Friday – No one likes being woken up early

After the last few days of doing overtime on nights (albeit very quiet nights), I had to do my own set of four shifts today. It involves two day shifts, and then two night shifts, all in Mandurah. Because of the 1 hour drive each way – when there isn't any traffic – I'm going to stay in the H of H in Golden Bay for the night.

Anyway work wasn't particularly taxing, although most of the calls were "Priority One" – or in need of immediate ambulance treatment, or immediately life threatening (and also any road accident/crash – called an MVA here (very E.R.) even if no one is injured). If the call isn't a Priority One then we don't attend the incident with lights and sirens. It is a lot more sensible if you take into account the lack of local driving skills, although a lot of what the ambulance service's dispatch centre thinks is immediately life threatening, from the information given to them, is a lot different than reality.

As with a lot of other things in the ambulance service here, St. Johns don't subscribe to internationally held ideas about the way that emergency calls are taken, and they use their own system for answering calls, and not any recognised system. I was thinking of offering to help out in the control room on overtime, a little like I was doing in Sussex, but I know I'll get very frustrated with the ad hoc type systems they use.

Anyway – I think I mentioned the other day about the lack of skill in the hospital. Today there was another example of it. We were called to the local court house. There was someone there who had, in the early hours of the morning, had a little tussle with the police and was arrested. Because of the injuries he sustained in the arrest he was taken for a check over at the hospital, and given the all clear about 4 in the morning.

We saw him at the court house, as he had become unconscious after complaining about a severe headache, and had started bleeding from out of one ear. Anyway, we took him around to the hospital again, and then trundled off to get another old nana for their routine hospital appointment. A couple hours later, we arrived at the hospital to see that the guy was still at the hospital. I inquired about why he was still at the hospital (knowing that his symptoms gave me a high suspicion that he had a serious injury). You can imagine how sheepish the hospital must feel now they found that the guy had a skull fracture.

I did have to bite my tongue or I would have said something about how they must be impressed with the previous evenings night shifts thoroughness, and not wanting to wake up the x-ray operator at 3 in the morning (I'm not sure that was the actual reason that they didn't x-ray – let's hope not). No one thinks twice about waking me up at 3 in the morning – although sometimes I wish they would.