Busy Night

I apologize for a long lack of posts, but to put it simply, nothing much has happened that I would consider blogworthy. This changed last Wednesday, however.

I arrived at the garage about an hour early for my shift in order to do some work on the company's website. However, right after I settled in and got my uniform out of the car, the on-call team's pagers went off for a car accident with four passengers involved. I immediately went ahead and put on my uniform as well, since it was probable that a backup team would be called. It was called a moment later, and by luck my team Capitan that night (who is a Paramedic, another good thing) walked in, and I told her that we may as well head straight over to a rig.

The ride over was fast, and I barely had time to lace up my boots and gather equipment before we got on-scene. The scene was well organized, and maneuvering the ambulance in didn't prove difficult. The cars were badly damaged - it had been a head-on collision at about forty miles an hour - and at least one of the passengers was badly enough injured to require a fast ride to a better trauma center than we have locally.

My own involvement was very specific. Passengers had been triaged and tended to when I arrived, and I simply helped to apply straps to a patient on a backboard and get her into our ambulance. We then staged for a moment in order to get vital signs and prepare for the trip, and headed off for the ER.

This was perhaps the most intense part of the experience for me. It was my first time driving an ambulance with a trauma patient in it with all the lights on. It's a little surreal - you can never be sure what other drivers are going to do - but I quickly became comfortable with maneuvering traffic and was incredibly focused throughout the experience. I also remembered to communicate with my partner, and slowed down through turns and helped to make sure the ride was smooth while she attempted to start IV's on the patient.

This case was a remarkable demonstration for me in vehicle safety features. Three patients wearing seatbelts in a minivan suffered little worse than bruising, while one patient, unrestrained, driving a Jeep suffered life-threatening head injuries from the same incident. The rest of the night proved trying - we had calls almost back-to-back until three A.M., and I had to drive to Pittsfield (about 45 minutes each way) twice, in heavy rain and thick fog.

On the other hand, I'm getting to know my squad better and increasingly feel competent in the day-to-day running of an Ambulance. This is what I'm here for, isn't it?