We’ve stumbled upon a blog called Trying My Patients . It’s written by someone called Ella , who works in the Ambulance Service “somewhere between Land’s End and John o’Groats”. It is very readable. Here’s an example:
12 year old male, rash on body
….We pulled up outside the house to be greeted by ‘that frantic wave’. You know, the wave I have mentioned before that tells you something isn’t right and you really need to get a wiggle on. I followed the mum through the front door straight in the lounge. The boy was just wearing his underwear which enabled me to see most of his skin. Every part of him was bright red and covered in the worst hives I have ever seen. His face was swollen and he was in untold discomfort. He stood up and rushed to the toilet. It turns out he also had uncontrollable diarrhoea. Although his tongue wasn’t swollen and he denied struggling to breathe I felt his condition was bad enough to treat for anaphylaxis and after a brief conversation with our Clinical Support Desk they agreed.
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Once I’d decided what we were going to do, I then had to do it and this is where the second guessing begun! It is very rare to have to cannulate a child and if we had been 5 minutes from hospital we’d have just run but the fact it was longer and the fact his rash was getting worse by the second I wanted to try for a vein before they all completely vanished…
She also has some very blunt advice for motorists, cyclists, relatives, GPs…. Here’s some of her advice for care homes:
It’s horrible to see the elderly who have spent a lifetime serving the country and paying taxes left in squalor because the care staff don’t give a crap. Invariably there are two sides to every care home. The side that the relatives see during visiting hours and the graveyard shift. During the day, patients are paraded in social areas, full of Amitriptyline and polite, English speaking nurses tend to their needs in full view of anyone who pops by. At shift change they are replaced by a bunch of miserable mis-fits who don’t care one iota about the people they are supposed to be looking after. OK, I’m generalising massively and tarring the good ones with a bad brush but in all honesty the good homes rarely call us so I we don’t see them. They care for their patients as they should and as a result their patients rarely go to hospital. When they do, they are clean, we get a handover, a full history with matching paperwork, an escort and a smile. Sadly we are more likely to get a seriously ill patient, be greeted with a grunt, no handover, no paperwork, no history and no escort. Our patient is likely to have soiled themselves and been left to suffer. These are the homes I want to Take Note. These are the ones that need investigating.
Don’t leave your patient lying in their own faeces.
Don’t tell us they were fine an hour ago when they’ve been dead for 6.
Don’t put your patient to bed after they have gone into cardiac arrest.
Don’t negate to start CPR because “We are short staffed”
Don’t negate to start CPR because “I forgot”
Don’t call yourself a ‘care home’ if you’re not going to care
Don’t put coded doors on every corridor and look annoyed when we knock.
Don’t call 999 just because your patient fell over. Check them first.
Don’t allow a catheter bag to fill to bursting point.
Don’t allow a colostomy bag to fill to bursting point.
Don’t put tea in the mouth of someone who is dead to cover your arse.
Don’t call yourself a ‘care home’ if you’re not going to care
Don’t wait until your patient is septic before calling us.
Don’t leave your patient uncleaned for days on end. We can tell. We can smell.
Don’t look at me blankly when I ask what room we need to go to.
Don’t look at me blankly when I ask what is wrong with the patient.
Don’t look at me blankly when I ask for a medical history.
Don’t call yourself a ‘care home’ if you’re not going to care
Let’s hope the care homes in our area are all better than the ones Ella describes.