hardened and become untouchable by normal human emotions. My crew mate for the day and I were sat at hospital completing paperwork from the last job when our radio burst into life asking for a crew to attend to a child with burns. We were nearly done and quite close to the address so we offered up for the job. You may have read my other half’s description of a Mother’s wail when something is seriously wrong with her child… this job was the first time I heard such a noise, and now I have I’m in no rush to hear it again.

Pulling up to the scene I didn’t even bother to turn the engine off – stood outside the address were the FRU medic and the parents holding a screaming bundle. The fact that the bundle was screaming was a reassuring sound but as they came running towards us I saw the extent of the scalds. The child had pulled a pan of boiling water onto itself and now had a scalded face and chest. Within minutes we had alerted the receiving hospital that we were on our way and I drove as quickly and smoothly as I could to the nearest accident and emergency department.

Ambulance crews in London have an advantage over our county ambulance colleagues in the fact that we have specialist burns units within driving distance. We could have gone straight to a burns unit but we were more concerned with getting the child stabilised and relieving his pain first – the facial scalds could have compromised his airway and it was not a chance we were prepared to take. Once he was delivered into the care of the hospital staff we could reflect on how the job had gone. This was one patient we were going to check up on through our shift although we were fairly certain that once he was stabilised he’d be moved to a burns unit.

A couple of hours later we were in our vehicle when our control called us on the radio. “We have a transfer for the child you picked up this morning – would you like to do it?” This was something nice that our controllers didn’t have to do, but at the end of the day, the child and his parents knew us now; and control know that even harsh ambulance road staff can sometimes be touched by certain jobs.

And so we transferred the little fella who ended up in one of the best facilities in the area, the staff there dealt with the patient, his parents and even made us a cup of tea before we turned around and started the journey back to our area. Nice people. Usually we would have just left this child in A&E and gone on to the next job, but thanks to the thoughtfulness of one of our controllers we got to see what would happen to the little dude. He has a long road ahead of him, but he’s small enough that hopefully he won’t remember the day he made an ambulance lady cry…

~ by Laura on February 3, 2007.