Last weekend

Last weekend I worked with a Technician who is on his 3 year Paramedic Uni course. Nice guy, competent, reliable and best of all has a good sense of humour. An absolute must in this job! Anyway Saturday dragged on with nothing really going on, a few routine 999 calls, Lot's of pointless stand-by and a Dr's admission which was about a 70 mile round trip. We cleared up at this hospital and they even tried to send us on some more stand-by. I don't think so.

'Er we haven't had our second break yet and if we do have to go on stand-by somewhere can it be somewhere with facilities!'

'Roger, sorry about that, I pushed the wrong button, you can RTB (Return to base)'

'Roger, will do'.

So off we went. Stayed on base for a while but copped a job at 18.10. We where on a 18.30 finish with no one else on base. As Dick Dastardly would say 'Drat and Double Drat!!!'
It came through as a sick person and that he had been to the hospital earlier.

'Right let's get him on board and go' said my crew mate.

We were on scene within minutes and went inside. A lady directed us into the living room where a young man in his early thirties was lying on the sofa not looking too clever. On the other side of the room was a baby asleep in a small chair and another child was quietly playing. It transpired that this chap had been to the hospital earlier with chest pain, had x-rays, bloods and an ECG. He was discharged with anti-biotics and pain killers-diagnosed with a chest infection. Well he may have had 'just' a chest infection then but now it was bit more serious. He was pale, breathless, pulse of 140 (which was barely palpable), blood pressure of 100 systolic and had a tympanic temperature of 40.8. I quickly exposed his chest and abdomen to check for any signs of a bacterial rash, although more common in children and adolescents, I didn't want to miss anything. No rash.
Now on the vehicle we repeated his obs. His pulse oximetry read 89% on air and his blood pressure was still low. We did a 12 lead ECG which looked fine but he was still complaining of severe chest pain. We gave him high flow oxygen, cannulated & took bloods, IV Metoclopramide, IV Morphine and in total a litre of IV fluids. Despite the IV fluids his blood pressure and pulse remained the same although he did say that he felt considerably better by the time we delivered him to the hospital.
I handed over to one of the A/E nurses and before we could off load him onto one of their trolleys the DR who had seen him earlier came over. He looked worried, may be he was thinking of what he may have missed. I briefly explained our findings to the DR, bid fairwell to our patient and booked him in at reception.
A late job but I didn't mind as it was a worth while job. I found out later that he was admitted to a medical ward.