Glorified Taxi Service

Tuesday, July-06-10

So about that life saving I thought would be happening during my shifts. Yeah...today not so much. Today was just one of those shifts that felt as if I was more a part of a of a taxi company than Magen David Adom. One of those shifts where I found myself waiting and waiting for that one call that was going to make my day and it just never came. Our first came in really soon after arriving, which made me think the day was off to a good start. It was a car accident but once we arrived we were told no one needed an ambulance and of course the two cars involved ended up leaving before us...paperwork of course. We then returned to the station where we waited a good 2hrs for another call. After having woken up at 5:45am and not doing much of anything all morning I was very ready to head out. It was for a woman, 83y/o who had fallen. We arrive and she tells us the she isn’t hurt, doesn’t want/need to go to the hospital but wants help getting back into her chair. We pick her up and immediately the smell hits. She has poo-ed herself and neither her or her caregiver seemed to mind and tell us to just place in her chair as is. Okay, so we do and then let’s just say we got out of there as fast as we politely could and completed the rest of the paperwork outside. Already not such a good start to the morning. By now it was around 11am so it wasn’t surprising that we received our next call before making it back to the station. An elderly lady who isn't feeling well. Upon doing her vitals we discover that her BP is 200/110, which is just too high. Our driver who happened to be a paramedic explains that he wants to take her to the hospital and she flat out refuses. Why? She just doesn’t like hospitals and won’t go, she thought that by calling an ambulance a doctor would come and check/treat her at home. Surprisingly many people believe that this is true. Well she won’t go to the hospital and our driver doesn’t feel comfortable leaving so he decides to call for the נט''ן-Natan (ICU ambulance) which can administer drugs. By the time they arrive it’s been 1.5hrs since the call began and we haven’t done much besides take her BP and try to convince her to go to the hospital. When they arrive we happily hand her over and left. Immediately after leaving we got our next call. It was emergency status to a hotel for a man with a very fast heartrate. We get there and ask the front desk and no one knows anything! We call dispatch and they call the patient who confirms that we are at the right hotel. Somehow they didn't have the right room number or something like that, I have no idea what happened but after about 20min of phoning back and forth, the ICU team arrived before we even saw the patient (it was called automatically due to the nature of the call) and we left without having even put on our gloves. We headed back to the station and before we make it there we get our next call. It was actually a pretty busy day, just not much treating happened at all. This call was another elderly lady and a simple transfer to the hospital. What should have taken maybe 20min took us 1hr at least. Our driver was in slow motion! Everything he did, from loading into the ambulance, driving, parking, checking the GPS, etc. he did so so slowly, and I was getting impatient. Finally we got her to Ichilov and had or first break of the day. Just being at a patient's place for so long doing well, not much is actually quite taxing. By now it’s around 2:15pm we haven’t done much beside wait around most of the day. Our final call of the day was non-emergency status. It was for a man, age 63 who had severe liver sclerosis and and hadn't been taken his meds. I don’t think he was 100% with it. Again our driver took his time, even stopping to have a cigarette between putting the patient in the ambulance and walking around to the driver’s seat, it was ridiculous. This man ended up vomiting in the ambulance too, which made for a great end to this dreadful shift. Although the driver was a nice guy, I don’t think I’ll choose to work with him again if I can help it. He was just much to slow and very unenthusiastic, which made for a very long day. Tomorrow I’m working the overnight shift (11pm start) so once again I get a weekday for the beach. In the evening all of us from the Tel Aviv stations are getting together again for dinner and to make next week`s schedule. I just hope tomorrow night I get a break from the transfers and get an exhilarating call.