Busy responding days don't usually happen till Friday or Saturday when a large number of the local people decide to venture out and go shopping! There is always a exception to every rule and today was the exception with 4 calls in 4 and half hours!
All Cat A calls and all within 2 miles of my house.
The first was a poorly bean who needed to be in hospital without delay and the third and forth were falls with severe cuts and brusies. It was the second call of the day which developed into me being ignored!!
Control phone and asked me to attend a female disabled patient who had collapsed in the local car park.
It took me about 4 mins to reach the scene and i was met by members of the public gathered around a slumped lady of about 70.
I took my kit from the car and made my way to my patient.
"I'm a community responder from the ambulance service, a ambulance is on its way and i'm here to help until the ambulance arrives"
She moans and is incoherant for a short while, patience and a few more questions quickly establish a list of complaints all serious in their own right but added together could be very toxic!!
She suffers from heart problems, is diabetic and is suffering from D & V to name the major ones!!
It appears that her D & V are to blame as she has difficulty keeping her fluid levels up.
This poor lady, how on earth did she manage to drive her car, park it and get out of it!!!!!!
She collapsed about 70 feet from it on her way to the shopping precinct.
Her o2 and heart rate are sensible for her and her breathing is in normal range so I don't at this point administer o2. I try to dig into what brought about the collapse, what happened immediately before and after this episode.
The solo responder arrives and i hand over and work with him whilst he does the obs and starts the paperwork.
The far off wailing of sirens hit my eardrum and before long the crew have arrived.
The solo is handing over the patients details and the crew disembark and start talking to my patient.
At this moment in time they haven't acknowledge me or my existance! Not even eye contact or a smile!!
Ok, its not a problem as my little lady needs their attention and rightly so gets it!!
They finish up and start moving things to get her into their truck, this is 10 mins or so after their arrival and they have spoken to a couple of bystanders BUT........................................
They completely ignore my "would you like some help" or "can i get that for you" not a no thanks or even a grunt..............NOTHING.....
This really makes me angry ......... my apologies for being a little cross at the moment,
I must point out that the solo responder was very polite and thanked me more than once. He offered me replacement masks and an O2 cylinder, i refused because, as i mentioned earlier, i didn't need anything anyway.
Now i was brought up to be polite and if possible, always acknowledge the people around me, this crew were rude and completely out of order in their behaviour. They didn't even offer me replacement kit for my responder bag they left the scene without so much as a bye!!!
OK so what can i do about it!!
I can report them!
But what will that achieve????????
it won't achieve anything!!!!!
it will simply cause a divided split between my responder group and the crew involved. Something i have worked hard to achieve for the last 2 years.
What worries me is that they have "this attitude" and that won't change unless someone stands up and says............................. "excuse me" please be more thoughtful and at least acknowledge us with a smile next time!
So I will have to think on the best way of dealing with this!
Your comments and thoughts would be really appreciated as always.
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This is my blog as a community first Responder. It is my own experiences and is not neccessarily those of South Central Ambulance Service or its personel. All names used are made up on the day of writing!.
5 comments:
Give the b..bounders hot rocks next time you see them! As a Responder, you're part of the Ambulance Service so they should treat you as a colleague - albeit a less trained one than the paramedic.
In my time in the ambulance service, I have only ever met one Community First Responder.
The call was to an elderly lady in extreme respiratory distress.
Due to our distance from the scene, we arrived 18 minutes after the call was placed.
The CFR was there 3 minutes after the call and had the patient on high flow oxygen. In the time he had been there her SP02 had risen from 71 to 91.
We then nebulised her, bringing the sats to 97.
Given her condition when the CFR arrived, and the further 15 minutes before we arrived, there is no doubt that this man had greatly improved her condition.
We did replace his equipment and we did thank him for all that he had done.
As you say, it's nice to be nice. We're all working towards the same objective, after all.
I hope that you find most crews won't treat you the way that this crew did.
Will sound a stupid thing to say and a long time after the event I know, but with it being in public and there being many bystanders anyway did the crew know you were there? I mean they'd spoken to the FRV and wouldn't always have been told that there was going to be a CFR there.
Either that or a grumpy crew on a bad day. It happens don't let it get you down.
I am lucky. Most of the crews know me from my daytime life, so as a Responder I get nothing but the best of treatment. I have however, had cause to be a little caustic to two crews (after the event I might add) that pushed me aside. The most frustrating event was being pushed aside in A&E resus with an infant in cardiac arrest, despite my clearly marked clothing whilst the sister tried to locate the Paramedic responsible for care. Hopefully, one new Polo shirt later, this won't happen again. For all readers of the CFR forums at medatrain, here is your reason for uniform items being worn.
And a quick plug for my re-vamped blog at http://stan-bysblog.blogspot.com/
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